The Messy Fight for Clean, Free Public Bathrooms

March Fong Eu insisted that she wasn’t a feminist, and that she wasn’t an activist.

余芳琪坚称她不是女权主义者，也不是活动家。

She didn’t look like one, certainly not a 1969 version of one, not with her beauty shop hairdo, matching checkered skirt and jacket, and sensible pumps.

她看起来不像这样的人，当然也不是 1969 年的那个人，更不像她在美容店做的发型、相配的格子裙子和夹克，以及实用的高跟鞋。

She looked like a mom headed to a PTA meeting or a middle-of-the-road Democratic politician, which she was, even if she was something of a trailblazer: the first Asian American woman to win statewide office in California.

她看起来就像一位要去参加家庭教师协会会议的母亲，或者是一位中间路线的民主党政治家，尽管她是一位开拓者，但她确实是这样的：第一位赢得加州全州公职的亚裔美国女性。

But there she was on a stage, not far from the state house in Sacramento, doing a little guerilla theater.

但她却在距萨克拉门托州议会大厦不远的舞台上表演小型游击剧。

Sledgehammer in hand, she stood next to a toilet chained to a platform, took a whack, and missed.

她手里拿着大锤，站在一个拴在平台上的厕所旁边，用力敲击，但没有击中。

On her second try, she landed a direct hit and shattered the white porcelain fixture.

第二次尝试时，她直接击中并打碎了白色瓷器。

The crowd cheered, and the band played “ the best things in life are free …”

人群欢呼雀跃，乐队演奏“生命中最美好的事物都是免费的……”

The people clapping and hooting for Eu were there to show support for a California Assembly bill that would ban pay toilets across the state and usher in an era of free and extensive public toileting.

人们为欧盟鼓掌和欢呼是为了表达对加州议会法案的支持，该法案将禁止全州使用付费厕所，并开启免费和广泛的公共厕所时代。

But the effort fell short in its aims.

但这一努力并未达到其目标。

It outlawed pay toilets without delineating or funding any plans to replace them.

它取缔了付费厕所，但没有制定或资助任何取代它们的计划。

The law, the pay toilets, and the problem of where to go to the bathroom together turned out to be quiet emblems of the tensions, hopes, and failed promises of government support for people’s everyday needs in 20th-century America.

法律、付费厕所以及去哪里上厕所的问题，最终成为 20 世纪美国政府支持人们日常需求的紧张、希望和失败承诺的无声象征。

Eu’s actual target was a toilet stall lockbox, first patented by an itinerant German inventor before World War I.

欧盟的实际目标是厕所隔间密码箱，该密码箱最初由一位流动的德国发明家在第一次世界大战前申请了专利。

To open the stalls, patrons had to drop in a nickel or a dime and turn a knob and open the bathroom door.

要打开摊位，顾客必须投入五分钱或一毛钱，转动旋钮，打开浴室的门。

The private companies that owned, manufactured, and serviced the lockbox devices split the proceeds with the municipalities and businesses that installed them.

拥有、制造和维修密码箱设备的私营公司与安装这些设备的市政当局和企业分享收益。

Walt Disney put in one of California’s first pay toilets in 1935, at his Walt’s restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard.

1935 年，华特·迪士尼 (Walt Disney) 在好莱坞大道上的华特餐厅 (Walt’s Restaurant) 修建了加州第一批付费厕所之一。

Within a few years, the shiny silver lockboxes popped up in bus stations, court houses, and airports across the state.

几年之内，闪亮的银色密码箱出现在全州的公交车站、法院和机场。

By 1960, there were 50,000 pay toilets across the United States.

到 1960 年，全美已有 50,000 个付费厕所。

The Nik-O-Lok Company of Indianapolis operated around half of them.

其中约一半由印第安纳波利斯的 Nik-O-Lok 公司运营。

Its 15 million annual users generated more than $30 million in revenues and prompted the owner of a rival firm to call the company “the General Motors of pay toilets.”

它的 1500 万年度用户创造了超过 3000 万美元的收入，并促使竞争对手公司的所有者将该公司称为“付费厕所中的通用汽车”。

But as much as businesses and local officials loved them, pay toilets infuriated the people who relied on them.

尽管企业和地方官员很喜欢付费厕所，但付费厕所却激怒了依赖它们的人们。

Almost everyone had a story to tell about not making it in time, or about pay toilet anxiety.

几乎每个人都有一个关于未能及时赶到或对付费厕所焦虑的故事。

Without the right change, what were your options?

如果没有正确的改变，你有什么选择？

Take a chance on finding another bathroom?

抓住机会寻找另一间浴室吗？

Slither under the stall door across a sticky, urine-soaked floor?

从隔间门下滑过粘稠的、被尿液浸透的地板？

Hope someone would keep the door open as they exited?

希望有人在他们离开时把门打开吗？

A newspaper writer in Red Bluff, California, north of Sacramento, declared in the 1950s that “the man that introduced pay toilets .

萨克拉门托北部加利福尼亚州雷德布拉夫的一位报纸撰稿人在 20 世纪 50 年代宣称，“引入付费厕所的人……”

.

。

.

。

should be shunned by all busy people.” A New Jersey resident called pay toilets “an abomination.”

所有忙碌的人都应该避开。”新泽西州的一名居民称付费厕所“令人厌恶”。

It was no wonder pay toilets gave rise to a political cause.

难怪付费厕所会引发政治问题。

Eu became one of the leaders of the free toilet movement.

欧盟成为免费厕所运动的领导者之一。

She likened pay toilets to an unfair “pink tax”: a fee imposed on women, like overpriced haircuts and beauty products, that men—who could use urinals for free—had to pay less than half as much.

她将付费厕所比作不公平的“粉红税”：向女性征收的费用，就像价格过高的理发和美容产品一样，而可以免费使用小便池的男性只需支付不到一半的费用。

Eu had an ally in the Sacramento Bee columnist and merry prankster Tom Horton, who framed the matter as a universal rights issue.

欧盟的盟友是《萨克拉门托蜜蜂报》的专栏作家、爱搞恶作剧的汤姆·霍顿，他将此事描述为一个普遍的权利问题。

With a nod to Berkeley student protests of the early 1960s, he launched the “Free-Seat Movement,” later renamed “Free Latrines Unlimited for Suffering Humanity,” or FLUSH.

为了响应 20 世纪 60 年代初伯克利学生的抗议活动，他发起了“自由座位运动”，后来更名为“为受苦的人类提供无限的免费厕所”（FLUSH）。

FLUSH members, Horton said, were in “total opposition to the unjust, if not unconstitutional, taxation of a basic freedom.” As an act of resistance, they pledged to “always hold the door open for a friend.”

霍顿说，FLUSH 成员“完全反对对基本自由征税，即使不是违宪，也是不公正的”。作为一种抵抗行为，他们承诺“永远为朋友敞开大门”。

Organizing and rabble-rousing eventually paid off.

组织和煽动最终得到了回报。

In 1975, California became one of the first of a dozen or more states to ban pay toilets.

1975 年，加利福尼亚州成为十几个或更多州中率先禁止付费厕所的州之一。

Scores of cities, led by Chicago, did the same.

以芝加哥为首的许多城市也采取了同样的做法。

By the start of the 21st century, lock boxes on stall doors were virtual relics, found only in small-town bus stations and flea markets hugging country roads.

到了 21 世纪初，摊位门上的锁箱已经成为虚拟的遗迹，只在小镇的公交车站和乡村道路旁的跳蚤市场上发现。

But pay toilets haven’t gone away.

但付费厕所并没有消失。

They have just changed how they look, how much they cost, and who can access them.

它们只是改变了它们的外观、价格以及谁可以访问它们。

Without a steady stream of coins, and with federal funding in sharp decline, city and state governments closed many public bathrooms and cut back on maintenance for the ones still open, leaving these places dirty and off limits to many.

由于没有稳定的硬币供应，而且联邦资金急剧减少，市和州政府关闭了许多公共浴室，并削减了仍然开放的公共浴室的维护费用，使这些地方变得肮脏且禁止许多人进入。

As it so often does, the private sector stepped into this public void.

正如经常发生的那样，私营部门填补了这一公共空白。

Starbucks led the way.

星巴克一马当先。

The coffee giant wedged bathrooms into its store designs and business models.

这家咖啡巨头将浴室融入其商店设计和商业模式中。

Company officials understood the middle-class psyche: People needed away-from-home bathrooms and didn’t trust the cleanliness or safety of neglected public facilities.

公司官员了解中产阶级的心理：人们需要远离家乡的浴室，并且不相信被忽视的公共设施的清洁度或安全性。

Starbucks also knew that customers would pay a premium—the cost of drink—to save themselves from public embarrassment and discomfort.

星巴克还知道，顾客会支付额外费用（即饮料的费用），以避免在公众面前感到尴尬和不适。

All of this has made Starbucks the biggest pay toilet firm of the 21st century.

所有这一切使星巴克成为 21 世纪最大的付费厕所公司。

The cost of using a toilet, as a result, has gone up 500% since the Nik-O-Lok heyday.

因此，使用厕所的成本自 Nik-O-Lok 全盛时期以来已经上涨了 500%。

By charging the price of a tall latte to use a bathroom, Starbucks filtered out the poor and the unhoused.

通过对使用卫生间的一大杯拿铁咖啡收取费用，星巴克过滤掉了穷人和无家可归的人。

The end result is both a garish indicator of inequality in America and a looming public health threat.

最终的结果既是美国不平等的一个耀眼的指标，也是迫在眉睫的公共卫生威胁。

This all became tragically clear when a deadly outbreak of Hepatitis A, a strain of the virus virtually nonexistent in the well-plumbed Western world in recent years, hit San Diego in 2016 .

2016 年，当一场致命的甲型肝炎爆发袭击圣地亚哥时，这一切都悲剧性地变得清晰起来。近年来，在检测良好的西方世界中，这种病毒株几乎不存在。

This public health crisis sickened nearly 600 people, killed 20, and cost the city millions of dollars in vaccines, hospital visits, and new porta potties.

这场公共卫生危机导致近 600 人患病、20 人死亡，该市在疫苗、医院就诊和新便盆方面花费了数百万美元。

And it was caused, experts agreed , by the scarcity of accessible sinks and the closing of several public bathrooms just before the outbreak began.

专家们一致认为，这是由于缺乏无障碍水槽以及在疫情爆发前关闭了几家公共浴室造成的。

This infrastructural gap has some policy makers looking to the past.

这种基础设施差距让一些政策制定者回顾过去。

In 2023, Sean Elo-Rivera, a progressive-leaning San Diego City Council member, floated the old idea of installing pay toilets and using the revenues to keep them decently maintained.

2023 年，进步派圣地亚哥市议会议员肖恩·埃洛-里维拉 (Sean Elo-Rivera) 提出了安装付费厕所并利用收入对其进行良好维护的旧想法。

“We have heard from a number of people in the community that they would gladly pay a quarter or 50 cents in order to have access to clean bathrooms,” Elo-Rivera told a newspaper reporter .

“我们从社区中的许多人那里听说，他们愿意支付 25 美分或 50 美分，以获得干净的浴室，”埃洛-里维拉告诉报纸记者。

He predicted that tourists, transit riders, and people experiencing homelessness would also benefit.

他预测游客、过境乘客和无家可归的人也会受益。

“This is not meant to be a barrier,” Elo-Rivera insisted, “but actually to increase the number of restrooms out there.”

“这并不是要成为障碍，”埃洛-里维拉坚持说，“实际上是为了增加卫生间的数量。”

Without saying it outright, he seemed to acknowledge that this was all that voters and his fellow lawmakers would be willing to do to fund and maintain accessible public toilets.

虽然没有直言不讳，但他似乎承认，这就是选民和他的议员同僚愿意为资助和维护无障碍公共厕所所做的一切。

But Elo-Rivera’s pay toilet plan, which would require overturning California’s 50-year-old state ban, pointed to how much the playing field had changed and how much social imaginations had narrowed.

但埃洛-里维拉的付费厕所计划需要推翻加州长达 50 年的州禁令，这表明竞争环境发生了多大变化，社会想象力也被缩小了多少。

Widely loathed and acknowledged in their heyday as unfair by everyone from suburban housewives to long-­haired counterculture followers, pay toilets amount to the best government can think to do today.

从郊区家庭主妇到长发反主流文化追随者，付费厕所在全盛时期遭到了所有人的普遍厌恶和不公平的承认，但它是政府今天能想到的最好的做法。

This is the political moment of now, when the solutions to the privatization of government are more privatization—and the result is steeper inequality.

这是当前的政治时刻，政府私有化的解决方案是进一步私有化——其结果是加剧不平等。

Bryant Simon is professor of history at Temple University.

布莱恩特·西蒙是天普大学历史学教授。

He is the author, most recently, of For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality .

他最近是《仅供顾客：公共浴室和美国不平等的形成》一书的作者。

Primary editor: Eryn Brown | Secondary editor: Sarah Rothbard

主要编辑：Eryn Brown |二级编辑：莎拉·罗斯巴德

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