CHILD pees on my building w supervising adult while I sweep

If Joe the Cop walked up on this adult and child and issued a summons to the adult, what would the reaction be on this site?

less outrage than the bike-on-the-sidewalk guy, but there would still be outrage.

when i was a child and had a bad kidney, i was ready to burst, unless i took a pee.
then my neighbor mary came to me.
speaking words of wisdom, she told my mother , let him pee, let him pee .
and in that alley of darkness, she stood right in front me
speaking words of wisdom , let him pee, let him pee.
she whispered words of wisdom, let him pee,
let him pee.
when i was done , i felt so much better ,then when i begun

then, my neighbor mary whispered to my mother, it was ok for him to pee,
but i didn't mean on me,
i didn't mean on me.

BrooklynChimp wrote: I'd bet- most of you to be transplants. Not to sound offending, as its simply an observation.

"What does me not being originally from New York, have anything to do with common decency and respect for others property?"

Nothing.

But what it does affect, is your lack in understanding of urban life. A city which twenty years ago was a hell of a lot different- and which shaped people a hell of lot differently.

As for the lame who felt embarrassed (a new yorker i bet). Maybe you should get new friends. You know, some who aren't ghetto or who embarrass you.

Its people with little to nothing who usually carry this elitist outlook.

Stay classy folks.

----

I am certain there are people in CH who are not 'transplants' who would see a problem with, and probably retaliate against someone (even a kid) pissing on their stoop. I really doubt you'd just sit still while someone urinated at your front door....

Your apology is accepted, Cool.

I would like to respectfully submit that I believe that this is an issue of cultural differences (as BrooklynChimp said). Even a few years ago, it wasn't possible to find a hairdresser open late at night on Franklin Ave. Many of the retail outlets on Nostrand Ave, still serving customers from behind bullet-proof glass, don't have bathrooms available. I imagine different social mores developed as a result. And, honestly, why wouldn't they? If there aren't public restrooms available, then you need to do something.

In India, I was myself indisposed once and asked a security guard where I could go to use a toilet. He chuckled. When I persisted, he swept his arm out, indicating the entire area, still chuckling. I was at a holy site in a major city. Whatever anyone may think about the sanitary aspects of this, taking a piss outside was normal for all the Indians around me, enough that my concern about a bathroom was seen as ignorant and humorous. Cultural differences.

I'm sure this will change organically, as the neighborhood continues to change.

Is it possible that the child REALLY had to use the bathroom and the adult with him had no recourse but to offer the side of the building as the only alternative? Yes, maybe he was enroute to the daycare center nearby, but maybe the child could not hold it any longer. And no doubt that this is an upsetting thing to witness. Someone raised the hypothetical about vomit adorning the building rather than pee, and that reminded me of a blond-headed member of the new gentry up-chucking within the tree lot where I have carefully planted flowers and herbs, and where I have painstakingly taken care of a tree. She had some dude beside her who dutifully held her blond tresses as she ralphed all over the place. I managed a 'Really? You had to do that there?' and the guy ignored me. These motherfuckers live next door! I don't think they are 'ghetto'. I just think that they probably had no recourse -- or thought that they didn't. When vomit calls, you gtta answer. As fate would have it, my badly injured Linden was the victim.

I think the OP's perception of the adult as a 'sagger' encourages him to view the adult and (the child's urinating) as 'ghetto'. I am inclined to think that the guy arguably had little recourse and saw this little boy urinating with his back to the street as a better alternative than urinating with his ding-a-ling exposed to the street. It's just fate it was OP's wall that bore the stain of the act.

MAH makes a good point. Sometimes we are subject to our bodily needs, regardless of our race or how our parents wear their pants.

Deeming it 'disrespectful' is a subjective perception of what happened. Disrespect is a PLAUSIBLE truth, but not necessarily the INCONTROVERTIBLE truth. I can see why one can so easily see it CTK's way, but we are not talking about a young adult who takes a piss on a side of a building. We are very likely talking about a child who had a bursting bladder walking beside a young man who made an apparent split decision. Were it my child, I can't say that the circumstances would change much. Maybe the pee wouldn't fall on the building, but it would definitely fall in close vicinity. To the sweeper's much understood anger at best I would offer a heartfelt apology, and depending upon HOW the sweeper responded, at worst it could even be an ugly confrontation. Maybe the best thing the supervising adult could have done was to keep quiet. If this were his child, no doubt he has more concern for the kid's bladder than any building in Brooklyn. I would ask the sweeper, from THEIR perspective what alternative, did the man have? Is it possible that the supervising adult thought that the child just was not able to any longer hold his urine? Isn't that a possibility? Isn't it possible that 'ghetto sensibilities' and 'disrespect' are being projected on to this person, and truly were not the motivating factors?

There is a buddhist saying:
There is YOUR truth, and there is MY truth.
There is HIS truth, and there is Her truth.

There is more than one truth out there. Considering alternate explanations help to mitigate anger and frustration, and gives us a clearer perception of the world we inhabit. We tend to color the world with our ego...

I hear the smirking as I write this.

Okay.
Assuming there were cars parked nearby that would allow for that, and assuming that a parent would rather their child urinate in the street than on a sidewalk, then I guess you do have a point. But, given the circumstances, the sweeper's anger is definitely warranted, as is the adult's decision to have the child urinate against the building. I will say this. There is NO way I am going to have my bladder bursting kid wee between two cars: Where does the kid stand? In the street, on the sidewalk facing the street, his little business all out for the whole world across the street to see? His back to the street offers more privacy. I think what little dignity can be cobbled together in such a situation is more the priority that deferring to a side of a building.

So, are we still saying that this is 'ghetto behavior', or are we a bit more understanding of the potential for another perspective?

The irony is there is a stairwell that leads to the basement on a nearby building, and the reek of piss floats right up to my window. It unnerves me to no end, and I am constantly pouring soapy water down there in attempt to quell the stench (what gets out the smell anyway?) No doubt some bladded busting adult sees the stairwell as an alternative to pissing against a building on the sidewalk, or between two cars. Believe me, I share sweeper's pain...

For the record, there was no bait offered, Whynot_31. I will answer that question though. I do think public urination, littering, graffiti, and the like do happen in poorer neighborhoods more frequently than wealthier neighborhoods, and I think it does because these nuisance crimes are aspects symptomatic of poverty.

The sweeper's argument offered no real discussion of that, just a mention of the act, and it was Mr. Krohn who initally piped in and crudely described it as an aspect of ghetto behavior. I wish he went deeper. I wish we could stop moralizing and really start intellectualizing. Words like 'disrespectful' for instance are too topical and don't explore how social behavior is shaped by class, capital, and the access to resources. A poster recalled having to urinate publicly in India. This wasn't because people lacked respect or even regard, but had more to do with the level of poverty and the lack of services that would provide public bathrooms. What she saw as an indignity was once seen that way in India too - I am sure of it -- over time socially disruptive behavior becomes the norm where there is little alternative.

I agree with you. The supervising adult of the CHILD should have offered an apology.....

Hey, recall the "Devil with the Red Vespa"? Slightly familiar, no? Us projecting what we think upon the protagonists of the scenario????

Many of the guys who live on the corner of EP and Franklin use the side of their building (I've dubbed it Piss Alley) as a place for Schwang Release. They're too fucking lazy to actually make that long, hard trek back up to their apartment.

I mean, after all, they're drinking 40's and that shit goes through quick.

KnowutI'msayin? :roll:

I can't say I never navel gaze.

In the U.S., most of us have access to indoor toilets most of the time when we need them. This is not true for at least half of the people in the world. According to Rose George who wrote a book about the subject, having access to a toilet is "a privilege". In India, no one sees urinating in public as a sign of defiance, disregard, or disrespect, because it's seen as a necessity. It's not even an indignity since almost everyone (except the rich) does it. We have the privilege in this country of being able to depend on access to a toilet, almost all the time.

After spending a fair amount of time in India, I don't see urinating in public or even in front of my house as a sign of disrespect. My issue with it has to do with sanitation. Whether or not you or I are standing next to someone who is pissing in a public area, the piss is going to end up there. The sanitary consequences of a build up of human waste are extreme, including the spread of some of the world's worst infectious diseases. Our cultural taboo against urinating in public arises from a concern about its sanitary aspects, but that we can collectively make this a taboo is a consequence of the tremendous resources we have in this country.

Even so, we don't have public toilets in NYC. Using the toilet of a restaurant or bar is going to depend on the generosity of the staff, their feeling of safety about having you in their establishment, or your financial ability to purchase an item you don't need to open up admission to the restroom. If no one is willing to let you in their restaurant, or you don't feel like you can spend money flagrantly, then you are going to have to hightail it home (hope you're not too far), or make do. Likewise, if there are no restaurants or bars, or other establishments with restrooms in an area - which in an urban setting would indicate a poor area - then you are going to be faced with never leaving home, or having to make do sometimes. My hypothesis is that Crown Heights was an area like that 20 years ago (and still is in many parts), and different social mores grew up as a result for the people that lived here then. I wasn't living here then, so my hypothesis remains just that.

In the specific case that the OP posed, best bet is that the kid really needed to take a piss. I have a "smaller bladder" than most adults, and I have been in that position and have climbed fences, hid behind trees, and performed other behaviors inappropriate for an American female (and especially a middle-class American female) in order to accommodate that need. No disrespect intended to whoever's property I pissed on. I just really needed to go.

Yes, a long post, because personally I think that the triggerpoint for the discussion (a neighborhood child urinating in public) raises a lot of interesting and relevant issues about our world, our neighborhood, and our individual places in it.

MHA wrote: I have neighbors who are flagrant litterers. There is little regard for how they dispose of their garbage. Sometimes some of the dudes in the neighboring building throw their jizz-filled condoms threw their windows, and there it will be in the morning, on the sidewalk. Other times a kid in the neighboring window sticks his penis out and urinate in the alley between the buildings. In this summer heat, the rank of it wafts through the windows; absolutely disgusting.

I make a habit of trying my best to maintain a certain degree of cleanliness. It is hard in the face of my attempts to not see the flagrant littering and even the urination as a display of disrespect.

I think the reason so much litter and pissing occurs has to do with the litterers and the pissers having a limited notion of ownership. I think whenever you 'own' something -- and by that I mean 'take responsibility for', you impart value to the thing in your care. Your labors gives it value. The original poster owns his home, and no doubt cares a great deal about it. And no doubt works hard to maintain it. And though no material harm can occur from urine on the building, what he interprets from the act is a lack of regard of what is his; what he 'owns'. Similarly, I feel a sense of ownership -- not of the building in which I reside, but the result of my endeavors -- to keep it clean. Whenever someone pisses on the stairwell of the building, or applies graffitti or pollutes my home environment in some way, it irks me to no end.Jesus, I live here for Christ's sake, is what I think. Right now a mountain of garbage is piled up next door. What alleviates my anger is coming to the sad realization that people are acculturated to act this way in most occasions. They have lost the ability to project the ability to respect what does NOT belong to them. In fact, they will sometimes view their own pathos as VIRTUE. A gentleman who is a superintendent for a neighboring building often sees me sweeping and comes over to commiserate. He mentions how when he is cleaning, the young brothers goad him for his endeavors, claiming that he is an 'Uncle Tom' because he is cleaning up the 'white man's building', and that they would never do that; keep in mind that they are messing up their own environment. Sometimes subversive behavior, as socially disruptive as it is, occurs because of this stance.

This of course does not justify it. But people who perceive themselves as powerless often act out pathos in attempt to feel empowered.


O.P., I really feel for you buddy. Seriously. I know that must've pissed you off. Pardon the pun.

MHA is right on the money with this one.

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this thread is getting more coverage then the oil leak.