Rambling Reporter isn’t exactly sure what a city controller does but didn’t expect “public bathroom mapper” to be part of the job.
Even so, Kenneth Mejia, the billboard- and social media-savvy city controller of Los Angeles (you may have seen his pie chart billboards around town), has been busy with a new public tool that would make George Costanza proud: bathrooms.lacontroller.app.
“We made this site because, in the summer, it was hot and we wanted to help our unhoused neighbors find a place to use the restroom and also drink water,” said Mejia in an Instagram video announcing the free app that displays every public restroom and drinking fountain around town.
If Costanza is the reason you learned the public facilities at Alice Tully Hall in Manhattan’s Lincoln Center are magnificent, then maybe Mejia will be the reason you discover the commode at the Hollywood Bowl is clean and open to the public. And if you’re worried about getting a parking ticket while you run to the restroom, well, Mejia has an app for that too: parkingtickets.lacontroller.app. The site’s dashboard displays a heat map of where parking tickets are most common in the city of L.A. (downtown through Koreatown is the largest single block), as well as the most common violations (no parking/street cleaning is the top infraction by far).
So will all this help Mejia get reelected as city controller in 2026? He definitely has the attention of parking voters and restroom-users. Oh, and Rambling looked up what a controller actually does: It’s basically the city’s chief accountant.
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This story appeared in the Jan. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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