Evansville sits on a bend in the Ohio River, down in the southwest corner of Indiana where the state runs out and Kentucky begins. It’s a working town—coal barges on the river, hospitals and shift work, plants and warehouses. The kind of place where people are careful with a dollar and suspicious of anyone who isn’t, and where you earn what you have. That’s worth knowing, because what I want to tell you about is something this careful, hardworking city decided to spend money on. A public restroom. And it was not an easy yes.
It’s a Portland Loo—one of those durable stainless-steel bathrooms built to stay open twenty-four hours a day. Safe. Accessible. Easy to clean. Hard to vandalize. It sits at the corner of Sycamore and Sixth, near the downtown bus station. Practical and unromantic, the sort of thing a city argues over for years before finally deciding to do.
As far as I know, it’s the first truly public restroom in our city open around the clock.
And plenty of…