The changing face of SOMA
It occurs to me that the front of my building always smells like piss because of all the people walking their dogs. This is in stark contrast to how it was ten years ago, when the front of my building always smelled like piss because of the human debris.
Tags: firstperson, sf
Current Music: Crystal Castles -- Tell Me What to Swallow ♬
19 Responses:
The neighbors suggested putting a water bowl out front even if you are not a dog owner because dogs will not piss where they drink. Of course, that might me you have to clean up the original pee first.
Yes, but will they piss where OTHER dogs drink? "Oh, not my water dish. Let'er rip!"
Not at all a bad idea.
In 10 years it will smell like plastic dust and gear oil as everyone is walking their robotic dogs.
Spray the area with a solution of 3:1 water to bleach, scrub with pushbroom or long handled brush, rinse a bit, let dry to clean off the odor that offends you and encourages animals to mark the territory more. Then. Pet stores sell dog and cat repellants. You can get them off the net, but the first time you buy, go to a store. Be sure to smell the product yourself and make sure you're not buying one that you hate as much as the dogs do. I live in the suburbs, in a house with a dog, and the front walk is thoroughly and repeatedly marked every day by my Pomeranian and by his many neighborhood competitors, and the odor pretty much dries away. I bet you still have a people problem if it's a strong odor to you. Dog urine isn't as vile as people urine, and people also dump more product in one place. Dogs go a little here, a little there, so they can mark as many spots as possible. You do have a bar up the block, right? I think their big spenders might need a break at your door before getting in their Hondas and driving back across the bridge. To discourage people, you might want to have your building install BRIGHT exterior lighting at the thresh-hold and a really really obvious looking camera, preferably with a blinking led. Camera doesn't even have to work, it just has to look like your doorway has no privacy whatever. Hey if it does work, bonus. You could start a piss-cam website. I bet when the tools see their tools on the net, they'll think twice about your door.
I'm not sure that the bar down the street explains it stinking like piss at 2 in the afternoon.
There are so-called "trees" here that I see people draining their beasts on all the time (the park two blocks away apparently being too far), but there is no grass and almost no dirt, so basically it's a slab of urine-soaked concrete with no drainage. Lovely, really.
Rapture-bright floodlights are a lousy solution. Besides the light pollution, being ugly and expensive:
(From a New Yorker article about light pollution by David Owen)
I think, though, once the guy's already headed for the wall there's no deterring him. If you're interested in catching him and charging him that's one thing, but I don't know how much time and money JWZ is interested in spending on taking photographs of people with their pants down pissing on his club.
People spikes?
FATALITY!!
I'm not sure how many drunken-gotta-whiz guys actually stop to consider whether they are on camera.
I've just read in livejournal that in Italy they are going to set up a DNA bank for dogs, so that they could identify the shit and fine the dog owners.
The town of Petah Tikva, Israel.
I was walking home the other day behind some random tinydog owning person and their fucking ugly pug-or-whatever-the-fuck pissed on every single stationary structure it encountered. I wish these people would just have children instead.
They are also the reason there is a market for movies like Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
Yeah, I own a little dog that will try to pee on anything that doesn't pee on her, but I would never, EVER sit through any sort of CG/animatronic/whatever freak-show dog movie.
so it sounds like his trees need to be rigged to pee back!
Sounds like a definite step up to me.
I would go with the motion detector 10000 cwp spotlight along with the the webcam. (along with all the legalese notification stuff that would be needed before you posted it to the net) If for no other reason that when the light came on it would startle the offender resulting in a further loss of bodily function and thus hilarity.
Or bleach..
We're fortunate in the UK, it's always raining so any pee, dog or otherwise, soon gets washed away.
Our problem is dog turds. Really, even if you've forgotten to bring a bag, just kick it into the road so some poor sod walking behind you doesn't tread in it.
Needs some motion-activated sprinkler, I do believe.
...but I thought it was funny when I found it.
I was actually searching for electric fence type products that would... discourage animals from peeing on something. Unfortunately my brief search came up blank.
Ironic when you consider that the economy is down and people are losing houses left and right.