Walking around Times Square one day in 2021, Teddy Siegel came to the sudden and horrifying realization that’s befallen many a New York City visitor: She had to pee, and there was nowhere to go.
Siegel began ducking into stores and shops, pleading with rising desperation to use their private restrooms, until finally finding a McDonald’s that let her use the restroom in exchange for making a purchase.
To remember the bathroom’s location for next time, Siegel took a video of the McDonald’s and saved it to her phone. Thus was born @Got2GoNYC, a TikTok account that aims to map all the publicly accessible toilets in the city.
Siegel’s brand of open, self-deprecating humor and her all-too-relatable outrage over a universal human experience has helped her reach more than 185,000 followers on the app and roughly half a million followers across multiple platforms.
Siegel says Congress is threatening to undermine her mission to document a real public health issue — the lack of available restrooms in public spaces — and to help people from around the world find relief fast.
“(TikTok) has really helped me not only spark a movement, no pun intended, but to amplify this mission in a way that’s been able to make it so accessible,” Siegel said.
Siegel is one of a diverse group of TikTok creators speaking out against what they see as an unreasonable restriction on their speech and economic activity, highlighting how some of the platform’s users are vocally at odds with legislation US officials say will block the risk of spying by the Chinese government.
Read more about how TikTok creators are reacting to the possible app ban.