San Francisco is testing a special paint that splashes back on your shoes and trousers if you offend it by urinating in public. It’s a possible answer to San Francisco’s rash of complaints asking the city to steam-clean urine from stinky walls.
The water-and-oil resistant paint was developed for other purposes, such as keeping walkways dry, but has been adapted for the purpose. It’s called “Ultra Ever Dry,” and the video above shows how accurate the name is!
Although the city outlawed public urination in 2002, with fines up to $500, it’s a growing percentage of the the city’s Public Works department’s workload, along with graffiti and pigeon poop. Public Works director Mohammed Nuru told The Telegraph (UK) “We are piloting it to see if we can discourage people from peeing at many of our hotspots.”
Well, if that doesn’t work, they might try having more available public toilets…
The splashback paint has also been tested in Hamburg, Germany, source of the graphic below. No word on how well it’s worked there, or if it’s merely caused violators to stand further back.
It sounds like a potential Yakov Smirnoff joke to me. ” In Soviet Russia walls pee on you”
Time will tell to see if this will work. In that particular area of the city, the worse offenders are usually (1)too drunk to notice until it is too late or (2) are transient.
If it does work, I say that they add this special paint to all areas of the BART stations! Please! It sure is a wake up call on certain mornings!