There may be few more basic expectations attached to a public park than having somewhere to go to the bathroom. Yet shortly before Gipsy Kings took the stage Sunday evening at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, a group of increasingly desperate visitors found themselves standing outside locked public restrooms at Embarcadero Marina Park South, wondering aloud exactly what they were supposed to do.
SanDiegoVille witnessed the scene firsthand while attending the August 9 concert. Several men and women gathered outside the restroom facility after discovering the doors locked. Some attempted to determine whether another entrance was available. Others questioned security personnel outside The Rady Shell, who appeared unable to provide a clear explanation or readily accessible alternative.
One woman was particularly desperate.
"I'm about to pee my pants and may have to go pee behind a bush or tree," she said while standing outside the locked facility.
Another expressed disbelief that the bathrooms were inaccessible at all.
"I can't believe they closed the bathrooms. Where are we supposed to go?" she asked.
The situation eventually became uncomfortable enough that a parking attendant working The Rady Shell's VIP parking operation stepped in and offered assistance. The employee transported one of the women by golf cart to the nearby Hilton San Diego Bayfront so she could use a restroom there. The attendant's kindness solved one person's immediate problem. It did nothing to answer the larger one.
When SanDiegoVille contacted the Port of San Diego the following day, the agency confirmed the bathrooms should have been open.
"All Port of San Diego public restrooms are scheduled to remain open during regular park hours from 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., seven days a week," a Port spokesperson told SanDiegoVille. "We are looking into why the public restrooms at Embarcadero Marina Park South adjacent to the fishing pier were closed Sunday evening and are taking steps to ensure they remain open during regular park hours going forward."
The Port also apologized.
"We sincerely apologize to our Sunday evening Embarcadero Marina Park South visitors," the agency said.
SanDiegoVille followed up Tuesday asking whether the bathrooms had reopened and, if their closure had not been authorized, who had actually shut and locked them.
"Yes, they are open and are to remain open during park hours," the Port spokesperson responded. "We are investigating further."
Two days after SanDiegoVille published its story, however, the contractor responsible for servicing the Port's public restrooms contacted the publication with a much more specific explanation and sharply criticized the reporting.
Jean Bates, Project Coordinator for NatureScape Services, Inc., said the restroom had actually been temporarily closed because workers encountered a biohazard inside the women's facility.
"On the evening of August 9, 2026, a brief closure of the public restroom at Embarcadero South occurred due to a biohazard requiring immediate sanitation," Bates wrote. "At approximately 7:48 p.m., our cleaning crew discovered human feces smeared on the toilet and the wall in the women's restroom."
According to Bates, workers closed the restroom for approximately 12 minutes so the crew could remove the feces and sanitize the facility.
"The sanitation process cannot occur while members of the public are present, and the closure was the minimum duration necessary to ensure the facility was safe for continued use," Bates wrote. "The restroom was reopened immediately upon completion of the sanitation process."
That explanation provides a reason for at least some temporary closure of the facility, but the timeline provided by NatureScape does not comport with what SanDiegoVille personally observed that evening.
The bathrooms were encountered locked for substantially longer than 12 minutes, and during that period SanDiegoVille did not observe cleaning or maintenance personnel entering, exiting or working at the facility. Members of the public remained outside trying to figure out why the bathrooms were inaccessible, and the situation persisted long enough for a Rady Shell parking attendant to ultimately drive one desperate woman to the Hilton so she could use its restroom.
NatureScape's account also raises questions about why the Port itself apparently did not know what had occurred when SanDiegoVille first sought an explanation. Rather than telling SanDiegoVille that the facility had undergone a brief, scheduled sanitation closure following a documented biohazard, the Port said it was "looking into why" the bathrooms had been closed, apologized to visitors and said it was taking steps to ensure they remained open. When questioned again the following day, the Port said it was still "investigating further."
Bates took particular issue with SanDiegoVille connecting the incident to the larger debate over public restroom availability in San Diego.
"It is important to emphasize that this incident was a short-duration, health-driven response and is not comparable to the City of San Diego's recent budget-related restroom reductions in Mission Bay and La Jolla," she wrote. "The Port of San Diego has not reduced restroom operations or implemented any budget cuts related to public restroom access or maintenance."
She also defended the Port's commitment to maintaining the facilities, saying it takes "extraordinary measures in terms of money and resources maintaining comfort stations" and "should be commended for it instead of criticized."
Bates subsequently sent SanDiegoVille a second email criticizing the publication more broadly.
"It's been a few years since I've been out of college, but I thought reporters had a standard of reporting accurate facts," she wrote. "Is that not true anymore?"
Bates characterized the original article as "very slanted" and said it "did not reflect the truth or the facts." She also invited SanDiegoVille to visit any of the 28 comfort stations serviced by NatureScape and "take into consideration our side of it."
SanDiegoVille is publishing NatureScape's explanation in detail precisely so readers can consider that side. The publication also stands by its firsthand account of what occurred outside the restroom on August 9.
The San Diego Symphony, which operates The Rady Shell, separately told SanDiegoVille through a representative that the public restrooms in question are not part of The Shell complex. The representative said the organization was aware of broader public-restroom closures around San Diego and agreed that, based upon SanDiegoVille's description, the facilities appeared to have been closed before their published closing time.
The distinction matters because The Rady Shell's interior bathrooms become restricted to ticketed patrons when the venue enters "concert mode." The public facility near the fishing pier, however, serves Embarcadero Marina Park South and is supposed to remain accessible during regular park hours regardless of whether a concert is taking place next door.
Embarcadero Marina Park South is operated by the Port of San Diego and remains open from 6am until 10:30pm daily. The Port lists restrooms among the park's amenities and promotes the waterfront space as a place where visitors can enjoy performances taking place next door at The Rady Shell.
The Rady Shell's own published information is even more explicit. Its FAQ explains that the venue's interior restrooms become restricted to concert patrons when the facility enters "concert mode," while separately stating that public bathrooms adjacent to the fishing pier at the southeast edge of the park are open during all public park hours.
The Shell does not exist on an isolated private parcel. It occupies Embarcadero Marina Park South, a public waterfront park, and its surrounding promenade remains accessible to the public during most performances under increasingly strict rules intended to maintain emergency access. On the evening of the Gipsy Kings performance, hundreds of non-ticketholders lined publicly accessible areas surrounding The Rady Shell.
Earlier this summer, The Rady Shell announced new restrictions on people congregating along the promenade during concerts, citing its designation as a fire lane and emergency exit. Visitors may no longer stand or stop along portions of the walkway, place chairs or coolers there, or sit on the rocks. Instead, The Shell directs members of the public toward the southern portion of Embarcadero Marina Park South near the basketball courts, picnic areas, gazebo and lawn to enjoy music from outside the venue.
In other words, members of the public are still expressly invited to use the surrounding park during concerts. They may simply need somewhere to urinate while doing so.
The incident arrives amid an increasingly contentious debate over public restroom access throughout San Diego, although the most prominent recent closures involve an entirely separate governmental agency and, as Bates correctly emphasizes, an entirely different reason for the closures.
Beginning in July, the City of San Diego closed 13 of Mission Bay Park's 28 public restrooms as part of Fiscal Year 2027 budget reductions. Mayor Todd Gloria's proposed cuts originally contemplated closing dozens of public restrooms across Mission Bay, Balboa Park, downtown and other locations as the City attempted to confront a sizable structural budget deficit. The Mission Bay closures alone are projected to save approximately $547,000 annually.
The policy has already produced scenes remarkably similar to what SanDiegoVille witnessed outside The Rady Shell, even if the underlying cause was different. Visitors to Mission Bay have told local news outlets they were forced to improvise when facilities were unavailable. One grandmother told KPBS that when she could not find a restroom for her 2½-year-old grandson, the family resorted to using a tree. Councilmember Raul Campillo subsequently called restroom access a public-health issue and proposed spending approximately $540,000 to reopen the facilities.
Gloria rejected that specific proposal, arguing that available one-time money did not constitute a sustainable source for recurring maintenance and staffing expenses. But in a statement to SanDiegoVille, the Mayor's office said the administration is now actively examining whether it can find another way to restore some of the lost restroom service.
"The Mayor's position has not changed on the specific proposal, but the Administration is actively looking at whether there is a path to restore additional restroom service," a City spokesperson told SanDiegoVille. "If there is a workable solution within the FY27 budget, we will bring it forward."
The spokesperson said Gloria "would have preferred to keep all of these restrooms open," but argued that the City's available revenue made maintaining every existing service impossible. The FY27 budget, which the City Council unanimously approved, reduced some Mission Bay restroom operations while preserving funding for other City programs and services. The Council also restored funding for some shoreline restrooms during the budget process at the request of Council President Joe LaCava.
The Mayor's office also pushed back against criticism suggesting the cuts were intended to punish residents following the failure of previous ballot measures seeking additional City revenue.
"The suggestion that the Mayor is punishing San Diegans for the outcome of previous ballot measures is simply false," the spokesperson said. "This was not punishment. It was a budget decision about how to preserve the services San Diegans depend on with the resources the City has available."
The administration nevertheless acknowledged the frustration caused by the closures and said Gloria "shares the desire to provide greater restroom access at Mission Bay." The City maintains that restrooms remain available throughout Mission Bay and points residents and visitors toward an online map identifying facilities that remain open.
The Mayor's office also told SanDiegoVille it is checking whether there is any specific regional coordination between the City, Port of San Diego or other public agencies regarding restroom availability.
That question takes on added significance following Sunday's incident because San Diego's public restroom problem does not necessarily respect jurisdictional boundaries. The Mission Bay closures were City budget decisions. NatureScape says the Embarcadero Marina Park South closure was a temporary sanitation measure prompted by human feces smeared inside a restroom. Those are plainly different circumstances.
But to the person standing outside a locked bathroom trying not to urinate on herself, which government agency owns the toilet and why it happens to be locked at that particular moment are understandably secondary concerns. The immediate problem is exactly the same: there is nowhere to go.
San Diego promotes itself internationally through its extraordinary outdoor environment. Governments invest heavily in waterfront parks, promenades, recreational amenities and tourism infrastructure designed to draw people outside. The Rady Shell itself has become one of the most spectacular additions to the downtown waterfront, with the surrounding Jacobs Park project specifically incorporating upgraded public amenities, including public restrooms.
Yet something as rudimentary as finding a functioning toilet can remain surprisingly difficult. And even when facilities are available, their condition can present another problem entirely. SanDiegoVille's experiences with public restrooms around San Diego, including those surrounding The Rady Shell, have frequently been less than pleasant, with facilities encountered in conditions ranging from poorly maintained to extraordinarily unsanitary. NatureScape's own description of workers discovering human feces smeared across a toilet and wall on August 9 illustrates the considerable maintenance challenges involved in keeping heavily used public facilities clean.
The consequences of inadequate restroom access extend beyond simple inconvenience. Public bathrooms are particularly important for seniors, families with young children, people with medical conditions and people with disabilities. When bathrooms are unavailable, people do not magically stop needing them. They find alternatives - businesses, hotel lobbies, bushes, trees, parking lots or other public spaces.
San Diego has experienced the consequences of inadequate public sanitation before. The city's devastating 2017 hepatitis A outbreak brought national attention to the relationship between sanitation infrastructure, homelessness and communicable disease, with subsequent government reviews emphasizing access to toilets and handwashing facilities.
Sunday's incident also raises practical questions specific to the downtown waterfront. Concerts can draw thousands of people onto the peninsula well before gates open. Ticket holders arrive early. Others walk the waterfront, use the park, gather outside the venue or listen from public areas. After performances, thousands can emerge simultaneously into the surrounding park and promenade. A functioning public restroom would seem among the least extravagant infrastructure necessary to support that use.
SanDiegoVille has contacted the Port of San Diego for further clarification regarding NatureScape's explanation, including whether the contractor's reported 7:48pm biohazard incident represents the entirety of the closure witnessed Sunday night and whether the Port's investigation has established when the facility was actually locked and reopened.
NatureScape has now provided one explanation for what happened. SanDiegoVille witnessed something that does not entirely square with its timeline. The Port initially said it did not know why the bathrooms were closed and was investigating. What is undisputed is that people attempting to use a public restroom during regular park hours encountered locked doors and were left searching for somewhere else to go.
For at least one woman, that meant seriously contemplating the bushes until a helpful parking attendant drove her to a hotel.
For a city and region that spend enormous amounts of money inviting people to enjoy their public waterfront, perhaps the most revealing part of the entire episode is how complicated something as basic as going to the bathroom managed to become.
Originally published August 12, 2026. Updated on August 14, 2026.
