n an interview in February 2000, Mayor Rudy Giuliani acknowledged that the 1997 bid died because he was afraid of giving a long-term megafranchise for street furniture to one company. He said the deal was "vulnerable to being corrupted."

He wouldn't comment for this article.

Politics are not the only problem.

"The problem is people misuse toilets; they misuse them in three ways," says Parks Commissioner Henry Stern. "Toilets afford privacy, and people misuse them in order to commit crimes, they use them to hide in. People misuse toilets in order to take drugs, they feel they will be hidden from the public view. And people misuse toilets in order to commit sexual acts, so the result of that public misuse is that you have to see that the toilet is staffed or manned in order to watch out for them. That's very difficult, that's very expensive to provide that kind of coverage all day. And that's the issue."

Vanessa Gruen of the Municipal Art Society, a non-profit organization that works to protect the urban landscape, agrees with Stern that safety becomes an important factor. She points out that wheelchair access must be provided for the city's 1.5 million disabled, and these become, "9 by 12 motel rooms in the middle of the sidewalk," says Gruen.

nother objection centers on advertising. Stern and the mayor don't like it, and neither does Gruen. "No company would want to have their ads actually on the toilets, you would have to set up ad kiosks near the toilets … it would be a lot of clutter and for no other reason than to have advertising," says Gruen.

"We wouldn't mind seeing automatic pay toilets on the street if they did not have any advertising on it and if they were well situated. You'd have to be very careful where you put them."

Gruen has another solution. "I'd prefer the city reopen the subway toilets or in the park or offer an incentive if buildings would offer public toilets on the ground floor."

Stern says that people need to plan better: "People have to exercise restraint, and people have to know when to go. This is not something that was discovered in the year 2000. It was a basic part of the human condition, and people out on the streets should make arrangements to take care of the physical needs. When they can't, there are stores, there are shops, there are all kinds of places where you can go."

Whether merchants welcome non paying customers onto their premises is another question.