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They had all of this beautiful work in their city, and as people begin to pee onto the stones in the wood, it begins to deteriorate. Welcome back to Privy. Privy is a podcast about toilets recorded here from my home toilet. My name is Hunter Hoover. I'm your toilet host, toilet enthusiast, and we have a lot to be appreciative of when it comes to toilets. Not a lot going on bathroom-wise this week, know. Been using that app.
We're gonna cover it here eventually, but been using the poop tracker app. It's pretty great. I get to see where your friends are going to. So yeah, it's just kind of a fun little thing. I think some people are kind of fudging their numbers, but you know, it is what it is. Yeah, not a lot of bathroom things going on. You know, I know there's been some legislature of people like passing what bathrooms look like. um It's whatever. Single stalls are going to be the way to go in my opinion.
So just single stall it. But this week, you know, we We're gonna transition here. And one of the things that we have talked about when we talk about pay toilets and public restrooms, wait, back up. So, Pokemon Go update. So I have been shiny hunting a shiny Jigglypuff for, I don't know, at least two or three years since its release in Pokemon Go. And since the last episode of Privy has released, I finally caught a shiny Jigglypuff. Revolutionary, loved it.
It's not a very good one, but I did catch a shiny Jigglypuff. So I don't really get anything other than having the shiny Jigglypuff for that, but it is exciting. um And now I have to find my new target. It's kind of a mercrow, but I'm gonna find you. One of the things that we talked about when we talked about our pay toilets and public restrooms, were these ideas of pop-up or bathrooms that are situated for public use.
um so nowadays, you know, we have these bathrooms that will like rise out of the ground like some sort of scary monster beast. And if you're so inclined, you may go in there and relieve yourself. it, you know, they're self-cleaning all this thing. It's pretty good stuff. But these in our brains, are not just a porta potty. And we're gonna talk about porta potties here coming up in privy summer.
These are like structures that are fixed in place that you may use in public to make it easier for you to not have to go as long in between the next indoor restroom. these also traditionally are going to feed directly into city sewers. This is like the biggest difference because you're gonna actually have a pipe that runs to it that feeds into established city sewage. And so when you poo or pee into it, it's not gonna go into a container. And so it's not gonna smell as bad.
And it's gonna be easier to clean and keep clean all of those things. We also discuss how these uh pop-up toilets or bathrooms that are situated out in the public eye are gonna be good for those who may not have as much access to either the funds to be able to buy something to use a toilet on private property like a store, or who may not have access to their own personal bathroom.
So these pop-up bathrooms are a good key and a good tool, especially when you start getting people going out late at night, walking around, doing things maybe they shouldn't be, it provides them a space to do bathroom that is not public. or it is not exposed to the public. But when you have these, as we also discussed, anytime you have some sort of a public amenity, you know it's gonna get abused and it's gonna get misused. And we talked about how a pay system could help that out.
But then the pay system is going to disparage folks who do not have the resources to use the system. And so then we're back to the whole Well, we gotta have something for people. And so then we're back to square one. This week on Privy, we're revisiting one of these ideas and we're gonna do it through the lens of history. history. How much of you we can learn about from Google? This week, privy, we're going to France. Oui oui mon soeur. Louis Pasteur. Ratatouille. All French things, I believe.
ah And as with any time we look at history on privy, we can't just start where we want to talk about stuff. God forbid we start at the beginning. No, we have to start way back before the beginning of what we're gonna talk about to get a feel for what is going on. The year. is 1789. According to Ron Swanson, history has only been going for about 13 years.
That culminating event that Ron Swanson says was the beginning of history, America's revolution and freedom from uh Britain, sorry Britain, but here we are. France helped us win that conflict. They had been an involved member of a number of costly wars. We We Mon Soeur France had bailed us out and had also had a number of its own campaigns that had run up the bill. One of which, again, we here in America have benefited from in our independence. Stay tuned for more on independence.
What followed for France was a classic problem of taxation to pay for the war debt that had been created during all of these campaigns. when they began to tax, the way they went about taxing, the people who were being taxed were not always represented. And it's somewhat ironic because this is what France helped us fight in America to be free from, yet, then they went and began to levy taxes without representation in that time. It's interesting, but here we are. Things got real bad.
And eventually you had rioting and revolution as the people tried to overthrow the old regime to establish a more democratic state. And then, After years of revolution, the age of Napoleon came about. Napoleon, some of the best ice cream, it's just wonderful flavor. Napoleon, Louisiana trade, it's all a thing. Napoleon was named the emperor of France in 1804 and his political and military and economic reforms made France a powerhouse in the world sphere once more.
Things were generally pretty good or at least trending okay for France during Napoleon's time. And again, I cannot stress this. This is me summarizing a few things that I have read on history. So I do my best to fact check, like, but there's this thing, Napoleon, got exiled by his people to Saint Helena in 1815. And when Napoleon was gone, things seemed to begin to fall apart once more and anew. Some things stayed the same. The government of France was centralized to Paris.
The wealth of France, however, was concentrated to about 10 % of the people. So you had 10 % of the population in France who owned over 80 % of France's wealth and money. So we have a class disparity between the very upper class who again, they have 80 % of the wealth but they're only 10 % of the population. That's not a good spread.
And when you have that, you're gonna have a number of people who... economically and financially and culturally are of a lower class and unfortunately as we're going to see maybe we're treated as such. It is established that less than 1 % of the population of France was allowed to vote in that wonderful democracy. See of all France and less than 1 % of the people were allowed to vote. and the top 25 % of the rich were allowed two votes.
So if you made it into the 1 % of people who were said to have been allowed to vote, if you were the richest of the rich, you got to vote twice. Yours counts as two. So that system seems all unfairly effed up. And it is technically democracy because we're voting, but is it if... Not everybody is voting. It's, yeah, it's a different system. Most of the French were either poor rural peasants or poor urban workers.
These had gained many rights during these times as well, but as you can see, their rights often only go as far as their class and their economic system. And as such, you have a number of these, especially in urban centers, of these low income or poor French workers living in cities where there is a small concentration of rich people also living in those cities, calling most of the shots.
And when you have people needing to, and you're hearing that, and so you're going to have some tension in these areas. And you're hearing all this and you're going, okay, but like, get to the punch. What does this have to do with bathrooming and the things I do in a bathroom? Well, here we go. When you have a lot of people in a condensed or concentrated area, you're gonna have a lot of people needing to go to the bathroom.
And the options up until that point were go in the street, go on a building, or like find some bush. Because a lot of these folks did not have access to a bathroom. Or if they were in between work or at work, it was too costly to them to get away from work, to go to do the bathroom. And so you have these people who are using the public as their bathroom, but you also have an upper class demographic of people who have to live alongside of it and they're not going to go for it.
They're fed up and they're going to do something to alleviate this problem. The architecture and buildings in France were immaculate and beautiful and some of them were being stained by the frequent urination. on walls and streets. had all of this beautiful work in their city and as people begin to pee onto the stones in the wood, it begins to deteriorate. Urine is winning the battle.
Urine over time, when dried, would leave unsightly residue that could even wear away the stone and other material. Public urination was technically illegal. They had made it illegal by this time, but It being illegal turned into somewhat of a protest against the class disparity because it's like, you have made this thing illegal and now my protest is to do the thing that you have made illegal.
What started as having sectioned off area to pee on, they would like put up these little gate things and say, here is the spot that you may pee. Please pee here. That eventually over time stopped working because again, The people are like, you know what? I'm going to jam it to you, sir, in Normanum, but probably sir at this point in history. I'm going to pee where I dang well please. I'm going to pee over here. I'm going pee over there. I'll pee with a fox. I'll pee in a box. Watch out.
The French commissioned the building of a number of what are called Vespasians. Now, if you are a Frenchman or a French woman, or if you are a purveyor of French language, you've probably heard me, you're going to hear me say a number of French words today. And you're gonna think to yourself, man, what an ignorant... unclassed French person and yes, you've nailed it. Vespasians. Now if that's not how you say it, correct me, that's fine.
And the person that they commission to build these Vespasians, we're gonna talk about what they are here, but it was Claude Filbert Bartholot, Count of Ramboutou and Prefect of Paris. What a name, what a laundry list of titles after his name, the only... counts I know are the count from Ye Olde Sesame Street and Count Chocula. Those are the counts I know about. I probably know about others, but those are the ones that I have in my brain at this very moment. yeah, the count.
But this guy is apparently a count. Now Claude Filibert, let's read again. Claude Filibert Bartholow, Count of Ramboutou and Prefect of Paris. Whenever I see that word pre-fed, I think of prefect from Harry Potter and I just think of Percy with his dumb badge.
So Claude wanted to make a more beautiful Paris and outside of installing fountains and develop the gas lighting network and planting trees throughout Paris, he also brought the Paris sewage system up to speed, the likes of which Remy the rat can get on board with. And he designed the first public urinals of Paris. And now a brief aside about Mr. Bartholau and 1800s France.
In 1833, Bartholau took on his role of prefect, which essentially is like a representative or a head of department in their government. In 1832, one year before that, the cholera outbreak struck Paris. This cholera epidemic killed 19,000 people in the matter of six months. And when Bartholow took his position the following year, he believed the small, narrow streets with a number of impoverished and unsanitary and pea-soaked conditions were the cause and the catalyst of this cholera disaster.
He commissioned the roads to be widened. Make them bigger. Make them wider. Spread them out. He modernized the sewage system to be more sanitary. Get the bad stuff away from the good stuff. He made the sewage system better in Paris. and he installed a number of fountains, many of which are still in use today. The city, which had 69 gas jets. or these like light posts as you will. When he took on his post over the course of his time as pre-fed was able to install over 8,600 of these.
The law against public urination was passed after many of these new fancy streets and structures were being built, but they lacked the means to enforce the law. And so Along with these new roads and new fountains and new lamp posts and new sewage network, Bartholau commissioned and installed the Vespasians. In short, these were public urination chambers. We need to talk about what France was doing because these urinals were both designed to be ironic and beautiful.
The romantic era had murmurings at this time and with it a desire to go back to the way things were before in art. Romantic. You are like in love with the ideal of what a thing could be. And an attention to the beautiful and the mundane was on their mind. So if we're going to build a whole bunch of public places for people to spray urine, might as well make them as immaculate and intricate as we can. because of romance. It's not like lovey romantic area. I understand that.
These Vespasians were exactly that. If you were walking and you saw one of these, the last thing that you might think is, my goodness, I need to go to the bathroom inside of that thing. These things were immaculate. And when you look at them, they don't really look like a place where you're going to go to the bathroom inside. They don't.
They were essentially a hole in the ground where you would pee into, but the enclosures that they built to surround these holes and give public wee-goers privacy were amazing looking. See our social medias for references to these amazing looking Vespasians. Also, a quick note, they're also called Pissoirs. Pissoir, which I had explained to me by a French lady. or a lady of French ah language study, it just means pisser. And we're trying, we're just trying to class it up and clean it up.
So vis-a-vis, we're gonna get to that in a second. If you were walking and saw one of these, you're not gonna think like, hey man, I gotta go spray urine into that. There were essentially a hole in the ground and the enclosures were immaculate. To me, they look a lot like the cool wood-built or iron-built gazebos with the wicker-looking like, work at the top. That's kind of the vibe I'm getting.
But many of them on the outset look like Morris columns, which are like these tall green columns that, that now are used for advertisements being posted on, except instead of trying to sell you goodies, you pee there. But what's interesting is they began to use these as advertisements. People would post ads on the outside of these, these Vespasians, these, these piss wars.
on these spaces because just like putting an ad on the back of the stall door on the toilet, you're sitting or in front of the urinal if you're standing to pee and you just stand there, you got to stare at something, they understood that if we put these ads in these spaces, people are gonna see them. It's a good place for your ad. My suspicion is these enclosures were more for people to not have to see Pierre Wee Wee while he goes his wee wee wee. They're amazing looking. And now am I searching?
It seems they are named also, like I said, Pissoirs originally, and then renamed later to avoid the derogatory term of Pissoir. However, in asking a person who has been to France, again, I talked to this young lady, and teaches French, and knows something about French culture, it could be that these two things are two different ideas. No. What is reported is that the biggest difference between a Pissoir, and I might be getting this, I might be butchering this, but I hope I get, I remember right.
The biggest difference between a Pissoir and a Vespossian is a Vespossian is the like big intricate structure where the Pissoir was not as nice and often would just be like kind of janky version. You know what saying? So. They are whatever they're called, Vespasian or Pissoir, they're amazing to look at. If you hear that word, Vespasian, you might be thinking, man, that's a weird sounding word. I feel like I've heard part of that name before. You have!
Former guest on the show, Vespasianus, he's the Roman fellow who featured in our urine episode. He's the guy who came to Rome who said, tax the pee, charge them for the pee, make them pay for their shameful pee that they do. He is the one that said, money doesn't stink. He is the one who taxed Vespasianus. They named these public urinals after the godfather of public urination himself. Ah, the romantic era.
Only here would we name our French public urinals after a Roman emperor who once taxed urine. What a time to have been alive. Thanks, Vespasianus. Thank you. For your namesake. The Vespasians were Rehauled from a glorified tower with an opening to be a more spacious in the 1860s and 70s. They would include multiple stalls or compartments raised modesty screens so that way you didn't have to see Pierre Wee Wee's Wee Wee. You don't have to look at that while you do your Wee Wee Wee now.
So that's good. They added gas lamps to the top of the structures to be locatable by night and easier hose operation while in the stalls. The Vespasians or Pissoires continued to be installed and by the 1930s it is estimated that there were over 1200 of these structures located around Paris. But as time went on, indoor plumbing improved and the need for these began to decrease. There was nearly a quarter of the stations left. 300 by 1960s. The Pissoirs are disappearing.
By the 2010s there is reported to be but one remaining Pissoir or Vespasien on Boulevard Arago by the Sante prison. Now I probably pronounced all that wrong, but like the last P station, you know what saying? The lone remaining Pissoir and one of the reasons these are disappearing was due to the foul smell reported to be emanating from them. Because it's still tied to the not great plumbing. It doesn't have like good flush. And I imagine they were built for pee, not poo.
And you know people are going to try to poo in these things. Another reason that these were uninstalled and taken out was these facilities were designed for those standing to pee. And were uninclusive to people who needed to sit to pee. Many pissoirs have been replaced with sanicets, which are self-cleaning public restrooms, an improvement by far, but... and uh Paris now contains about 420 nice self-cleaning privies. Sanicets. But here's the deal, they're not as cool looking!
The Vespasians were art as well as a place to fart. And that gets a thumbs up from me. If you're gonna make a bathroom, make it look sweet. Make it look cool. Make it artful. Give it to a demographic of people who may not have been able to enjoy things that were nice looking as often. Vespasians. What a cool idea. Their legacy of the spread to Berlin and Vienna and Amsterdam, the Pissoir and the idea of a public urinal can be found all across the United Kingdom in Europe today. They're all over.
So go get them. You might have to pay. Some of them are pay toilets, but that's okay. that can be found in the movie James Bond Casino Royale. But the French Pissoirs and Vespasians of old were both a marvel to look at and I imagine a marvel to use and probably a bit stinky. And again, these are all related to the paid toilet problem and the free public use toilets and how to keep a public space both sanitary and accessible.
problem as we have already noted here on privy we are still struggling with today. A side note before we launch into Hunter's Anecdotes because you know we're launching into Hunter's Anecdotes on this one. I had a young man at the high school I work at this week showed me a picture of a bathroom I assume a public bathroom stall that he used or was in over his weekend.
Man this thing was thrashed like there was dookie on the wall there was dookie where there should not be dookie and that's what I'm talking about. Like that is the struggle. When you make a place public and free use, there are ne'er do wells who are going to misuse free use and they're gonna spread their shoot all over the place. Don't do that. I shouldn't have to tell you this. Don't do that. And if for some reason you do that or you get the pee somewhere where you shouldn't, clean it up.
Just clean it up. Dang it. I'm actually in favor of having these public restrooms and, you know, I already said like I'm open to it being paid as long as we have a way to make sure that we're not, you know, I don't know. There's not a perfect system, but the system we have is not good cleanliness wise. And this is where we enter a special segment of Hunter's Anecdotes to Keep You Afloats. This hunter's anecdotes is brought to you by the number of times I have seen grown men peeing in public.
It's a, what a delight. And you might hear that and you might go, okay, but like when you're camping and your buddy goes in the bush, that's not, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in places where many, many people could see this happen, where cars and structures and uh contexts that you should not be seeing a man flop hog and Spray yellow? No, this should not have been happening. Three stories of public urination that I have witnessed. ah Story number one, Salem, Oregon.
ah I'm driving and this one, know, my goodness, this was, this is the most visible ah of them and I'm certain that authorities were called for public indecency. I don't know how, they could not have at some point. ah I'm driving to Riverfront Park and on my way to Riverfront Park, there is a street that goes by ah this like little turn that goes past the bridge. Before you go past the bridge, there's uh a congregation and a gathering of folks on the curbside.
And as I drive by, you know, I'm just minding my merry well business. I'm trying to get to Riverfront Park. If I'm going to Riverfront Park and I didn't have one of my clients with me, I was probably going to play Pokemon Go. Let me be honest about that. I'm on my way and I'm just driving, I'm cruising and I look over and I see this man like pants at knee and he is just facing the street with all of his endowment laid bare and just peeing into the road. Public urination and exposure, number one.
Salem, number two. Salem, Oregon. This time, this gets elevated to number two status, not like number two poop, but like still a pee. But this is like my second favorite one because this time I have a client with me and we're driving. We're heading towards Lancaster. If you're from the Salem area, I don't know why you know this, but like. We're heading towards Lancaster, towards the Willamette Town Center at the time as Lancaster Mall. This is multiple years ago.
And we're driving and we pull up behind a city bus who is like, a guy is like getting his bike off the back of the city bus and like getting it situated. Totally normal thing to be happening. And we're stopped behind this and I'm sitting behind the city bus and the guy gets his bike off and then I... see him proceed to pee on the tire of the city bus. And my mentor client thinks this is the funniest thing they have ever seen in their lives.
And all I heard about the rest of our session was, can't believe that guy was peeing on the bus. Did you see that? Did you see that? I was like, yeah, yes, we saw it. That's not like, that's not like acceptable behavior. But like inside, I'm like, what a guy, you know, what an absolute Chad of a legend. So here we are. The next and perhaps my most favorite peeing in public story. Not Salem, Oregon this time. This time we are in no none other than Caldwell, Idaho. ah In Caldwell.
So my wife is from Caldwell, Idaho. We had gone back to visit her family. I don't know if it was our summer trip or whatever trip, but we were back visiting her family and One of, like we had decided and that we were going to pick her grandmother up from church. And so she and I are waiting in the parking lot for her grandmother to come out of church and you know, people start to file out of the church one after the other.
um And you know, and my wife is like, yeah, know, grandma likes to stay back and talk and do that type thing. And you know, we're in no rush, we're on vacation. But. What was the most treasuring moment of this is as we're sitting there, this nice looking gentleman and his wife come out of the church and they approach the car and his wife gets in the passenger seat and the man throws open the driver's seat door. And it takes me a minute to realize what I'm seeing.
But what he has done is he's thrown over and opened the passenger door, which now the door is blocking him from exposing himself to the church comers and goers from coming out of the building, but he is just standing with the door open to his car, peeing on the ground right in the parking lot, right there.
And the way that he is situated is A, I can see just the perfect stream splash coming straight down and just pounding pavement and just, like, and my wife and I are just like sitting there staring at this like flabbergasted. Now, we had never said, a of this to her grandmother. We ain't gonna do that. Like, no way. But it did for sure go down. And the way this gentleman was situated and had his spread going on was that his wife could, she had two options.
Look straight ahead and pretend like nothing was happening or have full view of her husband peeing in public. Those are her options. There's no other way that she had anything else to look at. The dude could have used a piss war that day. And this has been another episode and installment of Hunter's Anecdotes. Oh, by the way, my buddy here in Oregon, he's like, Oregon has a law where you can pee wherever you want. I'm like, that doesn't mean you can expose yourself wherever you want.
Key point there, pretty sure. This has been another installment of Hunter's Anecdotes to keep you afloat. And this is the end of our episode. Thank you for joining us. We would love for you to connect with us on social media. We're at privycast on all social media platforms. Shoot us an email. Connect with us that way privycast at gmail.com. We would love to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of Bar Room Ballet as our intro and outro music.
You can find Kevin's music at incompetech.org and his music is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. Thanks, Kevin. We would also like to thank Pottington Bear for the use of all colors in the world. You can find Pottington Bear's music at pottingtonbear.com. Thanks, Pottington. This has been another episode of privy. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you enjoyed yourself. And now, as always, don't forget to flush.