A word of advice for public urinators in San Francisco: Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.
The Department of Public Works says it has coated nine walls around the city with a hydro-resistant paint which essentially splashes the substance back at the perpetrator. The effort is part of a pilot program aimed at discouraging the foul practice and comes at a price tag of a couple hundred dollars per wall. If successful, the program—now affecting walls in the Mission and SoMA districts—will expand to other areas, officials said.
San Francisco officials say public urination is a very real problem. Since the start of the year, there have been 375 wizz-related clean-up requests. And the current fine, which can range from $50 to $500, is doing little to stem the tide.
The special coating, known as Ultra-Ever Dry, comes from a Florida-based chemical and waste management company called Ultra-tech. The company also supplies paint for walls in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg, Germany where post-pub crawl outdoor urination was once practically a ritual. The program has since worked wonders there, according to Public Words Director Mohammed Nuru.
Just how effective is the paint? See a video demonstration (using water, of course) and judge for yourself.
Image Credit: Flickr User adam_jones, https://flic.kr/p/8bKHd6 via (CC BY-SA 2.0)