San Francisco wants you to fall in love with Its sewer system

Imagine falling in love with sewer system…eeks..

But this is what San Fracisco admin is trying to do..Here is the story:

Ah, San Francisco – the majestic Golden Gate Bridge! The charming North Beach cafes! The briny smell of the wastewater-treatment system churning through 80 million gallons of sewage a day!

Wait, when did that enter the tourist literature? Rather recently, actually: This fall, the city kicked off a curious campaign to make people fall in love with its sewage system. Central to the push are advertisements on public buses reading, “Your #2 is my #1,” “No one deals with more crap than I do,” and the slightly ominous-sounding, “You can’t live a day without me.”

One may be forgiven for assuming the mayor was deposed in a bloodless coup, only to be replaced by the plunger-waving head of the public-works department. But this fecaltastic campaign, which is costing the city $65,000, is really all about the democratic process. San Francisco is coming up on a multibillion-dollar upgrade of hundreds of miles of pipes, many that are roughly 100 years old, and several of its water facilities that are not seismically stable. The city’s Public Utilities Commission is using these nose-curling ads to generate sewage fever—it hopes the public buzz will lure citizens into the retrofit’s planning process.

“Our belief is that when you have public support, you have a better outcome at the end of the road,” says Tyrone Jue, the commission’s director of communications. “This campaign is about fostering interest and getting people talking about the sewer system in a way that they probably never talked about it before.”

Hmm…interesting to see such ads…but then the system has to work for people to appreciate these ads..hope it is working well in SF..

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