APTs go AWOL

A new wave of municipal idiocy is sweeping the city: the crotchety olde kiosks employed to peddle all manner of not-quite-newspapers are being forced to don a green sheath that may be uniform in their appearance to the infrequent Automatic Pay Toilets being potted hither and thither.

Gone, soon, will be the splintered, split-door bodegas, of a sort, that tend to spew questionable print media, Tijuana bibles, tabloids and the even L.A. Times; in their stead will be the twin of the shit-buckets coloured as glamourously as IBM PCs in the 1980s.

Speculation abounds that the extended police powers will allow a constabulary reach that circumvents the distinct boundaries of the First Amendment: the new deal allegedly holds that the skin of these great green closets are a gray area that allow the long of the arm to rifle through the nether regions of commercial print products, even as the former newsagents were supposed to have some control of the interior.

The APT "coin" panel on 5th at Pershing Square.

The APT on 6th at the edge of Skid Row L.A.

That is all yet to be seen.

Meantime, what the hell is with the elimination of the two bits entry fee to the APTs and that are, to be blunt, fucken broken? What difference does it make if a pay toilet is free if the god-damned thing is not available to the public?

Here is a hint that bean-counters (not you, Tony V, nor the extramarital beans you been counting under the covers) of Los Angeles: the half-million for each APT is gone, so stop wasting tax money on services not available. Strip the APTs, cite the private contractors who failed to maintain them, and install a chamber pot on every corner.

The BusTard pleads you do this, lest his winged bastard arse fly over that stilted Art Deco attempt on Temple and drop a load of what he really thinks.