After spending $5 million of the city’s tax dollars on high-tech, self-cleaning public toilets and then watching them quickly devolve into disgusting havens for just about every urban deviance imaginable, the city of Seattle is trying to cut their losses by vending all five of them on eBay where they can be yours for $89,000 each, discarded crack pipes not included.
In theory, the toilets’ self-cleaning mechanism is capable of spraying down the whole interior with water jets and detergent every day, but the drainage systems quickly became clogged with trash, rendering them completely useless. Drug fiends and prostitutes were also fond of the 20-minute auto-locking doors, but the depravity quickly became too much for everyone, says the NYTimes:
“I’m not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there,” said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. “But I won’t even go inside that thing now. It’s disgusting.”
