I have a recurring nightmare where I’m stuck in a long line, legs crossed and knees bent, distracting myself from thinking of liquids: waterfalls, water-type Pokemon, bottled water, etc.
That nightmare is in the back of my mind every time I go out in the city, and it’s one reason why I pee before I leave. I’ve had close calls, like when waiting to check out at the Trader Joe’s in SoMa. Sometimes I’ve desperately resorted to a bush. Once I held in my pee too long, and that gave me a urinary tract infection. The doctor scolded me for it.
But it’s not my fault that it can be hard to find good, clean, reliable public restrooms in the Tenderloin.
To avoid their own bad situation, someone might try looking online to find out where the public restrooms are, and when they operate, before they need to use one. Well, I did. And then I ran an experiment. I made multiple visits to each of those restrooms in the Tenderloin, and to some on its outskirts, to see if they were accessible and functional.
I discovered there were fewer reliable restrooms than I initially expected — more than once, I showed up to use a site that was absent. It simply wasn’tthere. It turns out that the city’s publicly available information about restrooms can lead people astray.
So I used what I learned to make this resource, to help people in the Tenderloin find a suitable restroom when the need arises.
For starters, below is an interactive map:
I also grouped the restrooms into three categories: my favorites, the ones that are just OK, and those I’d avoid unless there’s an emergency.
And click or tap here to find out how I approached this work, and why I didn’t include certain sites.
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There are supposed to be 11 public restrooms in the Tenderloin, according to city records. Through my visits, I discovered that two of those locations are actually closed to the general public so, in reality, there are only nine public restrooms. Keep in mind that about 30,000 people live, housed, in this neighborhood alongside unhoused residents. And as any local knows, many here spend their daytime hours hanging out on the sidewalks, including residents of single-room occupancy hotels.
I found that most of these public restrooms worked fine. I preferred the ones at the library’s main branch, at 100 Larkin St., as they seemed to never have a line and were pretty clean. The same was true of the Porta-Potties at 474 O’Farrell St., which are also open 24/7.
But other sites were downright bad.
Site M.I.A., other reliability issues
I ran into major problems with some of the Pit Stops — these are the restrooms that have attendants with dog-waste bags and sharps-disposal bins available. There are three kinds of Pit Stops: built-in self-cleaning green booths, Porta-Potties, and white trailers that get hauled away after they close each day. The Pit Stops are maintained by the company JCDecaux.
The trailer that’s supposed to appear daily at the intersection of Eddy and Larkin streets was not there two of the three times I visited. Its phantom nature is well known, it seems. On a later date, when I asked an attendant elsewhere about the restrooms generally available at night, they replied by listing sites that included the one at Eddy and Larkin, at which point they added, “if it’s there.”
I asked the city’s Public Works department, which manages the Pit Stops, why that location had disappeared. Rachel Gordon, their director of communications, explained that sometimes a portable trailer goes out of service and staff can’t find a replacement. In my opinion, when this happens, it would be helpful if Public Works left a sign there to direct people to other restrooms.
On my third visit to that site, it was there but lacked soap and paper towels. Gordon stated that they were removed because previous patrons misused them, clogging the toilets with paper towels and using soap to wash clothes.
During one visit to the Grove and Larkin Pit Stop, the attendant turned me away because, they said, 10 other people were already in line — even though it was an hour before the restroom was scheduled to close. Why would they do this? Gordon said that when a Pit Stop has a long line and the person is in a rush, staff may advise them to use other facilities instead. But in my case, the attendant had not told me about other available restrooms.
I also found that Pit Stops might open after their listed hours say they should have, they might close earlier than listed, and they might be temporarily out of order. Asked about this, Gordon said that maintenance issues can cause sites to be unavailable during their operating schedules, and that JCDecaux does their best to fix problems immediately.
At one Pit Stop, the sink wouldn’t dispense water, maybe due to a broken sensor, and at another the toilet was clogged.
So far, I’ve described instances when a site couldn’t live up to its listed hours of operation. In other cases, the listed hours were incorrect. I came to realize that this was part of a larger problem: Publicly available information about these restrooms appears to be spread across multiple resources, which aren’t comprehensive, can be untrue, and may contradict each other.
For example, according to DataSF, a repository containing information about city services, restrooms at Boeddeker Park and the Tenderloin Rec Center operate 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. The locations’pages on the Recreation and Parks Department’s website say that restrooms are available, and don’t explicitly state what I discovered upon visiting them: You can’t just walk in off the street and use the bathrooms. When I told the department about this, a representative said they were working with DataSF to update its listed hours. As of May 19, the information was still not updated.
Sgt. John Macaulay Park, which has a restroom, does not post operating hours online. I called the parks department and JCDecaux, but they gave conflicting hours: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., respectively.
In some ways, privately run web resources are better than the city’s. Both Google Maps and a site called Poopin capture all the restroom sites in the Tenderloin — but those tools contain user-submitted information that can also be inaccurate.
To find all the neighborhood’s restrooms, I had to consult those maps and three other information sources managed by the city. It shouldn’t be that way.
The city should consolidate, organize, and fix the information it publishes online, to give the public one web resource that fully reflects restroom availability.
TL needs more restrooms, especially at night
Why can’t the local government give the Tenderloin something as simple as reliably available, functional restrooms? I worry that these sites are so unreliable that they give people a reason to distrust public programs. And I don’t like having to buy something at a store just to get a bathroom code.
The restroom situation is especially bad at night. If you’re bar-hopping or going out with friends, your only options are restrooms at O’Farrell and Jones, and at Eddy and Larkin. Both are in the northern TL, and they are close to each other. That means that when you’re in the southern part of the neighborhood, you are out of luck; you can either walk uphill or to the 24/7 site at Civic Center, which seems uncomfortably far away, I think.
I say there should be at least one more 24/7 or late-night bathroom along Golden Gate Avenue or another southern street, or maybe on Van Ness.
Beyond the Tenderloin, there should be more clean, reliable facilities in the city at large. No one should have to defecate on the streets, pee their pants, or go on about their day with dirty hands because they can’t find a nearby restroom.
Below, I’ve grouped the restrooms in terms of personal preference. The best come first.
Open 24/7. I never had to wait over two minutes. Really clean for a Porta-Potty. I was able to successfully use this location on all three of my visits.
100 Larkin St. | Tenderloin
Type: Multi-stall restroom
Operating hours: Sun 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., Mon 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tue-Thu 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fri 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Dependable and has multiple stalls to use. Stall doors are placed weirdly, mainly to discourage illicit activity, and library hours are weird. But overall clean, and I never had to wait.
Civic Center Mid-Market Restroom | Mid-Market
Type: Pit Stop, self-cleaning booth
Operating hours: 24/7
Open 24/7, short wait times, and mostly clean. Much more reliable than the Mid-Market Pit Stop on Powell. But the line could get long, so I prefer the library restroom.
Metreon | SoMa
Type: Multi-stall restroom
Operating hours: Sun-Wed 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m, Thu-Sat 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
A little far away from the TL, but almost always clean. I never had to wait, unless it was rush hour or there was an event at Moscone Center. Something was out of order on each visit (urinal, stall, sink, or hand dryer), but that did not generally affect accessibility.
These restrooms are fine I guess
Turk and Hyde | Tenderloin
Type: Pit Stop, portable trailer/Porta-Potties
Operating hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Visit one was a portable white trailer, and visit two was Porta-Potties. May look different on your visit, but it will likely be clean and accessible. I could not use the location on third visit as they were still setting the trailer up.
Sgt. John Macauley Park | Tenderloin
Type: Public Toilet, self-cleaning booth
Operating hours: Most likely 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Hidden by the trees of the park, but really clean. Official hours of operation are unknown as the parks department states 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., while JCDecaux says it’s 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sink and dryer did not always work so it may require patience.
Grove and Larkin | Civic Center
Type: Pit Stop, self-cleaning booth
Operating hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Only restroom with a pink toilet. Generally clean, and no wait on initial two visits. I was turned away on third visit due to an event at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, despite the restroom being listed as open for another hour.
Powell mid-Market restroom | Mid-Market
Type: Pit Stop, self-cleaning booth
Operating hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
On the first visit, the restroom was closed earlier than stated hours. But the next two visits, I was able to access, finding it clean and accessible. May have long wait times due to events nearby, such as Giants games or Market Street parades.
Union Square public toilet | Union Square
Type: Public Toilet, self-cleaning booth
Operating hours: 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Really clean, but hidden by the parking garage structure. I only found the operating hours by contacting the Public Works department. Restroom was down on second visit and maintenance worker suggested to use the Macy’s restroom across the street.
Restrooms of last resort
Eddy and Larkin | Tenderloin
Type: Pit Stop, portable trailer
Operating hours: 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Unable to use it on the first two visits (and yes, I double-checked the Pit Stop hours to make sure I was there when it should be operating). I was able to use it on my third visit, but soap and paper towels were unavailable.
Eddy and Jones | Tenderloin
Type: Pit Stop, self-cleaning booth
Operating hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Wait times vary and location is unreliable. The toilet was clogged on the second visit and it took the attendant five minutes to clear it out. On the third visit, it had maintenance issues and could not be used.
For this project, I visited each site three times during its operating hours, with each visit occurring on a different day. It’s not a perfect system, as it was based on my schedule. But I think it gave me a good enough sense of restrooms’ general strengths and weaknesses.
I limited myself to public restrooms, which I defined as government-run or -overseen sites open to everyone and lacking barriers to entry, such as entering a code or buying something from the business that contained the site. This ruled out cafes and restaurants, but included plazas and shopping centers if the restrooms were not located inside a store.
I consulted Google Maps, Poopin, the city’s open data portal of restrooms, the Public Works department’s maps of Pit Stops, and a list of public toilets. I included in this project the restrooms that appeared in two or more of those websites. The boundaries of the Tenderloin depend on who you ask, but many (including the city’s Planning Department) agree that it reflects what I used for my interactive map. Some people include parts of Civic Center and SoMa, with the Transgender District and Theater District sitting on the edges of the TL and neighboring areas.
The restrooms also had to feel like they made sense for this project, which is obviously subjective. For me, that meant that if they weren’t in the TL, they had to be in the downtown area. They also had to be close enough to the TL for neighborhood residents to easily access, and each facility needed to seem like something someone could realistically use.
Restrooms I didn’t include
Civic Center and Powell BART restrooms: Convenient to use when taking BART, but if you are entering and exiting the same station, the excursion fee is not worth it. Muni A Pass holders do not get charged an excursion fee at BART stations within SF.
Jefferson Square Park: Restroom is too far from the Tenderloin, location- and culture-wise, despite it being two blocks west of Van Ness. This park in the Western Addition just seems too suburban to me, when I’m in the TL headspace.
SoMa Pit Stop: I did include a different restroom in SoMa, but this one was way too far from the TL. If it had been two blocks south of Market Street, I’d definitely include it.
GLIDE: It just feels weird to go into a church to use the restroom and leave. Also has some weird operating hours.
St. Anthony’s Hygiene Hub:Someone must sign up at 6:00 a.m. to secure a spot. It’s not really the best option for those who need to go ASAP and its hours are limited, open Monday through Friday and closed on major holidays.
City Hall: There are accessible restrooms on each floor, but you will have to go through a security screening to enter the building. It is also only open Monday through Friday and hosts private events often.
Retail stores: There are plenty of stores with restrooms that a non-customer could get away with using, but including them would have been against what this project was all about. I also didn’t want to ruin a good thing and publicize these locations as that might have attracted enough people that the business owners would make the restrooms less accessible.
Niko Clark is a writer based in San Francisco. A recent graduate from UC Berkeley, he’s previously written for The Daily Californian’s blog and opinion sections. He intends to pursue his Master of Arts later this fall.
