At the Public Safety Commission’s meeting Monday night, former City Councilmember Steve Martin railed against the upcoming conversion of Plummer Park’s public restrooms into gender-neutral facilities.
His public comments are reprinted below:
“It has come to my attention that as part of the redesign of the community building in Plummer Park of the same-gender bathrooms have been designed in a way that seems very insensitive to the history and the problems that we’ve had in Plummer Park.
As many of you will recall, we’ve had to really create high security in that building, because our park staff has been abused and assaulted by the prostitutes who are coming in there to use the bathrooms. And now what we’ve done is we’ve designed these bathrooms, that are very high tech, that have doors from floor to ceiling, that lock from the inside.
And so everybody can walk in.
I’m not quite sure what the what the point is — whether we’re trying to open up a bordello for our prostitutes that work locally, or we’re trying to create some kind of sex club — but this does not make any sense for Plummer Park.”
[…] Park restrooms have been a lightning rod of a topic for West Hollywood residents in recent years. Recent plans to renovate Plummer Park’s restrooms into a gender-neutral facility drew much consternation from members of the public, who feared they would be a magnet for drug addicts and sex workers, as they had been in the past. Former Councilmember Steve Martin warned they would become a “bordello for our prostitutes.” […]
[…] Gender-neutral restrooms have generated jitters since City Council first approved a plan to start integrating them in 2021. Former City Councilmember Steve Martin memorably warned that gender-neutral restrooms at Plummer Park would a “bordello for our prostitutes.” […]
Those of us who live near the park have already lived through this. Before covid, at any given hour there were between 5 – 20 people camped out in front of the bathrooms from morning to night waiting for their drug dealer to roll through to make his delivery. When they got bored, they would burglarize our cars and apartments and take our stolen property to the pawnshops on Santa Monica to scrape together a couple of bucks to buy more meth. They would then lock themselves in the bathrooms in groups of twos and threes to smoke and inject… Read more »
Yup. It’s amazing how ignorant so many are on here. They have not lived through prior issues and refuse to learn from those of us that have.
Steve Martin is obviously a sex-negative, homophobic, classist, White-supremacist rich arrogant despot. His comments are not welcome, in addition to being inaccurate and arrogantly privileged GET OUT.
He’s a wHiTe sUpReMaCiSt! Now there’s a whole whopping 301 in the country.
Wow, you sound like a racist. Not cool. He has a point because we’ve been down this road before and had problems. He’s trying to protect the residents in the city by looking to the past and learning from it. But of course this council won’t listen-they know everything. And then we have people like you out there bringing up the color of his skin for no apparent reason.
Oh please! With all your name-calling and insults I’m surprised your comment was approved for publishing.
Can you believe EIE is a therapist!
THAT explains it! He’s looking for a diagnosis for a non-existant illness.
Can’t use them because the street trash,drug addicts, and prostitutes that don’t mind polluting parks, with their skank and disease, stay in there forever, lock the doors, and use it as their cesspool. Then they intimidate anyone who tries to get in. The Gays that like bath houses and anonymous sex and spread AIDS and HIV will support the degenerates because it’s their style. So the city council appeals to the huge minority of perpetrators and dregs of society and some garbage will call it white supremecy because they want to drag everyone down with them in their marginal and… Read more »
Could we PLEASE stop the inaccurate, circa 1982 BAD-retro-shaming take on how, and where HIV/AIDS is actually contracted?!?! Let’s put this in the “round-file” along with that screaming-National Enquirer headline, featuring then Dynasty stars,Linda Evans and Rock Hudson, act-smooching: “THE KISS OF DEATH!!!”
You’re a crank. Republican, perchance?
How did I know how this must be from the healine alone? Gosh.
The poor former sounds just like the former mayor of Hudson, Ohio.
After all, ice fishing can ONLY lead to prostitution.
So, too, in WeHo, CA, open bathrooms lead violent hookers, er, prostitutes, to assault upstanding citizens.
Let’s shut down any potentially private space in all of West Hollywood and keep people from having sex.
A citywide ban on sex seems to be in order, and isn’t there a city council campaign coming up here soon? What a platform!
THAT’S PERFECT! Sexless City…we can get t- shirts, take pledges and then start a singing group like,,,,,,up with people. I toured with them and we never had sex…well..not that they knew about.
I drove bus for them in the early ’70s. Bunch of prototypes for the QAnut movement, backed by certain members of the Firestone family.
QAnut is bad, BlueAnut is worse.
WOKE???? Didn’t we stop using that tired word about two seconds after it appeared. Trying to figure out why “everybody use this toilet” is now a “thing” that designates “woke”. Why not just designate corners of the town where sex workers can work and leave it at that. Or restrict it to “behind the foliage” – Used to view aging as sort of a sad thing – getting older etc. Now I welcome it. The newly woke need to sleep until they wake up with some common sense.
Oh Councilor…if you knew the action that took/takes place in these restrooms in the…well….maybe you do….I’d take a chill pill. MAKE THE RESTROOMS ACCESSIBLE TO ALL. What will be will be- just like it always was.
Agreed … !
He’s clutching those petals awfully tightly. How do these cretins get elected to the Weho council anyway?
Methinks he doth protest too much. He’s probably hired prostitutes in those bathrooms.
It is sad that the park is a cess pool of prostitutes and homeless. You play tennis there, but no one dares to use those bathrooms. its f-ing disgusting. They should be put into those buildings downtown. Maybe a reason to vote in Caruso! he is the only one that recognizes the seriousness of the epidemic, and wants to clean the streets up!
Caruso is running for mayor of the City of LA, not the City of WeHo, so not sure how your comment is relevant, although I like Caruso too.
It’s too bad he’s not running for mayor of West Hollywood. We could sure use someone to clean up the mess that’s been made in the last two years.
and you just go to play tennis joe? Sure……..
Hey genius, Caruso’s running for the mayor of Los Angeles. I hope you, as a resident of the city of West Hollywood, vote in the election for the mayor of the city of Los Angeles.
It seems to be the most effective means of communicating your wishes.
These comments from Steve Martin are representative of white supremacy in one of its most vile forms: a veiled concern for public safety and morals. I’ve lived in the City long enough to know that who he’s referring to as “our prostitutes” are black transgender women. First, you do not own them and they are not yours to claim ownership of. Second, you are portraying black transwomen as inherently dangerous and morally repugnant and this is racist. The hostility towards this group of people is apparent. Lastly, it’s dehumanizing to deny a person from using a public restroom because of… Read more »
Well, Steve Martin is certainly an expert on prostitutes and bordelos. (Other than lying and leaking confidential information from closed sessions of the counsel to smear his political opponents, that’s about the only area where he actually has expertise)
How the F did this Steve Martin guy ever get elected; yikes. Martin is definitely the sewage in this toilet drama!
Give me a break. No one is denying anybody a chance to use a restroom. His point is we shouldn’t have stalls that are floor to ceiling where people can lock themselves in and do whatever other than going to the bathroom. You need to get over yourself, calm down and stop the racist allegations that are baseless. The only one who sees race in every issue is a true racist. Sit down and think about that for a minute.
WHERE DO YOU GET THIS STUFF?
You read a whole lot into this article that just isn’t there!
Or did you read it at all?