San Francisco’s High-tech Public Toilet Breaks Down After 3 Days

A new “space age” self-cleaning public toilet in San Francisco’s Embarcadero broke down after just three days in service.

The toilet, made of stainless steel with an abstract exterior, heralded a new age of design for the city.

ICYMI: The newest structure on the Embarcadero is a stainless steel abstraction that could be a sculpture-sized binocular case. In fact, it's the first of of 25 new public toilets. My looky-loo at our contemporary commodes: https://t.co/FkFpIl73sw via @sfchronicle

— John King (@JohnKingSFChron) November 24, 2022

However, it failed during its first week of operations.

SFist.com reported:

The trouble appears to have started Friday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. As seen above, it sure looks like the commode got stuck out of place during the unit’s self-cleaning cycle. SFist heard the on-duty attendant tell a supervisor that “some lady went in there,” and after she came out, the mechanized commode had not lowered back into the sitting position following the self-cleaning cycle.

…

And sure, it probably won’t be long until this thing is fixed and back up again. This is a nice design and (when working) a great free amenity for the general public. But honestly, Day Three is pretty early for this so-called toilet of the future to already be breaking down and needing serious repairs.

All 25 of these kiosks will eventually take on the same stainless steel exterior (and interior parts seen above) as this just-broken one near the Ferry Building. Media coverage of these new toilets has noted that the city isn’t charged anything for them, as JCDecaux handles maintenance and installation costs in exchange for the advertising space.

Earlier this month, Breitbart News reported on another public toilet that cost the city $1.7 million, thanks to complex city construction rules and bureaucratic delays.

San Francisco has become known for struggling with public accommodations for toilets, especially among a large homeless and drug-using population that lives on the streets. The city has a special system for reporting human and animal waste in public spaces.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.