Flush with cash and desperate to flush?
New Yorkers are now renting out their toilets via an Airbnb-inspired app called “Airpnp” that shows the closest available commode and the price to use it, and instantly contacts the owner.
Currently a handful of private addresses in the city offer their johns to any Johnny-come-lately.
The Post located one porcelain throne that bills itself as a “charming Carroll Gardens commode” in a “cozy loft-style bathroom” on Smith Street, Brooklyn, at the OrangeYouGlad graphic-design studio.
“You’re our first!” yelled art director Connie Leonard excitedly when The Post walked in and asked to use the advertised WC.
The bathroom at the back of the office isn’t sparkling clean, but there’s a big stack of old Esquire magazines, fancy hand soap and “Poo Pourri” fragrance spray for any embarrassing scents.
“It’s a really smart idea, and if people actually used it more it would be very useful. It just needs to be more widely known,” said Leonard, 30.
The OrangeYouGlad crew doesn’t charge latrine users — unlike a toilet shark in Little Italy who was charging $20 for people who “really need to go and this will have to do!” The bathroom doesn’t have a sink. A toilet in Woodside, Queens, is a more affordable $1.
Duncan didn’t want a pee-ramid scheme. “It’s like a pay-it-forward. There’s going to be some time in our life when we really need to go, and it would be really nice for someone to lend you their potty,” she said.
“If you’re on a busy street in New York, you’re literally surrounded by hundreds of toilets but you can’t use them because they are in people’s apartments,” said app founder Travis Laurendine, 31.
Airpnp helps solves that problem. When a user clicks the button to check if the restroom is available, the owner gets a phone call from the app and decides if they want to lend their loo. People can then review it.
Airpnp launched just under a year ago in New Orleans after the city council there outlawed Porta-Potties on the parade route during Mardi Gras.
The app’s most popular cities are New Orleans and Antwerp, Belgium, but Laurendine tells of a Brooklyn user who made more than $100 renting out his washroom to washed-up partygoers.
In Bushwick, entrepreneur Nadav Ullman, 24, offers up his bathroom for $5. Except he waived the price for the one Airpnp customer he’s had so far — a girl from New Jersey.
“Maybe it’s ’cause I’m a nice guy,” said Ullman. “But probably because it feels weird to ask money for something I would offer for no money.”
The OrangeYouGlad designers are clear about their preferred customers.
“We would prefer pee-ers to poopers,” said Duncan. “But people are not going to be questioned about what they need the bathroom for.”
source: http://nypost.com/2015/01/17/new-yorkers-are-renting-out-their-toilets-via-airbnb-inspired-app/
by Amber Jamieson
http://www.thisoldtoilet.com
