Intercosmic... Toilet?

Good day Water Closet goers!

So upon looking out for any form of public bathroom (often drunken) violation I’ve stumbled on a few favourites. You know it:

Penis Pictures -- nothing says class...

(INSERT NAME HERE) for a good time call 416- xxx- xxxx

(INSERT NAME HERE) is a .... (insert obsenity here)

I love ... OR ... and ... forever

These are just the horrid generic ones that always seem to start a response. These responses are what we all secretly enjoy. I know I get kicks when I read a “stop writing shit on the wall” - Oh the irony! - or a very simple “Fuck You!” (personal favourite)

Who says we don’t care about our fellow latrine users?! We leave each other tid bits of all sort of things. Tiny insights into each others lives.

Recently at a bar I went to the bog. While my regular thought process had been slightly drowned in beer, I sat and read: "I'm writing on this bathroom wall so that you know that you aren't alone. We all feel the need to leave our mark in some infinite way because it means we've existed in a space and time. We're all interconnected."
As I giggled slightly, it made me think that it's completely true. Graffiti is as old as humans. In Pompeii, I wonder what the public bathrooms have to 'say' to us? Probably the same that we see now.

A Spiritual Experience on the Toilet

I have to go back to the Java House.

When I was younger, a family friend once read me a poem. She said, "now that I have read you this poem, evidence of it is going to reveal itself everywhere."

Fast forward to about a year ago and I am going down that tricky little staircase in the back of the Java House. I get into the stall, close the door... and there it is. The poem.

yeah.

So I finished up, but not before spending some time reading the rest of the awesome graffiti in that stall. I went back up to my table and sat down. I knew how what I was planning on saying to my friends was going to sound...but I said it anyways.

I said, "Guys... I just had a fucking spiritual experience on the toilet."

le end.

Watch out for that...rapist? The bathroom as a site for Neighbourhood Watch

I came across this graffito:

and was immediately stricken by it. Who is Tom Fischer? Where can I find (or NOT find) him? There must be a thousand Tom Fischers in Toronto. But only one of them belongs to the phone numbers listed there. Quick, memorize those numbers and if you ever meet a Tom with a twinkle in his eye, and he gives you his number and it happens to be one of only two numbers that exists on the whole planet, RUN...

That, or clock him. Then run.

This was my thought process. Wouldn't it be yours? The point is that this message was scribbled on the wall of a bathroom because a) someone really hates Tom Fischer, or b) someone decided to share their pain and anguish in hopes of protecting another person from having to experience it too. The anonymity of bathroom graffiti allows for this kind of community action. It gives people the freedom to share their experiences without becoming vulnerable - and possibly being victimized - once again.

The bathroom can serve as a site for warning fellow community members about known dangers. Simultaneously, the site becomes one where communities are built and strengthened. Despite the horror I felt at reading this message, I also felt a sense of security, as if someone was watching out for me. This is an important quality in a community. And in a city as large and anonymous as Toronto, a community is often hard to find. Yet communities are vital to a society's health and well-being. Feeling like you can trust the stranger who put up that warning makes you feel a little warmer towards all strangers - just not Tom Fischer. It makes you feel as if people, for the most part, are good. Providing you can avoid the Tom Fischers out there, the world is not such a scary place. And the culture of communication in the bathroom helps to weave this ever-important community fabric.

I don't know about you, but I won't be forgetting that name anytime soon. Talk about an effective Neighbourhood Watch program.

Average Joes vs. Powerful Corporations

I'm sure everyone has at one point used public washrooms and noticed people's writing in the stalls. They're usually expressions of love, hatred or general opinions that people want to put out there for everyone to see while remaining unidentified. Some would argue that graffiti in washrooms makes them look unsanitary and unappealing. I personally have never felt that people’s scribbles in washroom stalls made the washroom look unhygienic. I mean, it is a public washroom, so with or without scribbles, it won’t change the level of sanitary conditions. What is interesting is that only in bathroom stalls can you find a space where you will find endless opinions, and at times people communicating with one another, with no sense of who they’re talking to. There exists graffiti outside the bathroom, however it is usually created by a group or a known individual, and they’re usually not anonymous. Bathroom graffiti really do represent a form of freedom of speech. However, in recent times, I’m sure someone who holds a really important job at a really important company used a public restroom, and found himself reading people’s writings and staying much longer to find out why “sally really loves john.”
More commonly these days, instead of finding people’s thoughts and opinions in bathroom stalls, we find an ad pushing us to consume more than we already do. Actually, research shows that most public restroom users (76%) remember the ads in bathroom stalls better than ads shown on television. The advantages to corporations are that there are few distractions in bathroom stalls, ads are usually unexpected, and this is a cheaper way to reach out to consumers compared to billboards, TV commercials, bus ads, etc. Business owners also benefit, in that they receive some money from advertisers from a space that does not interrupt their operations and would otherwise remain an empty space. So everyone wins, except us. The notion of privacy and freedom of expression is slowly seized by large corporations so they can continue to construct us as passive beings. The positive thing is that we are not passive beings. We’re angry, happy, and sad. We agree and we disagree. We will not be silenced by ads telling us to go to another country or to lose weight. Let’s all take out our sharpies and let them for once listen to us!