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Show HN: PeeYork, Bathroom finder app for NY
- armchairhacker 5y agoBut seriously, this is an underrated problem. As a runner and someone who drinks a lot of water I wish there were more public restrooms. Even johns are ok
- yusuke242424 5y agoI saw many bathrooms along the Hudson River where runners can see New Jersey side. I saw a homeless in the bathroom too haha.
- tristanc 5y agoIt’s not too often this comes up ... but here is an iOS app for finding drinking water fountains and public restrooms using Overpass’s OSM API. https://github.com/hashFactory/ImThirsty https://github.com/hashFactory/ImThirsty
- pietervdvn 5y agoOr alternatively, one can also use https://mapcomplete.osm.be/drinking_water https://mapcomplete.osm.be/drinking_water and https://mapcomplete.osm.be/toilets https://mapcomplete.osm.be/toilets to find and easily update them in OpenStreetMap
- jakecopp 5y agoAh I've wanted something like this for ages. Do you know of anything similar for Android?
- siruva07 5y agohttps://findtap.com/ https://findtap.com/
- yusuke242424 5y agoThe app is a available for android too.
- yusuke242424 5y agoWow. Uber for bathroom sounds good too. I could find water refill easier in NY tho.
- Grustaf 5y agoThis seems very useful but shouldn't it be called "N Y Pee"?
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y agoSurely you mean Manshattan?
- galuggus 5y agoThe big Crapple
- harrylepotter 5y agoPooYork
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yusuke242424 5y agoI like PeeYork. The sound is cool.
- oh_sigh 5y agoDidn't George Costanza make millions with this app idea, only to lose it to Madoff? Also, NY bathroom pro-tip: look for the local police precinct. They will always have public bathrooms, they exist all over NY, even in the more residential areas with no shops, and the type of people who go and destroy public bathrooms or shoot up drugs in them for hours usually aren't going to voluntarily walk into a police station.
- rejectedandsad 5y agoThat’s an excellent idea!
- eliseumds 5y agoThat's right, and not only in New York or in the USA, you'd be able to find public bathrooms in many police stations across the globe.
- Klonoar 5y agoI was gonna say, call the app “Costanza”.
- vgeek 5y agoWealthy industrialist H.E. Pennypacker would have loved such an application.
- cyberge99 5y agoThere’s a great similar app called runPee geared more towards movie goers and what happens during the film while you step out. Neat concept.
- holler 5y agoNeat. I've been holding onto a domain thronehunter.com, for 10 years now, after a stint at a startup in a downtown metro, where the office was a very small "loft" with 10+ people squeezed in. Myself and a few others fairly quickly had an aversion to using the lone bathroom in the loft for respectful reasons and instead began seeking out bathrooms at nearby hotels and elsewhere. We would often joke "hey I'm going to run to the Hilton, I'll be right back" or "has anyone checked if the Mariott is open?". I bought the domain thinking it'd be fun to build a bathroom finder/rating app but never got around to it!
- yusuke242424 5y agoIt’s better to collaborate with hotels to scale this idea. I want to do Airbnb for bathroom to be honest.
- holler 5y agohaha, it's not a bad idea, although not sure how to monetize it? lmk if you want to brainstorm and/or use thronehunter.com
- hamburgerwah 5y agoThe HN crowd loves to promote urbanization, density, blah blah blah. The fact that such an app exists at all is de facto proof of a failed city. Just a comic level of dysfunction. "NYC, we're so progressive we can't even address the basic requirements to support human life"
- wffurr 5y agoI don't think "the HN crowd" has anything close to such a consensus. But I do think you could find broad agreement that cities should have more sanitary facilities in general.
- Teknoman117 5y agoYeah. I always make sure to hit a restroom before driving through a city. Few things suck as much as feeling the call of nature while you're stuck on surface streets in the middle of a big city. Where are you going to be able to temporarily park your car and where is the restroom. In the less dense zones, it's just stop at the next gas station/mcdonalds/starbucks/whatever. Less dense than that, just run into the woods...
- yusuke242424 5y agoI learned to pee before going out in NY. This is a mandatory action. Also decided to not hold until the last minute.
- jdavis703 5y agoIn my experience suburbs and rural areas are even worse for public bathroom access (and even delivery of most other public goods except education). Are there US suburbs with plentiful public bathrooms?
- desert_boi 5y agoWhat's a suburb? Depending on the level of density and sentiment about public parks (poor people's lawns v. a public good), some relatively low density places are better about public bathrooms. Boise is something like 5K people per sq. mile downtown, but there's public bathrooms at regular intervals on the Greenbelt in places at lower 3K densities. As homelessness has gotten worse though, there's been noticeable encampments/vehicle caravans building up at these bathrooms.
- mistersquid 5y agoThere's an underserved market in SF, too. I'd pay cash money for a regularly updated restroom finder. Best of luck! EDIT: どうもありがとう! Just saw the Hirigana on the landing page. My Japanese partner and I have been lamenting the failure of public restroom availability compared to JP. Heck, even compared to the US 2 decades ago when gas stations allowed public access to their restrooms.
- google234123 5y agoYeah, well, people squandered it and abused the old system. There are still strong social norms in places like Japan. People in SF are fine with dropping needles in the streets.
- reustle 5y agoI live in Tokyo and previously lived in New York. I was back visiting last week and found it even harder to find bathrooms now that many tourist centric places closed. I ended up buying a lot of hot tea at various starbucks locations throughout the day just for the bathrooms. 頑張って OPさん. Your contact button doesn’t work, by the way.
- yusuke242424 5y agoThanks. I visited NY in May and faced the issue. The purchased drink made me want to pee again too. The contact page works by a phone. I can change it to my LinkedIn too haha. I’ll use the app when I visit NY again. You can add your favorite bathroom place on the app too.
- yusuke242424 5y agoThis idea came up from a Japanese guy(me)who are used to the public bathroom environment in Japan. I was surprised that there was no bathroom in the train station in NY.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y agoThis is my go-to app to find bathrooms: https://www.starbucks.com/store-locator https://www.starbucks.com/store-locator
- mikeryan 5y agoMy go to in Manhattan is just to walk into the nearest big hotel like you’re a guest and find the restroom off the lobby.
- Apocryphon 5y agoThat also works well in San Francisco.
- yusuke242424 5y agoReally? Should I call it as Pee Francisco?
- galdosdi 5y agoNice restaurants were also a good place to go because they had good customer service habits. Any bar or places that serves alcohol has to have a bathroom. In NYC iirc, 20 seats or more and built before 1970 or so also required it. I looked this up once after getting sick of being told there was no bathroom at places that seemed likely to be lying.
- yusuke242424 5y agoI tried to sneak in a restaurant to use the bathroom but couldn’t. I used a bathroom in a bar once.
- galdosdi 5y agoYour mistake was acting sneaky.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoI almost thought I read YC 21 PeeYork.
- yusuke242424 5y agoI wish I could get in lol
- katzgrau 5y agoI had this same exact idea years ago when I worked in NYC. Except the name was "New York Shitty" I think I wanted to make it primarily for the name.
- jackcosgrove 5y agoBack in 2008 there were MizPee and Diaroogle which did the same. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/diaroogle-helps-you-find-clean-public-bathrooms/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/diaroogle-he...
- yusuke242424 5y agoThe issue still remains for 13 years lol
- heckingoodtimes 5y agoSame, but “Poober”.
- galdosdi 5y agoThis must be a nerd Manhattanite rite of passage, perhaps because the bathroom situation sucks there. My personal NYC bathroom database name idea was "WikiPeedia" or just "the 'Peedia"
- djbeadle 5y agoI was going to say "NYPee" was a missed opportunity for this name. My go to map of bathrooms in NYC is this Google Map I found on Reddit a few months back: https://goo.gl/maps/oiKqZ5PTEQ3RAWeJA https://goo.gl/maps/oiKqZ5PTEQ3RAWeJA
- yusuke242424 5y agoWow this is cool. Also it’s fun to take bathroom pictures lol
- 5y ago
- comdicap 5y agoInteresting. I mean I have been using Where is Public Toilet app for years. That app is crowd sourced, so you can suggest bathroom location. Not sure how this app is different.
- yusuke242424 5y agoYou can enjoy adding bathroom locations and review it. Actually I wanted to make it to Airbnb for bathroom by partnering with many merchants.
- tpowell 5y agoI can’t remember where I found it, but there’s an ad-supported iOS app called Flush that does this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flush-toilet-finder-map/id955254528 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flush-toilet-finder-map/id9552...
- RileyJames 5y agoWhen I was van dwelling around the US I was blown away at how inviting NYC was for van living. I was expecting it to be the hardest place in the US due to density, but it was one of the easiest. First spot I checked was a dead end street next to a warehouse in Williamsburg. Backing onto the Hudson. Beautiful Manhattan views. A park on one side, and another a block down with a bathroom. And immediately fell into a community of about 10 others do the same thing. Amazing. This is the kind of app that serves well for van living, tho I rarely couldn’t find something.
- yusuke242424 5y agoI want to make an app for van life in the future.
- RileyJames 5y agoThis was the most useful app I found: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/ioverlander/id894352689 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/ioverlander/id894352689 - offline first (tho the background map didn’t work, but the items on the map were there which was more critical) - wiki style info, so it was usually accurate Built off OSM maps, and I think data entered into it was fed back to OSM. Tho that portion was vague. Let me know if you make something.
- ykevinator3 5y agoThe itoilet https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pci_7o6cCbM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pci_7o6cCbM
- mokarma 5y ago7 years ago we had Airpnp... same as Airbnb, just for toilets. https://thenextweb.com/news/airpnp-its-like-airbnb-but-for-toilets https://thenextweb.com/news/airpnp-its-like-airbnb-but-for-t...
- yusuke242424 5y agoThis is so funny. I had the same idea. I hope this scales in the end.
- stefan0320 5y agoAs a foodie, one of the most frustrating things is answering nature's unexpected calls, this App is a foodie's 911. My to-go app is https://goweewee.com https://goweewee.com or just type 'wc' on Google Map
- yusuke242424 5y agoThis app sounds cool too. I like taking bathroom pictures lol
- stefan0320 5y agoI understand, my favorite place for selfies, ha.
- unguardedvocal 5y agoYou need an app to find an alley?
- yusuke242424 5y agoActually an alley is a spot to pee in NY lol