America is not ready for DIY pissoirs
Bookworm on May 21 2008 at 5:35 pm | Filed under: San Francisco
In my rants about the Bay to Breakers race, I mentioned the fact that, despite lots of porta-potties, many of the participants thought it was just fine to use the bushes. At Webloggin, which reprints some of my posts, the editor found a perfect picture of a wall and sidewalk being liberally sprinkled by revelers. I have no words for how disgusting I found this. One of the hallmarks of modern civilization is proper waste disposal. Even in Paris, for goodness sake, they’ve done away with the pissoir — which, for those who don’t know, was a little metal circle wall set up on the sidewalks of Paris. Men walked into that circle and, free from prying eyes, peed all over the sidewalk. Paris stank.
It turns out I wasn’t the only one upset by this complete lapse into societal degradation:
It’s often called the world’s longest party, but this year’s Bay to Breakers race through San Francisco was anything but fun for the residents, cops and public workers who bore the brunt of the drunken young “runners” who staggered around Golden Gate Park and the city’s west side, relieving themselves wherever it proved convenient.
“We tried to get out in front of the problem, but this year some of these kids were just beyond gone,” said city Recreation and Park Department spokeswoman Rose Dennis.
“The media covers this as some kind of wonderful party, but at the end, there is a lot of crap and people urinating,” Dennis said.
Much of the problem at Sunday’s 97th running of the crosstown race was blamed on the early-20s crowd, which has been growing in recent years.
“They were stumbling around, hammered,” Dennis said. “Peeing. Women with their boobs hanging out. Staggering around Balboa and 31st waiting for a bus to take them home.”
Indeed, the Park Police Station, which covers the eastern end of Golden Gate Park, got so many complaints that Capt. Teri Barrett sent out an e-mail blast Tuesday asking residents for help in documenting just “how out of control the Bay to Breakers was this year.”
The race’s party rep has been building for some time. This year, a local news and entertainment Web site, SFist, even posted a map of liquor stores along the route to help participants through stretches “painfully lacking in places to buy additional smokes and booze for your continued ‘running.’ ”
Runner Ryan Cunnane, 28, agreed with officials that Sunday’s race was “by far the booziest” he’d seen in his nine years of racing. But he called it a “disgrace” that sponsors hadn’t furnished more portable toilets, saying people needed to relieve themselves whether they were drunk or sober.
“Once people realized that waiting in line was a death sentence, it became a free-for-all,” Cunnane said. “The wall of the gas station at Divisadero and Fell turned into a makeshift bathroom, with 10 guys lined up on the wall to relieve themselves.”
It appears that the City may also have provided too few urinals at the race’s beginning, but that doesn’t explain the mess at the end, in Golden Gate Park. There were no lines at the porta-porties. In fact, it seemed as if most were empty at any given time. Nevertheless, the “party-goers” were standing in the street peeing within feet of the empty porta-potties.
The whole thing was a disgrace, and San Francisco should crack down. This is no way to treat a City.
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Greetings:
So, you were OK with the five minute headstart for the womenfolk?
I wasn’t interested at all in the race. The only five minute headstart women should get is the one in the line for the restrooms!
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“The media covers this as some kind of wonderful party, but at the end, there is a lot of crap and people urinating,” Dennis said.
Much of the problem at Sunday’s 97th running of the crosstown race was blamed on the early-20s crowd, which has been growing in recent years.
“They were stumbling around, hammered,” Dennis said. “Peeing. Women with their boobs hanging out. Staggering around Balboa and 31st waiting for a bus to take them home.”
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My God, another case where the liberals just cannot seem to GET it.
You have a public festival where “alternative lifestyles” of many sorts is part of the purpose. Minor laws get broken surrounding nudity and misdemeanor drugs. Everyone is celebratory but actually purposeful – they know the purpose of this. It all goes OK. Police are told to simply monitor the situation but accept the low-level lawlessness.
I don’t like it. Public flaunting of laws is never a good idea, and it will always lead to trouble in the end. These kinds of things tend to go on in “private parties” which at least continue to honor the concept of publicly following the law. But I digress. For the purposes of the discussion, let’s say I’m OK with things so far.
Here is where the liberals keep making the same crazy mistakes, over and over and over: THE LAWS OF CONSEQUENCES. Or to put it another way: Build it, and they will come.
Wild public parties in parks are a magnet for outsides to come on in and join the fun. You will – especially in this day and age – attract more and more people whose sole purpose is to push the boundaries. This always means, for them: “Last year didn’t go far enough. We’re going farther this year.” No one knows where the limits are, so there are no limits. I am sure that the police don’t even know where the limits are. Perhaps: No violence, no rape, no murders, is about the extent of it? No hard drugs? Who knows? Any such limits I am sure are privately expressed by the commissioner to his officers. Wouldn’t want to upset the anarchists, you know. What’s a little rape compared with PUBLICLY STATING: No rapes! “Hey Pig: Don’t you force your fascist patriarchalism on me!” is the anarchist response.
The far-left liberals must recognize that every year will be worse and worse and worse. Look at how the disgust is already beginning to spread. Look at how it is the outsiders who are flocking in, with absolutely no respect, and completely trashing the event in every way they can. They are utterly out of control. As the chaos grows, there will inevitably be violence, rape, and then murder. Harder and harder drugs. Gangs. Violent drug suppliers.
These are the consequences of a no-limits public bacchanalia. The liberals cannot seem to understand that consequences HAPPEN. So what started as a sort-of new-hippie public party degenerates into chaos and filth, because they won’t acknowledge this. They won’t decide in advance “This far we allow, and no further.”, and then ENFORCE it. The inevitable result is that either the situation becomes totally dangerous, or they have to shut it down out of embarrassment for the day when the gangs shoot it out and there are a shocking number of rapes, molestations, and muggings, on that inevitable day: “The Day The Party Died”.
The purpose of religion is to establish the ideals of behavior we wish to strive for. The purpose of laws are to establish the minimal behavior we will tolerate.
If you make laws and don’t enforce them – all the time – two outcomes are possible:either you might as well not have passed the law – it becomes just a suggestion – or you allow your enforcers – the police – permission to selectively enforce your laws. The latter is what we call corruption. The former, of course, is anarchy.
I wish I’d said that, suek.
Heh. Feel free!
Suek, what you said was so logical and clearly stated that it has been filed to memory.
You’re very kind. If so, it’s the fruit of many arguments with my adult sons – we’ve gotten into the ethics, morality, legality issues back and forth so many times! and of course, in this day and age of sharia as a topic, the discussion of whether one can be moral if legally required to do/not do something, and why the idea of laws and religion being one and the same is bad … all grist for the mill!