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Michael Our neighborhood, Noe Valley in San Francisco, is known to be almost at the center of the peninsula on which the city spreads out. However, hardly any tourist knows about our little oasis, a well-preserved small village with its own marketplace, amidst a decaying city where chaos has reigned for years due to misguided policies.
On our town square, a weekly market now takes place every Saturday, where farmers from the surrounding area sell high-quality organic goods to a well-to-do clientele. During the week, there are small tables with chairs on the square, where, strangely enough, you hardly see any homeless people lingering. Instead, it seems to be frequented only by the higher-earning city crowd, who apparently take a break after strolling through the fashion boutiques on 24th Street. Amazingly well-behaved children are playing under the supervision of their nannies on the slide of the playground.
An idyll, a jewel of urban planning! Only one thing was missing until recently: a public toilet, as the surrounding restaurants generally only allow guests to use their facilities for cost reasons. It so happened that in 2018, the then-supervisor Matt Haney pulled a plan out of his pocket to build the toilet. But of course, a simple portable toilet cannot stand in the prestigious marketplace of Noe Valley; we're not at the Wacken Open Air heavy metal festival! So, several designs were solicited, and the best one was selected and approved.
The fact that the planned 20-square-meter monument to detoxification was now supposed to cost a whopping 1.7 million dollars did not deter Supervisor Haney, because, as is well known, our city requires 42 paid permits for every little thing, and for any construction project, 17 different unions have their hands out. This may seem grotesque to you now, but in San Francisco, the Department of Public Works, the Mayor's Office on Disability, the Arts Commission, the electricity provider (PG&E), the city planning committee, and many other organizations actually charge exorbitant fees for opaque paperwork and assessments before such a project even takes shape. Furthermore, by law, only highly qualified union workers are allowed to carry out the construction work.
Nevertheless, Matt Haney had already organized the 1.7 million, with the money set to come from the city and state tax coffers, and the project was, as they say, in the bag. Matt Haney had since made a career move, rising from city council to become a government representative in Sacramento. Surprisingly, however, our otherwise not at all stingy Governor Gavin Newsom found the toilet costs to be exorbitant and abruptly cut the state of California's involvement. This put the project on hold for the time being. A wild hunt for sponsors began, and a toilet company from Nevada offered to construct the facility for free. The only problem was that the San Francisco city council had previously declared with great fanfare that they would no longer do business with states like Nevada, as Nevada did not fully implement San Francisco's noble LGBTQ laws. Parbleu!
With their backs against the wall, the city fathers relaxed their moral demands on the policies of other states, and the toilet was delivered, with two different companies taking on not only the construction but also the lion's share of the union-extracted construction costs. The city contributed only $200,000, also to unionized construction workers.
Currently, the "Toiletgate" affair has already made waves across the US, and also a Wikipedia article about the public restroom in Noe Valley has existed for some time now (not written by me, by the way). Nowadays, when traveling as a California resident to other states, it's not uncommon to be confronted with such 'typically Californian' nonsense with eye-rolling.
Even the renowned daily newspaper, The New York Times, has already covered the topic. And former President Trump recently used the topic as campaign rhetoric, as evidence of failed policies on the part of the Democratic Party. Being the roving newsletter reporter in charge, I have recently tested the toilet, which is only about 500 meters from our house, and I can confirm that it works. However, I would not classify it as top-notch, as I have seen much more appealing constructions even on hiking trails in the middle of nowhere.
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