toilets

Lava Mae

The lack of public toilets is a problem when you’re on your way home on the subway and you drank one beer too many, but they’re a much bigger problem if you have no home and no access to facilities. Increased public access to bathrooms doesn’t just mean everyone has a pot to piss in; it can also increase health, dignity, confidence, and employability for the homeless. And San Francisco nonprofit Lava Mae is getting the word out about that — in the form of a parade of beautiful artistic toilets.

Lava Mae is working to get San Francisco buses retrofitted with toilets and showers, and in the meantime it wants to make San Francisco natives aware of the importance of restroom access. So the group commissioned three artists and three designers to kit out five thrones and install them on Market Street. The awareness campaign, bless their hearts, is called “C’mon Give A Sh_t!”

No word on whether anyone peed in any of the toilets, but if they did, we trust they probably needed to and we hope it helped.