A Big Stink Over Revelers’ Carefree Ways

It is Saturday night on Bourbon Street, and the witching hour is near. A calliope of sound -- swing, zydeco, bad cover bands -- bounces off the brick facades. Couples are making out. Revelers are massing in the street, almost all holding an adult beverage, and often two.

Civic activist Leo Watermeier stands alone, one eyebrow arched in anticipation, an island of sobriety in a sea of inebriation. He watches a young man approach a bar the size of a closet -- a to-go-only operation, with no interior, big enough only for a lone bartender hawking booze to pedestrians.

The man toddles down the block carrying a green concoction. Drinking in public is legal here. It’s what happens next that isn’t. Eventually, nature will call, and the man will have trouble finding a restroom. He will go, Watermeier fears, where many seem to be going these days: outside, in the street or in an alley.

Lately, a surge in public urination, and an accompanying morning-after stench, has created headaches for cities and communities that market themselves as adult playgrounds.

The problem appears most acute in New Orleans and Las Vegas, two cities that sell themselves, more than any others, as anything-goes destinations.

In Las Vegas, workers descend on downtown alleys once a week to spray odor-eating bacteria. In New Orleans, a similar steam-cleaning mechanism is used to combat the stench. And last month, the City Council approved a law dubbed the “potty ordinance,” designed to stop public urination by increasing the number of restrooms available to drinkers.

The Big Easy ordinance was passed after Watermeier, a New Orleans native and a real estate agent, began taking regular counts of bathrooms along the Bourbon Street corridor. His work showed that the French Quarter has a plethora of bars and a dearth of restrooms.

Watermeier said there were nearly 60 Bourbon Street-area businesses on busy weekends that either did not have restrooms or denied the public use of their facilities.

The number fluctuates here more than in most cities, because when larger crowds arrive, additional bars open and more restaurants open side windows to peddle beers and alcoholic drinks to pedestrians.

Each year, about 15 million people visit the French Quarter, the six- by 13-block neighborhood that includes Bourbon Street. The few public restrooms in the Quarter are mostly on its southern edge, near Jackson Square.

“A friend of mine told me that she sees people just walking down the street peeing,” Watermeier said. “I told her, ‘Get out of here.’ And then last night I saw it myself. A guy just unzipped his pants and went while he was walking down the street.”

As many as a dozen metropolitan areas have banned public urination in recent months or years. It was something that seemed so obvious that they hadn’t bothered before.

In Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood, officials cracked down in 2002 on Cub fans after a homeowner videotaped men and women who routinely used his backyard as a urinal. The city backed the ban with a $500 fine for those convicted of illegal urination.

In Newport, R.I., city officials became so fed up that they threatened to publish in newspapers the names of those convicted of urinating in public.

In downtown Minneapolis, a neighborhood association introduced an awareness campaign in January aimed at fun lovers who emerge from bars with a full bladder. Campaign slogans included “Go Before You Go.”

Problems associated with public urination are typically ascribed to the homeless. The recent increase is different. Many offenders, civic leaders said, appear to be well-off people who have no particular reason to go in the street, except that they have simply lost sight of the boundaries of fun.

“We even have a problem around St. Louis Cathedral, which is a national landmark,” said Jane Jurik, a legislative aide to New Orleans City Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson. The cathedral is in the heart of the French Quarter.

“Things are just getting more and more out of hand,” Jurik said. “Why? Why are people more apt to do it now? I don’t know. I think that’s a question for the sociologists. People just seem to take more and more license.”

Some observers blame the problem on a lack of public facilities. Others contend that many tourists today get so engaged that they forget to stop for restroom breaks.

Sociologists say the root of the problem is not terribly complicated.

“Why do people do this? Because they drink,” said David Allen, chairman of the sociology department at the University of New Orleans.

Clarkson, whose district includes the French Quarter, teamed with another member of the City Council last month to push through the potty ordinance, which requires any business that sells alcoholic beverages -- including grocery stores and tiny bars -- to provide restrooms for customers.

City officials said most of the to-go bars would likely stay within the law by handing out restroom tokens that could be used at nearby restaurants or clubs run by the same owners.

Aware that some think the campaign to clean up the Bourbon Street area is threatening its bacchanalian spirit, Watermeier, 54, insisted he was working merely to protect his beloved city.

“We love this live-and-let-live attitude here. There is room here for naughty behavior, and there always will be,” he said. “But this is one of the most famous and important streets in New Orleans -- one of the most famous streets, probably, in the world. I’m not trying to kill it. I’m trying to nourish it.”

A similar campaign is underway to combat the stench that emanates from some streets and alleys in downtown Las Vegas, away from the glitzy Strip. There, officials hope to twin public and private investments to reverse years of physical and economic decline. Public urination stands in their way.

Las Vegas’ downtown district has long been a haven for the homeless and the destitute. And the area’s oppressive heat does not help; food and other garbage that restaurants place in alleys rots quickly, compounding the stench.

But Vegas is also experiencing problems with people urinating wherever they see fit, said David Semenza, the city’s neighborhood response manager.

“We’re a 24-hour town,” he said. “There are clubs that are open all night. The alleys have become a convenient place for people to relieve themselves.”

Since April, a crew dubbed the Rapid Response Team has descended on downtown Las Vegas every Thursday night. By 4 the next morning, team members have blanketed alleys and streets with an odor-eating bacterial spray.

“We’ve taken it under control,” said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman.

City leaders across the nation said their campaigns were working, but not everyone appreciated the effort. In New Orleans, for instance, owners of small grocery stores or to-go-only bars in the French Quarter said they could go out of business if forced to allow all customers to use existing restrooms or to add public facilities.

At the Royal Street Grocery, a block southeast of Bourbon Street, Robert Buras winced when asked about the ordinance. The grocery, which also contains a small deli that sells po’ boy sandwiches, opened in 1938.

Buras said he had always allowed customers who eat at the deli to use his restroom. But the facility was off-limits to everyone else, he said. That’s no longer true because of the new ordinance.

One problem in the restroom, he said, such as a stopped-up toilet late on a busy weekend night, could push him over an already perilous financial edge.

Buras is fighting to recover the money he spends maintaining his now-overused restroom. He is charging customers $1 to use the facilities. Like many merchants, Buras said the city should build more public restrooms. City officials, acknowledging a lack of public facilities, said they were working to resolve the issue.

But the ordinance is a start, said Clarkson, the city councilwoman.

“It was getting disgusting,” she said. “We are the biggest party in America. We are very bohemian and proud of it. But our bohemian charm is our architecture, history, food, music and artists. It is not urine.”