Hamburg is pee-proofing its public places
If you're the type of man that enjoys dry feet and pants, you'd better think twice before emptying your bladder in Hamburg, Germany. Pee against a wall in the city's historic red light district and there's a good chance that your stream will come back to bite you thanks to a coat of nano-paint.
The St. Pauli red light district is one of Hamburg's top entertainment destinations, attracting as many as 20 million visitors a year with its mix of popular nightclubs and legal prostitution. However, this steady...um, stream of visitors has many of the district's longtime residents and merchants pissed. Outsiders routinely relieve themselves against walls (and just about any other vertical surface they can stumble into) which leaves much of the mile-long St. Pauli stretch smelling like a latrine.
Now however, the St. Pauli merchants association is fighting back by coating the most heavily-trafficked walls with Ultra-Ever Dry, a hyper-hydrophobic nano paint originally developed by Nissan. When urine (or, ugh, vomit) hits this paint, it splashes back with a vengeance, soaking the offender's pants and shoes with his own mellow yellow filth.
Even more insidious, the merchants association has only posted warning signs on some of the treated surfaces, so you'll never be sure if it's going to be you or the wall getting hosed.
