The Porto Potty Report

This blog is due to a special request out of San Francisco. Candace's friend Christine wanted me to get to the bottom of what quite possibly could have been one poopy situation. I'm pretty sure when Inaugural Executive Director Emmit Beliveau (a Mainer) was going over his 2 million person guest list and he saw Gordo and Byrne's names he immediately ordered up at least 5 thousand porto potties. There certainly were a lot of porto-johns...in some spots they stretched for as far as the eye could see. The toilets were located mostly on the Mall but there were thousands scattered throughout the monstrous downtown area. Many were curiously in proximity to street food vendors, which makes me wonder which was the chicken and which the egg.

There are a few criteria for judging a good porto-potty. First, how clean is it? Second, how convenient is it? And third, how much room is there inside? I give bonus points for the built in urinal and the hand sanitizer. My first porto experience in D-C happened Sunday afternoon, it took a little a while to find one near the Capital building that wasn't locked up with a zip tie. A really bad idea by the way to set down hundreds of toilets and keep them essentially padlocked with plastic. It was clean and very spacious, a shelf for setting down my pen and pad, a urinal, and hand sanitizer dispenser were part of the luxury. A near perfect experience. My second relief of that day came after the "We Are One Concert", and estimated half million people packed the mall to check out a musical show of epic proportions. After strolling the city for a couple hours following the show, we visited the WWII Memorial, which was right in the middle of all the action. I'll just say the potty I visited there was a significant step back from my previous experience. My third and final outhouse on a street corner experience came shortly after the Inauguration ceremony. It wasn't too shabby considering the number of people roaming the streets that day. Overall I have to say the porto potty experience in D-C was about as pleasurable as porto potty experiences get and cold temps meant no bugs, which is another big bonus!