PUBLIC BATHING AND SHOWERS

In a 21st C context there is a very good case for the kind of 'public bating facilities' that were once not the oddity that they now seem to be.

Consider this and like scenarios ... Someone living along the kanamalukaTAMAR comes to ‘town’ being Launceston, for a night of culture.  They plan to ride the Trevallyn trails before catching a movie and anyway petrol is a bit pricy right now. 

Now a nice shower before mingling with the hoi polloi and the great unwashed would be nice. The said resident is familiar with 'The Town', but has no idea of where a convenient shower would be. 

Said shower doesn’t have to be free, GOD FORBID the Council has to cover its costs! Is there such a shower in the C.B.D. – and this is in no way connected with “Homelessness”, but there’s a thought! 

Now a shower/toilet near the Start or Finish of the bike trails would be nice but can hear the retort from Town Hall now? “Not our Job” the trails are a National Parks and Wildlife Service. Well no, only a portion is and in reality is that the appropriate attitude towards catering for a community's needs – not wants? Also, isn’t that a Councils job, or at least part there off, to care and provide amenity. .

Now whilst this question is specific in the start it might only take two brain cells to realise that there are other people who might get sweaty and/or dirty recreating before wishing to move on and enjoy perhaps a meal, or a night at the museum or even to start start work? 

Now we could complicate the question by adding that said resident caught the bus,  and yes there is public transport for those who torture themselves by living out side the CoL and its clutches. Also, from out of town, wouldn’t the shoppers, et al mind being able to securely store his/her/other bike whilst imbibing in the city's cultural offerings 

Now when we take the tongue in cheek aspect out of this issue it is actually  truth in this storey and there more like it. Once upon a time Local Governance was mindful of community needs and aspirations and it now seems the front of mind issue is revenue collection given among other things extraordinary executive salaries need to be funded along with a string of managerial follies.

All that said, it is not rocket science or even expensive to build an adequate OFFgrid shower. WHY isn't happening in consultation with the community?

More gleaned reading below!

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With warm weather comes sweat, and with sweat comes…stink. That was a big problem in Progressive-Era New York, writes Andrea Renner—and sparked a long-forgotten trend of public bathhouses designed to cleanse the unwashed masses. ......................... “In Gilded Age America, social classes were divided not only by wealth and culture, but also by smell,” writes Renner. It wasn’t just a matter of grueling physical labor or limited bathing facilities, she notes. Rather, the stinking poor uncovered upper-class anxieties about immigration, class, and cities. ......................... Middle-class families had increasing access to bathtubs and water. Meanwhile, 97 percent of tenement dwellers did not. Communal sinks and plumbing problems made bathing a challenge. That was a problem not just for the working poor, but for the upper classes, who considered uncleanliness “a moral failure as well as a threat to public health.” Clean was good, dirty was bad—and bathing became a metaphor for Progressive-Era reform. ......................... In 1891, New York opened the People’s Baths. Enter the bathhouse. England and Germany were already home to public baths, and American reformers began a social experiment that riffed on the European concept. In 1891, New York opened the People’s Baths, where people bathed in “rain baths,” or early showers. In just a year, over 10,000 people bathed there. ......................... In 1894, writes Renner, bathing became a campaign issue in New York, ushering in “a golden age of bathhouse construction.” Renner chronicles the building of 26 municipal and charity baths between 1901 and 1914—bathhouses that furthered the new art of indoor plumbing while providing efficient bathing opportunities to tenement dwellers on the Lower East Side. These structures were microcosms of Progressivism, shuffling bathers in and out using an organized process that turned the “filthy” poor into uplifted city residents. ......................... Coney Island bath house At a Coney Island bath house circa 1940s/50s (via New York Public Library Digital Collections) The baths “provided little space for congregating and [prohibited long stays],” turning the relatively new concept of a leisurely, private bathing experience on its head. That decadent experience, it seems, was only for the rich. The poor, on the other hand, were handed a cake of soap and a towel and hustled into an institutional shower. ......................... Nevertheless, writes Renner, the experience was a luxury for people who might never have bathed otherwise. Despite strict rules against socialization (possibly enacted to discourage homosexual activity), bathers paid off attendants to take longer-than-allowed showers and socialized freely inside. ......................... Ironically, the baths that reformers so loved weren’t as beloved by New York’s poor—in part because they came from the demands of reformers and not the public. “Bath reformers of the 1890s had failed to understand that European bathhouses were popular in part because of their sociability,” writes Renner. ......................... Eventually, the rise of plumbing did away with the public bathhouse altogether, although their successors—public pools—continue to play important roles in the city. The idea of a public bath is unfamiliar today, but at the time it represented an ambitious social experiment. Though they’ve been converted into rec centers, you can still spot a few of the iconic buildings in the city today—a reminder that even the way we bathe is laden with meaning.