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November 10, 2008
On pots
Port A Potties for the New York Marathon, originally uploaded by Trish Mayo.
I have, I think, an unhealthy fascination with portable toilets. There's something inherently interesting to me about a place where somebody feels the need to install such a device.
Once, my family was driving along a road in eastern Nova Scotia, and we saw a solitary port-a-potty in the middle of a field. There was no sign of human activity, nor a dwelling, anywhere near the thing. Why was it there? I took a picture of it, but such things have been lost to history - or at least a shoebox somewhere.
Needless to say, one place that needs lots of port-a-potties is your local marathon. I've run about ten races this year - not marathons, obviously - and every single one of them is stacked with port-a-potties. I won't get into details, but running tends to loosen up one's innards, so a lot of runners like to make sure they're clean before a big race. I just drink a lot of water, in my case.
The New York City marathon was last week, and the New York Times had a most interesting article about the thousands of toilets installed for the race:
By Sunday there will be 1,660 of them. Their mismatched colors create a snaking kaleidoscope through the parking lots and roadways of leafy Fort Wadsworth. “My guys are a little color blind,” said Bill Malone, president of A Royal Flush, the Connecticut-based company that has supplied portable toilets to the marathon the last 15 years. He looked at a string of green, blue, gray, brown and pink toilets.
“You’d think they could keep the grays together,” Malone said, smiling.
Staten Island represents the starting point of the New York City Marathon. It is where 39,000 participants — people who tend to be well-nourished, quite hydrated and a wee bit nervous — wait for the race to begin.
And wait.
And wait.
And, come to think of it, if you will excuse them for a moment, they will be right back.
Gathering and placing 2,250 portable toilets for a one-day event — and then removing them almost immediately — is a daunting task. The marathon represents the third-largest annual assemblage of portable toilets in the country, behind the Rose Bowl college football game and parade and the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D. Placed side by side, the 4-foot-wide toilets would stretch 1.7 miles.
entry no. 1241
Posted at November 10, 2008 11:21 AM