The Curious Phenomenon of Boys Peeing on Chinatown Sidewalks

Snapped this one on Ludlow st on June 2012

Actually, allowing little boys to urinate at will, without fuss or disapproval, is a Chinese custom of longstanding. My Chinese neighbors on Broome Street, back in the 1960s, used to allow the boy children (not sure about the girl children) to go about the apartment without pants or diapers and just clean up after the little puddles. In due course the children seemed to get toilet trained without trauma.
Now it’s true that I didn’t see this practiced on the street, in those days; perhaps that freedom was confined to the home. Perhaps the practice of doing it in the streets is a behavior of new arrivals. I don’t know.

I personally don’t think it’s as bad as drunken adults urinating (albeit covertly rather than openly) in public places because for one thing children often *cannot* hold it in and for another thing the urine of a little child is nowhere near as malodorous.

Spitting in the street, which was firmly prohibited in the 1940s (I remember the large “NO Expectorating” signs) but has resurfaced as an alarming resurgence all over the United States in recent years (like the bedbugs), is a really disgusting practice and much more objectionable–aesthetically and public health-wise–than little children, barely out of infancy, occasionally piddling in the street.

taking photos of it seems actually a lot worse than it happening for some reason…they’re kids peeing for god sakes.