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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Alaina Demopoulos

Rushing to McDonald’s, sneaking into Trump Tower: the desperate struggle to find a public toilet in New York

green kiosk says 'public toilet' on top
A public toilet in Herald Square in New York, 2005. The city plans to build 46 new restrooms. Photograph: Richard Levine/Corbis/Getty Images

Why is it so hard to find a public bathroom in New York? The city of over 8 million people operates a paltry 1,000 bathrooms – that’s one for every 8,000 New Yorkers. Anyone running errands in one of the five boroughs who doesn’t want to pay for an overpriced bottle of water in exchange for a cafe’s bathroom code must brave a decades-old public toilet that might be poorly lit, out of toilet paper, or covered in … something.

Now Mayor Eric Adams has a plan … well, sort of. In a press conference this week, Adams launched Ur In Luck (get it?), an initiative to expand access to public restrooms across all five boroughs.

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