Bouncing waste liquid back at the impolite and intoxicated bar crawlers who treat the streets as their bathroom, the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, Germany, has given fair warning about its water-repellent surfaces with signs that read (translated): “Do not pee here – we pee back.”
The St. Pauli Pees Back project is a response to the shortcomings of other approaches – with 20,000,000 visitors per year, the area has not had much success with signs and fines and fines alone.
Naturally, the locals complain about the smell and sight of this happening on their city’s streets. People getting pissed is one thing, but pissing publicly is quite another.
A super-hydrophobic paint was applied to some of the most popular non-potties in the neighborhood, making sure “it reaches the target demographic” – many locations are marked but some are not, designed to deter people from peeing regardless of notices posted. As one of its organizers put it in German (sounding even better in English translation): “It’s peeback time.”
