Citizens Say: “If you can’t beat them, join them!”

(Streets of San Fransisco cleaned of human droppings by three person full time patrol) Photo: John Muir

One of America’s wealthiest cities has a huge problem with public poop. Between 2011 and 2018, San Francisco experienced a massive increase in reported incidents of human feces found on public streets. In 2011, just over 5,500 reports were logged by the San Francisco Department of Public Works; in 2018, the number increased to more than 28,000.

The government watchdog Open the Books documented the sharp increase over time in a stunning chart, first spotted by the BuzzFeed editor John Paczkowski.

Open the Books/City of San Francisco

Notably, this is a chart of only documented reports — the actual amount of feces on San Francisco’s streets is likely even higher than these statistics suggest.

“I will say there is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed told NBC in a 2018 interview. “That is a huge problem, and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.”

San Francisco has struggled with a feces problem for years. The city even employs a “Poop Patrol” that attempts to keep the streets clean and focuses on the Tenderloin neighborhood.

But people who are not homeless seem to have joined the trend and are also using the public streets to defecate. A libertarian weekly pointed out that the taxpayers must provide funds to the government for the service of cleaning the poop off the streets, so…we all are entitled to defecate on the street.

Outside of trendy nightclubs women can be seen squatting near the curb with a gaggle of girlfriends around to provide a screen. “The wait for the ladies room is so long in the clubs,” the defecatee asserted, “and I’m no lady!”

While men have long been pissing in allies after a few beers with the boys, the sight of well dressed women taking a dump by the side of the road is something new.

“This is another way that ‘homeless culture’ can educate us all,” said philosophy instructor Eric Clanton. “I think we can all benefit from putting ourselves in another person shoes. ”

Just watch were you step when you are wearing those metaphorical shoes. Or, are the allegorical.

An inline rollerskating club has organized a kind of dodge game where they skate down heavily ka-kaed streets trying to avoid the foul messes. Bring toilet paper!

(Street skating challenge – avoid the people droppings!) Photo: Diane Arbus

The skaters do say that the relaxed attitude toward public defecation is a help to a skater out on the street and far from home. Just squat by the side of the road. People walking by hardly even look anymore. In fact, they turn their eyes.

We caught up with Everett Chadsworth and investment banker at Wells Fargo in Market Street area. He had just bought a bowl of hot steaming Asian noodles off a push-cart vendor and ducked into some bushes near the street to defecate while his bowl of soup cooled nearby. As he sat on a wall eating he told this reporter, “This is so quick and easy. I don’t have to go to the company bathroom and then try to book it down to the street level for lunch. I can kill two birds with one stone. The city has three full time people to clean up after me, and I pay their salaries through my taxes, so I want my money’s worth!”

(Everett Chadsword pays to poop in homeless woman’s exclusive ‘zone’) Photo Mann Ray

The popularity with public pooping may soon catch up to that of India where women especially won’t use public toilets to poop. San Fransisco seems to have adopted a quaint Third World custom.

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