Flushing Money Down the Toilet

The next time you hug your toilet, please be aware that said toilet might be worth as much as a house.

Well, maybe $300,000 doesn't get you a house in Boston, but it sure as hell can get you a toilet. Just one. And barely.

Twelve years ago, Mayor Menino pledged to build 10 public toilets. Since then, six have been built, and we are closing in on the illustrious seventh.

Though this construction project is not anticipated to last as long as the Big Dig, it will come close. Although disappointed by this fact, Bostonians are quick to cheer the two-years-per-toilet rate of construction, officially recognized as the longest time to put in a toilet, ever. This ensures our status at the slowest city in America to get shit done. No pun intended.

To be fair, these aren't your easily replaceable, fragile, run-of the-mill dorm room toilets. These are a-third-of-a-million dollar toilets, and have quite the list of amenities:

"They have high-pressure water jets, self-cleaning floors, sensors, emergency systems, and of course, plumbing . . . [and] weight sensors [that] detect any violations of the [one-person-at-a-time] rule -- intended to prevent the toilets from being used by drug users and prostitutes."

Fancy-schmancy toilets. But what good, I ask you, are the self-cleaning floors if you can't bring your prostitute into the public toilet in the middle of Harvard Square at 3 p.m. in the afternoon?

And I don't know what on Earth the "emergency systems" are for. (Right. But she's a Mets fan. I'm talking about normal people). You're in a bathroom, so most emergencies should be taken care of. Any emergencies that cannot be addressed by those instruments that are common to all bathrooms are those that lead you to believe that, well, maybe you shouldn't have locked yourself in a public bathroom to begin with.

The emergency button presumably summons some sort of authority figure to assist you in whatever your emergency may be. In my experience, however, any emergencies that cannot be taken care of in a bathroom are those to which you never summon the authorities.

At some point I will pay the quarter to go into one of these things, just to see what $300K worth of water closets gets you these days. After that, however, I will return to the bushes behind the building, which are free.