Too many people using it, and you don't know what's out there. "I ain't sitting on any bathroom stalls out here like that, especially in New York," says Dwayne "Venomous" Sheppard, 21.
SHOTTY POTTY PORTABLE
She was attending orientation but already knows better than to use a portable potty in Washington Square Park, one of the city's more undomesticated plazas. "It would probably be gross," says Sadie, an incoming freshman at New York University. For a week, though, there's this colorful new option.īut a highly unscientific survey of passersby suggests that most people here have no intention of using them.
Usually, you find the nearest Starbucks or McDonald's. Both tourists and people who actually live here must utilize a fair amount of ingenuity when nature calls. Good publicity for Imodium, to be sure, but "Urban Relief" is also meant to temporarily alleviate one of the many unpleasant aspects of living in Manhattan: the dearth of public bathrooms. Its launch Wednesday was attended by local news outlets as well as a Japanese television crew. Not surprisingly, the exhibit's snarky concept is attracting media attention. "There's a lot of movement in it," she says - deadpan. Her potty, "Jazz and the Red Dress," is a melange of colors, depicting jazz musicians and a dancing woman. "What's more spontaneous than jazz?" asks Fragapane. The artists were told to improvise on a theme of "spontaneity," which is why East Village muralist Mary Fragapane chose jazz as her inspiration. This time, instead of fiberglass animals, their canvases were the exteriors of 215-pound Maxim 3000 potties (standard tank volume: 70 gallons). The nine artists who painted the potties also participated in the "Cow Parade" here.
In many respects, "Urban Relief" is similar to the "Cow Parade" public art displays that began in Chicago, as well as the "Party Animals" exhibit in Washington. It was born out of a desire to look for more summer travel solutions." She helpfully points out that a concern of vacation travelers is finding a comfortable and copacetic place to relieve themselves. "It was a collective brainstorm," she says smoothly. But this was not the case, according to Michelle Wang, franchise director for marketing at the makers of the anti-diarrheal, McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals. We may suspect that the wisenheimer who came up with this concept must have had too many margaritas at lunch. The week-long exhibit, which consists of 10 fully functional portable potties, is sponsored by Imodium, the over-the-counter anti-diarrhea medication. Back in 1917, French surrealist and provocateur Marcel Duchamp stunned the art world by presenting an ordinary urinal as a work of art.Ī few days ago, artists here underwhelmed New York by presenting a collection of painted portable potties as public art.
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