Story provided by PCMag –
Mardi Gras is in full swing in New Orleans and that means parades, beads, and booze—and holding it in while scurrying around looking for an available restroom.
Unless you’ve got AirPnP queued up on your smartphone, that is, in which case you can simply stroll over to a nearby facility that you can rent briefly for sweet, sweet relief. AirPnP arrived last Friday, according to Nola.com, just in time for the busiest week of the Mardi Gras season, which actually began on Twelfth Night, or Jan. 5.
While AirPnP doesn’t come packaged in a mobile app, the peer-to-peer service works roughly along the same lines as AirBnB, the lodging and venue rental startup that lets users hire bedrooms, houses, estates, boats, and other properties from other private parties. AirPnP—the name is a funny and very descriptive twist on AirBnB—is a barebones, Web-based service that can be accessed at AirPnP.co.
“Say I’m on St. Charles and Second, and you might live nearby there,” developer Max Gaudin told the local Fox affiliate. “Basically, they pay through the app, go to your house, use the bathroom, and then rate their pee experience so that other people can see how legit your bathroom is.”
Some 1,200 people had signed up for the service prior to the site’s launch last week, according to Fox 8.
When you arrive at the AirPnP site, you can opt to “Find a place to pee” or, if you’ve got an available bathroom along the Mardi Gras parade route, “Add a place to pee.” As of Wednesday, there were just under 20 bathrooms available for rent via AirPnP, mainly along St. Charles Avenue in the Garden and Central Business districts, and on Rampart adjacent to the French Quarter.
A typical commode available to revelers was the “Funky French Quarter Flusher,”available for use for $5 a visit. Though Gaudin described a method for paying in advance through AirPnP, this bathroom renter and most of the others mapped by the site appeared to prefer cash payments for their services.
The available facilities include restrooms in private homes, hotel accommodations, and porta-potty setups along the parade route, which Mardi Gras attendees probably would have discovered with or without AirPnP.