One public toilet? Chicago bathroom desert belies windy aspirations to being a world-class city
It’s best not to comment on specific mistaken remarks made by Mayor Brandon Johnson — the air is already thick with criticism, and once started, where does one stop? But there is one statement he says repeatedly that is almost Rahmesque in its misguided pretension:
“Chicago is a world-class city.”
Yes, there is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute, Margie’s Candies and a few other first-rate institutions that might embolden a person to imagine Chicago is right up there with London and Paris and the other global big boys.
But the truth remains: Chicago is not a world-class city. It can’t be. We don’t have any public toilets. A survey by Nationwide Waste Service lists 21 cities. Kansas City is first, with 30 public toilets per 100,000 residents, while Chicago is dead last, with less than half, 14 per 100,000.
And those are not actual public toilets but toilets accessible to the public, theoretically, in libraries and hotels and restaurants that turn a blind eye to those in need. While a few city-run facilities no doubt lurk in remote park district field houses and other public buildings, this woeful sentence was published by the Sun-Times this week:
“The city’s sole public bathroom appeared near the CTA Blue Line station in the Polish Triangle at Division Street and Ashland and Milwaukee Avenues in West Town.”
The structure appeared, that is. Not yet open. Almost there. After decades of dithering. Chicago is about to open one sleek self-cleaning public bathroom. In Wicker Park. How many of those are found in Paris? A city of 2 million residents, or three-quarters the population of Chicago?
Answer: 435
Any idea how embarrassing this is? How bad for our reputation? Flip open a guide book.
“Public toilets are non-existent on the streets of Chicago,” a Frommer’s guide chides.
How long was this humiliation in the making? (pardoning the mild pun; we journalists love punning on this topic; doing so relieves — whoops — reduces our discomfort.)
“Pitch for public toilets fails to flush out City Hall backing,” a Tribune headline snickered in 1992, noting that JCDecaux — the same French company currently constructing the Wicker Park loo, which at the time had built 4,000 public toilet kiosks in 400 European cities and was also trying them in New York — made a presentation to obdurate Chicago administrators, who were unmoved.
“There are a lot of questions,” said the city’s director of central planning — cost, number, “clutter on Chicago sidewalks.”
Alas, one question few bothered with — then or now — is: Where are people supposed to go to the bathroom?
“Why is this? Why in this age of issues and era of special interests is the public toilet a taboo topic?” the Trib’s urban affairs columnist marveled, also in 1992. “It makes a lot of people embarrassed and unsettled.”
Does it ever. Here I thought Americans were horrified at the prospect of using a bathroom where a person of indeterminate gender might be applying their lip gloss. Turns out, we’re just horrified at the thought of bathrooms, period.
To be fair, Chicago does have all those alleys. And public bathrooms have a tendency to be colonized by the homeless and drug addicts — Starbucks in Europe lit their bathrooms with blue light, to prevent intravenous drug users from finding a vein. But unsavory interlopers camping out are also a problem with 24-hour ATM lobbies downtown, but one that seems mostly overcome.
We don’t have public bathrooms because we don’t live in a society where we recognize the duty of government to help people live decent lives. If government provided toilets, what’s next? Health care?
As with health care, bathrooms represent another human necessity offloaded to private industry. Asked if Chicago needed public toilets in 1996, the president of the Oak Street Council merchants group said, “Unequivocally no. I don’t think we need public toilets in Chicago. I don’t think anything more is necessary to obstruct the beauty of the city. There are enough garages and hotels and restaurants around so that people can have their pick of just about any facility.”
That’s nonsense. Striding into Petterino’s, staring down the maitre d’, making a hard right and heading directly to the bathroom takes a level of moxie that most tourists with three gotta-go-now! children won’t muster.
If I were looking for the bright spot, I might say: At least the pension crisis isn’t the only grim Chicago reality coming home to roost after years of neglect. We spend millions urging out-of-towners to come to Chicago and explore this lovely city. And almost nothing to help them find a toilet once they get here. That doesn’t scream “world class” to me.