Hamburg red light district takes revenge with walls that ‘wee back’

Residents of Hamburg’s red light district are getting their own back on late-night revellers who urinate on public buildings, by using a new hi-tech paint that bounces back any spray. A local interest group has applied the special water-repellent paint, also used in shipbuilding, on two particularly frequented buildings in the renowned nightclub district of St Pauli’s to deter “Wildpinkler”, as Germans call them.

The paint protects the buildings and the residents and most importantly it sends a signal this behaviour is not on.

Julia Staron, who organised the group

The special hydrophobe paint is expensive: Staron said it costs about 500 euros (US$556) to paint a six-square-metre area, but it was worth the effort and was already having a positive effect on newly protected walls. “If you compare the work involved for daily cleaning of the mess and the awful smell […] it has definitely been well worth it,” she said. Staron said her community group came up with the idea after realising conventional methods were not having the desired effect.

World