WASHINGTON –Pee on the wrong wall in San Francisco and it just might pee on you back.
In the fight against public urination, the city’s public works department has enlisted its own walls. As part of a pilot program, the city has coated nine walls with a special paint that makes “urine spray right back onto the shoes and pants of unsuspecting relief-seekers,” The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The city’s public works director told the newspaper that the idea came from Hamburg, Germany, where the high-tech paint was used in the St. Pauli nightclub district to prevent public urinators from peeing on walls. It’s better than payback for the German locals. It’s “pee-back time,” the BBC reports.
It’s also been called the St. Pauli Peeback.
San Francisco’s pee-repellent paint, Ultra-Ever Dry, is made by the Florida-based Ultra Tech International. According to the company’s website, the paint:
“… uses proprietary omniphobic technology to coat an object and create a surface chemistry and texture with patterns of geometric shapes that have “peaks” or “high points”. These high points repel water, some oils, wet concrete, and other liquids unlike any other coating.”
So how will San Francisco know if the pee-proof walls are working?
“We will send people to see, visually, if there are any wet signs to indicate urination has happened.,” Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru tells The Chronicle. “We will also use our natural nose to smell and see if urine is there. If it seems to work, we will continue it after the pilot phase ends.”
Or revelers will simply find themselves another wall.
