San Francisco’s pee-repellent public walls

So remember, if you’re in San Francisco or Germany, don’t pee on the walls, pee on some flowers.

Inhabitants of the Golden Gate City love their town so much, they pee all over it. The problem has gotten so out of hand that city officials have designed a way to combat rampant public urination by creating walls that actually pee back. “We are trying different things to try to make San Francisco smell nice and look handsome”. There is even a tongue-in-cheek public awareness campaign video letting people know about the walls peeing back.

The nine walls, concentrated around the Mission and SoMa, with one stop in Chinatown and the Stockton Street Tunnel, are part of a pilot program to see how well the coating works as a deterrent.

Don’t pee into the wind, as the say goes, but if you’re visiting San Francisco, maybe don’t pee on the walls as well.

What the public works department is looking at is a high tech liquid resistant paint.

The special pee- and other-liquid-repelling paint is called Ultra-Ever Dry and is made by Florida-based UltraTech.

“We will send people to see, visually, if there are any wet signs to indicate urination has happened”, DPW director Mohammed Nuru told the Chronicle. This type of paint was used in Hamburg to similarly deter public urinators, and was proven successful.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports Friday that it’s the city’s latest attempt to clean up urine-soaked alleyways and walls. More walls are slated to painted in August. According to the Chronicle, DPW has fielded 375 requests to remove urine only since January, accounting for 5 percent of all the requests it receives.

For the Department of Public Works, the results may well be worth the cost.

The paint has proved to be effective in Europe.