So I was gonna talk about the newest issue of the Bay Guardian. What with the whole cover story about the Homeless issue being one big, huge boneheaded column. I think I'll bring that up sometime later, but instead of going into a rant, I thought I'd put things this way, especially since I got a unique perspective on the whole homeless thing today.

I want to talk about one component of the Homeless issue: shit. That is, mainly, the whole issue over homeless people taking shits all over the place. People, for some reason, don't like seeing the shit on the streets. Hell, people tend not to like even seeing shit if it comes out of a cute, golden retriever puppy nevermind a scuzzy looking homeless person. And people like even less watching people take shits on the street. I can remember coming out of my apartment on Shrader one fine, beautiful SF morning only to see some crazy homeless person pull up her dress, squat down, and take a shit in front of somebody's stoop. Not a really good way to start the day. Understandably, people do not like having to see things like this. And while everyone talks about it's effects on Bubba and JoAnne Tourist from Wisshauka Nowheresville and the tourist industry, I'm pretty sure it's not something your average SF citizen if fond of seeing.

So people complain to the Mayor and the Mayor, all frustrated because it means he has to do something other than dining at fancy restaurants with his girlfriend of the week and does something drastic. Like getting rid of park benches. Or tries to have the cops arrest people for defecating in public places.

Which is a policy that upsets some people. See, the problem, as they see it, is that the homeless have to take a shit on the street, out in the open, because there's no bathrooms for them to use. Which is true. And a very good point. There are no bathrooms around for them to use. In fact, if you're downtown or in certain less than hoity-toity neighborhoods, it's really hard to find a public bathroom anywhere even if you have a home.

Why is it so hard to find a bathroom? Well, for one thing, there expensive and people have to clean them and there's no money for them. Just check out some of the bathrooms in Golden Gate Park and see how they look. I've been in Third World bathrooms that were in better shape.

But there's another reason why there's no bathrooms for people to use. It's because of the Homeless. Because they often-times use the bathrooms to clean up or do whatever and, well, often leave a huge, disgusting mess. And people don’t' like having to use disgusting bathrooms. We in the First World do not look fondly upon dirty bathrooms. That's why we like living in First World countries. And let's say you run a business on Haight Street. You have a bathroom for people to use, but there's so many Homeless people who use the bathroom that the bathroom are constantly a disgusting mess. When one of your customer's goes in there, somebody who actually pays the person who owns the business, they then go into the bathroom, see the mess, and maybe decide not to go shopping there again because they don't want to be associated with a place that has a bathroom that's fairly disgusting.

And that's if the business is lucky. A lot of business in the Haight, for instance, refuse to let people use the bathrooms because oftentimes the Homeless, at least the junkies, use the bathrooms to shoot up. So, besides having their bathroom turned into a shooting gallery, the place's customer's go in there, find empty hypodermic needles and, well, who wants to see that?

So as a result, it's almost impossible to find a bathroom downtown or in a lot of neighborhoods. Sometimes it's darn near impossible. All businesses have a bathroom, of course, but it's often impossible to use them. They either only allow you in if you're a customer and they give you a key to enter. Or some pretend there isn't one but will let you use it if you look okay. Or a lot of places pretend that there's absolutely no bathroom available and somehow their employees just hold it in for hours upon hours.

What does this have to do with today? Well, somebody thought it would be a brilliant idea to put one of those beautiful, lovely self-cleaning DeCaux toilets on 16th & Mission. For those of you who don't know the neighborhood, it's an extremely busy, hip neighborhood that also has an extremely seedy, skanky side. So, you think, good idea. It's a popular neighborhood, so let's put this wonderful, self-cleaning toilet in the middle of one of the busiest corners in the City. And all the Homeless people and other down on their luck people in the neighborhood, for just a quarter, can go use the place to take a shit.

Except for the fact that I'm pretty sure nobody actually uses that bathroom for what it's supposed to be used for. Everytime I walk by, I always see like three or four people getting in or getting out. And none of them look like they really have to go to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. Today, as I was walking by, right in the middle of the afternoon, the door opened and as one person goes stumbling out, another person can be plainly seen shooting up. When I walked past the bathroom a few hours later, the bathroom was pretty much trashed- door open, floor a mess, toilet not self-cleaned.

If you read the papers, you know that this particular toilet is an issue. The people who live in the neighborhood and the businesses that business in the neighborhood hate the bathroom because it's either being used for junkies to shoot up or for prostitutes to pull tricks in. They don't like that. I live in the neighborhood and I didn't really appreciate seeing someone shoot up in front of me, just like I wasn't really thrilled with watching that homeless lady take a shit on the street a few feet away from me.

So what does this have to do with the Homeless issue? Just this. That something needs to be done and that people would have a little more sympathy towards Homeless Advocates if they stopped talking about fixing capitalism, or how panhandling is a free speech issu,e or even having sympathy for the homeless if they just acknowledged the fact that people don't like seeing shit everywhere.