Public restroom graffiti, or lack of...

[KlondikeGeoff]

Back in the days of pay toilets, this was often inscribed on the walls of the stalls:

Here I sit, all downhearted,
I paid I dime to shit and only farted.

The damned thing suddenly popped into my head and now I can’t get rid of it.

In any case, it suddenly made me realize that in recent years I rarely see graffiti scrawled all over public bathroom stall walls.

In the past, there was seldom a place that did not have the entire inside walls covered in various pithy sayings, with hardly any space left.

Has the general toilet-going public matured, are walls coated somehow to prevent this, or is there some other explanation?

[Cluricaun]

My PDA stylus has a harder time scratching stuff into stall paint then the pens I used to carry.

[matt_mcl]

Maybe you’re frequenting posher public bathrooms?

[UncleRojelio]

Folks who scrawl upon bathroom walls are a very discerning lot. If they cannot pen something unique and original, then they just do not write anything. Too bad movie screenwriters don’t have the same scruples.

[Clothahump]

@KlondikeGeoff

Back in the days of pay toilets, this was often inscribed on the walls of the stalls:

Here I sit, all downhearted,
I paid I dime to shit and only farted.

The damned thing suddenly popped into my head and now I can’t get rid of it.

Don’t forget the second and third verse:

Now I sit amidst the vapor
Some SOB done stole the paper.

My date awaits, I must not linger.
I’ll wipe my ass with my index finger.

And of course the immortal ode to graffiti itself:

He who writes on outhouse walls
Rolls his shit in little balls.
He who reads these words of wit
Then eats these little balls of shit.

[neutron_star]

Just out of curiousity, when were the days of pay toilets? I’m almost 30 and I’ve read about their existence, but I’ve never seen one in my entire life.

[Sternvogel]

@neutron star

Just out of curiousity, when were the days of pay toilets? I’m almost 30 and I’ve read about their existence, but I’ve never seen one in my entire life.

I was in college from 1977 to '81 (around the time you were born) and I remember that Greyhound station rest rooms had pay stalls (using the urinals was free, as was taking advantage of the restroom with which the bus was equipped). There was an organization called CEPTIA (Committee to End Pay Toilets in America) whose first major success was getting Chicago to enact a ban in 1973. As the linked article states:

CEPTIA was successful over the next few years in obtaining bans in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, California, Florida and Ohio. Lobbying was successful in other states as well, the consensus being that the system discriminated against women, and by decade’s end, pay toilets were almost unknown in America. By then, those remaining toilet owners who had pay toilets found they were losing more money than they made, due to stolen or vandalized pay boxes, as well as lost business.

[armedmonkey]

This picture made me laugh.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@KlondikeGeoff

Back in the days of pay toilets, this was often inscribed on the walls of the stalls:

Here I sit, all downhearted,
I paid I dime to shit and only farted.

I remember it from free stalls, rendered more simply as:

Here I sit, broken-hearted
Tried to shit but only farted
But think of the sucker who took a chance,
Tried to fart but shit in his pants.

I’ll always associate bathroom graffiti with college. It was in the dorms, in the libraries, in the bars, everywhere. Something about college life seems to bring out the potty poet in people.

[Troy_McClure_SF]

@matt_mcl

Maybe you’re frequenting posher public bathrooms?

That’d be my guess. There’s plenty of fine art in my regular haunts.

[KlondikeGeoff]

the consensus being that the system discriminated against women

That was ridiculous. I don’t see any reason why women could not use the free urinals too.

[Jayn_Newell]

I tend to think of bathroom graffiti as a high school thing. The stalls (and desks, and any other surface they could find a way to write on) always had something on them. Of course, wit was another matter–“I wuz here” and “Gary iz hawt” tended to be the standard fare. I haven’t seen much of that since I graduated though.

[KGS]

My favorite bathroom graffiti was written seven feet above the toilet:

“If you can piss this high, join the fire department.”

[John_DiFool]

Almost all of the graffiti I’ve seen lately is seriously lacking in wit, mainly because it invariably consists of homosexual come-ons.

[Kythereia]

There’s always, inevitably, weirdly, some sort of abortion debate going on in the stalls I visit on campus.

I mean, yeah, a healthy discussion’s great and all, but… a bathroom stall?

[tonedef]

@UncleRojelio

Folks who scrawl upon bathroom walls are a very discerning lot. If they cannot pen something unique and original, then they just do not write anything. Too bad movie screenwriters don’t have the same scruples.

Although it is funny if you see that someone has writen somthing that is lame or has been done before, because there is always a long list of comments on how much a tool that person is.

[lieu]

UncleRojelio makes me wonder though… maybe this has something to do with the writer’s strike.

[TheLoadedDog]

My favourite is written in small type on the bottom of the door of the stall…

You are now shitting at forty-five degrees.

[armedmonkey]

@tonedef

Although it is funny if you see that someone has writen somthing that is lame or has been done before, because there is always a long list of comments on how much a tool that person is.

My God, the SDMB is public restroom graffitt?.

Yep, that sounds about right.

[Maggie_the_Ocelot]

I was in a women’s room recently at the local community college, and saw these two competing philosophical arguments:

“Time spent thinking is time lost doing”

and

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

Pondering the debate, I then noted that a third person had raised the level of discourse a bit by adding,

“I fucked your dad.”

Which just made me giggle.