Starbucks Opens its Bathrooms

The policy has officially changed

So there might be a silver lining to that racist scene involving two Black men in a Philadelphia franchise who tried to use the bathroom while waiting for a business colleague and wound up in police custody. Starbucks has now announced that, unlike other capitalist enterprises, it will officially make their bathrooms available to anyone who enters their premises, whether or not they purchase anything at all. 

It's about time as far as I'm concerned. Why should libraries and hospitals be the only institutions that cater to the public biological needs? Those of us in the tiny bladder brigade salute them.

Restroom philosophy varies depending on the country and culture. Public markets and spaces in Mexico usually have bathrooms available for a small fee. They are run as a business enterprise, kept clean and waiting for customers. It can be a drag to always have change available but it's well worth it for the easy access.

However, sometimes paying to pee is a slap in the whatever. In Peru, at Machu Picchu you have to pay an arm and a leg for admission and then pay extra to use the pisser. This is an unfair tax on women and old people. If you spend, say six hours, there (and it's a big place where it's easy to spend the day) you might, if you're like me, have to go three times. In that case you should be able to purchase an express pass or something. But if you're like my partner Deborah, who is a woman with a super-sized bladder, you may only have to go once. It's simply unfair.

Then, there's Paris. Well, it's different everywhere but in Paris most cafe/restaurant owners were not thrilled if I snuck in to find a toilette. I had to be single focused and pretend I didn't understand them when they used that francophone logic in a futile attempt to deter me. It's not that I'm cheap, well maybe a little, but ordering another drink of something because you have to pee too often is counterproductive, to say the least.

Ah, but Madrid, my beloved city. Any haven for drinkers of wine and beer will inevitably be heaven for perpetual seekers of the aseos, their name for the old servicios where you aseo belongs.  Spanish bathrooms are plentiful and easy to find. They have a lot of small rooms with full walls for privacy. In fact, most espanoles find the type of public restrooms in the US, that consist of a row of stalls, disgusting and invasive, a kind of TMI of bodily functions. In Spain, even in hotel lobbies, people will kindly point you to your destination, even if you are not a guest.

So Starbucks is making its mark on US restroom history finally providing all Americans that proverbial pot to piss in. We have lost so much of late, it's the least they can do.

Una Gringa en Mexico

Statue in Guanajuato

There is no substitute for travel. It is a way to feel part of a world so much greater than yourself that opens up a vast array of cultural norm and shines a light on the things we take for granted and fact that these assumptions are not universal in nature.

Although many of their lives are harder, people tend to be much kinder in Mexico. They will readily help friends and family and go out of their way for foreigners. Folks put up with our grammatically flawed Spanish, answered our stupid questions and walked us to places we couldn’t find.  There is a warmth, a generosity of spirit, that is totally unlike anything I’ve experienced in the USA.

This is a laissez-faire capitalist country and hard-working people sell everything from folk art to food to bathroom use, which comprises a national industry. Imagine a job in the US where individuals spend their days giving out toilet paper and cleaning toilets that individuals may use for a fee of 3 to 5 pesos a shot (about 15 to 30 cents). The poverty in Mexico is astounding but so is the growth of a rising middle class.

When it comes to ethnicity, there is an obvious caste system. The darker skinned, indigenous people predominate in the service industry as maids, shop employees, lower level restaurant workers. Yet being an individual entrepreneur is pretty much unregulated. Folks can set up a artisan booth, a taco stand or a public bathroom without government intervention or guidelines.

Mexico is a place where you are on your own in many ways. Real estate taxes, even on mansions tend to run about 30 to 50 dollars a year. Due to lack of genuine police protection, the cops don't get paid much and there is widespread bribery and corruption. The rich and middle class create their own gated communities and hire private security. It is a libertarian dream state. It is left to the individuals to protect themselves and their property because, to quote Bob Dylan, “the cops don’t need you and man they expect the same.”

Deborah and I met up with a relative of a friend who had been living in San Miguel for over ten years. She had increased the height of a wall between her place and her neighbor’s because the adolescent males next door kept trying to break into her place. She said they were bored rich Mexican kids who just wanted a challenge. She also believed that the police had earmarked her as the problem because the family was wealthy and influential. And, in spite of the fact that she is of Mexican-American descent and speaks Spanish, she is considered a perpetual outsider.

That is the dark side of family bonding; the relative ostracism of the expatriate community which, in turn, tends to stick together like any minority group. To American eyes, there is an appalling lack of public safety regulations. Children ride in open backed trucks.  Everything you eat is at your own risk. The potholes in the street are treacherous and there is no such thing as a lawsuit for tripping and falling anywhere, even on government property. I can’t begin to imagine what disabled people must endure. Fireworks punctuate the night like gunshots and dogs run wild.

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I could never live in Mexico. As a long-limbed, big-footed, somewhat sexually-indeterminate, pink-skinned creature, I stood out in every crowd. I longed for the anonymity of blending and the luxury of simply seeing others on the streets who looked like me. I am very happy to be back home but also grateful for the cultural experience of Mexico our close, yet very different, neighbor to the south.

In Mexico Sitting and Relaxing is Legal

Plaza in Tlaquepaque

I came back to news of San Francisco's enforcement of the new sit/lie ordinance that makes hanging out on public sidewalks against the law. Not only is this not the case in Mexico, sitting and relaxing are actually encouraged in public spaces such as the beautiful old colonial-style plazas that grace almost every city and town.

There are benches everywhere, much like the ones that were removed from Civic Center Plaza in the mid-nineties when I worked at the nearby Public Library. Yes, in sleazier towns there are occasional scruffy guys or borrachos (drunks) but the night markets don't sell alcohol and the problem is nearly non-existent compared to this country.

Public spaces are for the people and they come alive at night with stands selling tacos, pozole, tamales, homemade potato chips, even hamburgers. The people are so friendly it made me a bit embarrassed for our country of rush and bother. I am trying to be more Mexican now in my new retired state. To me that means more conscious of others and more aware of myself as a member of a community that transcends ethnicity, race and gender identity.

Passing as a Man in the Guadalajara Bus Station...

 A Female Man in Guadalajara

Yes, there are queers in Mexico, one woman bus driver was butch as all get-out, but in general women tend toward ultra-femme. Gay men, of course, are more visible. This must be the reason that I was so often addressed as senor. Deb and I decided to make the best of it and try to pass as a heterosexual couple. It worked as long as I didn't speak. My voice is not exactly in the male range.

Travel as Buddhist Practice

Ajijic Seen From Lake Chapala

I'm in the process of packing for 3 weeks of travel in Mexico with Deborah. Since I'm putting everything in a backpack that I have to carry, my decision are made almost exclusively by weight. It's a challenging prospect due to the fact that we will be at in a range of climates from 7,000 feet above sea (sunny and comfortably temperate) to absolute sea level which, in July, will be steaming. I'm taking lots of soap so I can wash and rewash the clothes that I'll be sick to death of by the end of the trip. 

Packing is one of the hardest things about travel. Once we leave, we will have next to nothing and will, judging by our past performance, get used to it. It will be as though we never had any other life but the one of motion. Travel is one of the few genuinely Buddhist experiences. You are in the moment because there is nowhere else to be. Taking in the world and meeting basic needs of food and shelter are the goals that take up all the available space. It is a freeing feeling.

When I was young, following the death of my mother in 1973, I took the money from her life insurance, a friend and we went to Europe to bum around indefinitely. Our venture, meant to last at least a year, ended in eight months, not because we ran out of money (hostels and train travel were dirt cheap then) but because, even at 23, we ran out of stamina and patience with nomadic life. In the long run, there is an isolating quality to observing other's lives from the outside.

But, in the short run, I am really looking forward to a few weeks of suspended reality. Especially because, as a newly retired person, I haven't yet defined the parameters of what that day to day reality will actually look like.