This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Kelly Xiong. Find her on Instagram at @k.3lly. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
If you’ve ever been to New York City then you probably understand the struggle of trying to find a bathroom when you really need to go. Trying to find public bathrooms in NYC is like trying to find a job right now in this market — nearly impossible and growing in frustration. For a city with around eight million people and thousands of businesses and stores, you would think there would be more easily accessible public restrooms. If you’re not a resident of the city, trying to find a bathroom can be extremely stressful. Even as a resident of the city, it’s super hard. But don’t worry, because this Instagram account has come to save your bladder.
The Instagram account @got2gonyc shows you public restrooms in NYC that you may not know about. The account, run by Teddy Siegel, goes around the city documenting bathrooms across the five boroughs. She is a big advocate for increased access to bathrooms.
Some of the hidden public bathrooms that Teddy shares with her audience are surprisingly clean and beautiful. In one of her videos, she takes us to the St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s bathroom. She takes us around and shows us what the inside looks like, along with what it has or lacks. At the end, she gives a bathroom rating. This one got an 8/10. Teddy also includes everything the bathroom has and doesn’t have in her caption.
Some of the other bathrooms that Teddy explores even have their own photobooths. It’s become prevalent enough that it now has its own series — the “bathroom photobooth series”. And the best part is that they are easily accessible to the public.
Got2Go has almost a thousand posts. If you don’t feel like scrolling through her Instagram or TikTok account to find the nearest available bathroom, good thing she has a Google Maps collection. This bathroom collection is collaborative and includes almost three thousand locations. Collaborators in this map can make notes about current locations, add, and delete locations. There are over two thousand people in this group, everyone is helping each other out by updating the list constantly and making public bathrooms in NYC more accessible.
Whenever I go back to New York to visit, I always have this list open in the background for those “just in case” moments. There are thousands of bathroom pins in just Manhattan alone, which makes life so much easier. 
Since gaining much popularity, Got2Go has expanded beyond the borders of NYC. Contributors to this collection have started to add bathrooms in other states such as New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, Arizona and California.
An Instagram account started as a way to help New Yorkers “go piss girl” has turned into a call for more accessible public bathrooms nationwide. Teddy has also been given many huge platforms since the start of her account to talk about bathroom accessibility. This issue may not seem “that big” but it is an important human right. Everyone deserves the right to “a safe, sanitary, accessible public restroom” she says in her caption on her Tedx Talk post, “using the bathroom is one of the most unifying parts of the human experience and we all deserve the right to do so in peace.”
In 2022, the Crohns and Colitis Foundation reported that the nationwide shortage of public bathrooms is an urgent public health crisis. Even when the situtation is absolutely dire, 23% of their survey respondents — over 1000 adults across the U.S. — said that they’ve been denied access to a business’s restrooms. 18% of these respondents have had at least one bowel or urinary accident in public. This is a real problem and Got2Go — aka Teddy — is helping bring more awareness and change with one silly, funny — but informative — social media post at a time.
Let us know in the comments, what are your thoughts on the lack of accessibility of public bathrooms in NYC, and the rest of the country?
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