Cranky new pee walls bite you back

July 24, 2015

Testing out a new pee repellent that "pees back" to prevent public urination. pic.twitter.com/6eDJ4w9MWH

— SF Public Works (@sfpublicworks) July 23, 2015

Gentlemen, be careful where you point that thing. The Mission now has three new “pee walls” coated with a special repellant paint that returns urine to its sender.

Modeled after a program in Hamburg, Germany, the walls are among nine locations in the city that have been treated with Ultra-Ever Dry hydrophobic coating that deters public urinators by making their pee splash back on them. The treated walls in the Mission are at the southwest 16^th Street BART plaza, the 3400 block of 17^th Street near Valencia, and on Osage between 24^th and 25^th street, according to San Francisco Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon. The BART plaza is also a site for Mission Pit Stop which brings portable public toilets to the area.

Gordon said the agency put the word out on social media earlier this year that it was considering the new paint and asked for suggestions where to put it. In the first six months alone of this year, the city got 375 requests for steam cleaning due to public urination.

“It’s definitely experimental,” she said. “We’re going to look at it probably for a few months and see if we want to expand it.”

[Video via @sfpublicworks, H/T @periqueblend]