A young woman has made a name for herself in New York City as a “bathroom influencer,” documenting the restrooms available for public use throughout the five boroughs.
Theodora ‘Teddy’ Siegel24, inadvertently launched her brand in the summer of 2021 with a 12-second TikTok session that shared information about a bathroom on the second floor of a Times Square McDonald’s.
According to her story, she was enjoying a day of shopping with her sister when she needed a place to pee, but she became increasingly frantic as store after store turned her away.
When she finally burst into the McDonald’s at 7th Avenue and 45th Street, she was told she had to be a paying customer to use the facilities, and paid $3 for a bottle of water.
Theodora “Teddy” Siegel, 24, is behind the social media platform @got2gonyc, which documents publicly accessible restrooms in New York City
Teddy launched her platform in the summer of 2021 with a TikTok highlighting the McDonald’s where she had been able to use the bathroom after a frantic search in Times Square
A post highlighting a downtown Taco Bell — plus the bathroom code — was one of the first bathroom tips on Teddy’s TikTok to go viral
Then she discovered that the toilet wasn’t even locked.
“(I) luckily got there in time, but I was just really annoyed,” she told Insider, eventually feeling compelled to highlight the McDonald’s bathroom location on social media.
From there, she launched @got2gonyc, which catalogs bathrooms in public locations and commercial establishments in New York on TikTok.
An 11-second clip shared in August 2021 that identified a restroom in a Taco Bell at Lexington Avenue and 57th Street — plus the door code “1987” — was one of the first posts to go viral, racking up nearly 125,000 likes.
It further generated thousands of responses that effectively collected recommendations for additional bathroom locations.
Teddy eventually began compiling all the bathrooms—from submissions and her own research—into a Google Maps list titled NYC Bathroom, which now has nearly 2,000 locations.
And two years later, @got2gonyc’s TikTok has amassed more than 150,000 followers, while its associated Instagram account has 213,000.
A significant portion of the recommended bathrooms are located in corporate storefronts, such as fast food chains, hotel conglomerates and multinational clothing retailers.
Teddy eventually started compiling all the bathrooms – both from crowdsource submissions and her own research – into a Google Maps list
As @got2gonyc grew in popularity, Teddy began to realize how dire the lack of toilets in New York could be, as horror stories began to fill her inbox
The luxury sector is also a good candidate for @got2gonyc’s mission – with the Soho location of Bloomingdale’s, the chic Hoxton Hotel in Williamsburg and the Cartier building on Fifth Avenue ending up on the bathroom radar.
However, the Cartier bathrooms didn’t get Teddy’s “stamp of approval” because it wasn’t “clear that anyone could use them,” she reported.
Another luxurious example: a recent post Spotlighting Dover Street Market at 30th Street and Lexington Avenue praised the luxury concept mall and exhibit space for its chic single-occupancy restrooms – each equipped with a bidet.
Although the project started as a playful, subversive resource for bathroom seekers in New York, Teddy quickly realized how dire the city’s shortage of public toilets really was when horror stories started trickling into her inbox.
“That was really a turning point for me in the report… This really is so much more than a public health crisis. It’s also an equity crisis,” she told Insider.
It was with this revelation that @got2gonyc grew into a platform through which Teddy has defended a vision of many more publicly accessible toilets in the five boroughs to the city council.
Bloomingdale’s in Soho is one of the more expensive bathroom spots Teddy recommended
Teddy was disappointed to find that Cartier’s bathrooms were not easily accessible
Dover Street Market’s bathrooms received perfect marks in Teddy’s book – with the bidet function in the hi-tech toilets getting a special shoutout
She even wrote one New York Times wrote an op-ed in January that laid out the gist of her argument.
“New York City has a population of 8.5 million, but fewer than 1,200 public restrooms. And then we don’t even count the tourists. You do the math. Where should New Yorkers go when they have to?” she wrote.
The point is driven home by the rather graphic Stories section on the @got2gonyc website, which chronicles the misery of New Yorkers who could barely find a bathroom in time — and many who didn’t.
Among them a 44-year-old Construction worker with Crohn’s disease, who was unable to find an accessible bathroom at a moment’s notice and ended up soiling herself in a stairwell during a shift.
“I had to go get cleaning supplies and do my best, call my manager and get out of the building,” he recalls. ‘It was completely humiliating. I’ll never forget that day.’
The @got2gonyc website also features stories of New Yorkers who almost didn’t find a bathroom in time — and some who didn’t
A woman, while fighting brain cancercouldn’t find a bathroom amid a wave of chemotherapy-induced nausea, and threw up on the sidewalk.
Newsreader Lindsay Tuchman had to knock on a stranger’s door to ask if he could use the bathroom while covering an early morning fire in Far Rockaway.
And a woman with endometriosis ended up covered in menstrual blood on Fifth Avenue while out with her toddler.
Such disturbing stories forced city officials to take action.
In October 2022, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Councilmember Rita Joseph passed an initiative that required the creation of a new agency to report on “feasible public sanitation locations” in each zip code.
And in August, Councilwoman Sandy Nurse introduced legislation to “create a permanent, long-term strategic planning process… for establishing and maintaining a citywide public restroom network.”
Teddy spoke up the press conference announced that first measure at the end of 2022.
“Solving the lack of public restrooms in New York City, I believe, will have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people,” she stated.