> There were ample bathrooms but every single one of them was filled with human feces, covering practically every surface, and littered with needles.
What the hell? No offense, but was this in a slum somewhere or something? Not saying it doesn't happen in other places, but I think I've came across that once in my ~35 years, visiting countless of public bathrooms, cities and towns, admittedly mostly around in Europe, South America and Asia, but still...
I don't think that's a "city" thing, that might be very local to the specific city you visited, or the specific area.
I’ve definitely heard that other countries don’t tolerate this sort of thing, but the thread is about US cities. Of course YMMV, my understanding is many European cities have very few or only paid public bathrooms.
Ah, yeah, going back I see the "big US cities", my context was just "big cities" when I was reading the thread, my bad!
> my understanding is many European cities have very few or only paid public bathrooms.
Not my experience living here, but I'm sure it differs a lot based on the country and the city, some will have free public bathrooms, some paid public bathrooms, some no bathrooms at all.