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Potty parity hits New York City


New York's City Council and Mayor Bloomberg are set to pass a measure oh-so-cleverly known as the "potty parity" bill, requiring many new buildings to have twice as many bathroom stalls for women as for men.

From the NY Post:

The measure — which will not affect existing places, just new ones or those that are rehabbed — requires bars, movie theaters, concert halls and other establishments that can accommodate up to 150 patrons have at least one men's room stall and two women's room stalls...Under the plan, places catering to between 151 to 300 people must have at least two bathroom stalls for men and at least four for women. Venues of 301-450 must have at least three for men and at least six for women.

Jeez, we get the point!

Private office buildings and restaurants aren't covered by the plan, but new arenas, bars, concert halls, movie theaters, theaters, stadiums, dance halls, convention centers and theaters are included.

Bloomberg officials pointed out that states such as California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Washington have enacted "restroom equity" laws.

I'm glad they managed to do better than "potty parity." Gross.

Posted by Jessica - May 19, 2005, at 12:13PM | in News

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4 Comments

[0+]  stephen said:

"Jeez, we get the point!"

Indeed, J, it would have been helpful of the NY Post to add that venues for 451 - 600 patrons would need four stalls for men and eight for women, just in case the concept of 'twice as many' had thus far eluded the reader.

Seriously, though it's a good idea, assuming there are still urinals for the men.

[0+]  johnny_5 said:

Maybe they could just do away with the urinals?
I never use them anyway. I always end up with some freak looking at my junk, peeing on my shoes or just being an annoying abastard anyway.

[0+]  CrashCat said:

Do you remember Title IX? Yeah, a little law that says that colleges have to provide gender equality for sports. Do you remember what happened with that? Yeah, the colleges cut men's sports because they aren't willing to cut the gigantic football and basketball programs.

Do you think an average size restaurant that would normally have 4 toilets in each restroom is going to suddenly change their building plans to build a grand 8 toilet women's restroom? Nope. They're going to build a 2 toilet men's restroom and a 4 toilet women's restroom. If you're really lucky or they just have money to burn, you MIGHT get 3 and 6. The same goes for huge movie theaters; instead of the plans going from 12/12 to 12/24, they're going to go to 8/16. It still adds up to 24 toilets, what do they care how many are in each room?

This law stinks and nobody's going to do anything until they don't know what hit them and they're cramming people into tiny restrooms all over NYC (and every city that soon follows suit).

[0+]  stu said:

I missed this one but got a link back recently from a recent post. CrashCat, if the law is as stated in this post, you are reading it wrong. Their are mandatory requirements for bathrooms depending on the occupancy of the place. Thus, they don't have the option of reducing the bathroom amount because they have minimum requirments based on the amount of people the location is catering too. While the other people mocked the oversimplification of the article you seem not to get it.

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