Let people run their businesses the way they want.

Better yet, let's have publicly funded restrooms that are conveniently located, as is the case throughout Europe.

I realized the greatest thing about America after travelling in lots of other countries. We have drinking fountains in all of our public building with clean cool water. The rest of the world doesn't have this, and when visiting a museum if you get really thirsty you have to leave and buy bottled water. So the rest of the world should adopt our vision on this one.

Interesting about not having drinking fountains in places such as museums in Europe. Maybe this is because the tap water wasn't safe to drink when these places were built, and it would have been too expensive to plumb in drinking fountains after the fact. Which brings up another thing: We are lucky that here in the U.S., tap water is usually safe to drink.

In Italy it has always (well, at least as far back as I can remember) been the law that if you want to open a coffee shop, a pub or a restaurant you must make a restroom available for free for all.It works.

It’s not a bad idea on its face. I mean when you gotta go, you wish you could. Most restaurants and gas stations do have restrooms though. The only places I can think of where there aren’t public restrooms are in the downtowns of big cities.

Since providing a restroom seems like a good service to offer customers, there must be some reason why establishments would not. Rampant drug use comes to mind. Still it would be nice if you didn’t have to hold it after drinking a coffee from a downtown starbucks.

First off, the law should be if there is no public restroom around you can piss on a tree. But you should be exempt from arrest.

I went to a peace march in washington dc in 2003, over 100,000 people attended and marched around the white house. I had to piss in the museum bathroom. There were cops everywhere and no portable toilets. They knew we were coming too. By the way you probobly didnt hear much about it as the new york times did not bother sending a reporter and said something to the effect that a few people showed up. 100,000 is a few?

I agree. Too many businesses refuse customer restroom access. You could easily control access by means of an electronic lock.

That's usually a local issue, probably under the jurisdiction of the Board of Health. Businesses that sell food may be required to provide access to public restrooms, but they are generally not required to provide them for non-customers. I myself don't patronize convenience stores that don't have restrooms.