A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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“Shout out to ATM fees for making me buy my own money” (3/27)
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Entry from April 14, 2012
“We don’t swim in your toilet, so don’t pee in our pool” (swimming pool adage)

“We/I don’t swim in your toilet, so don’t pee/piss in our/my pool” is a sign at many pools, both public and private. “I don’t swim in your toilet, so please don’t pee in my pool!” has been cited in print since at least 1966.
 
   
Google Books
Hard Rain Falling
By Don Carpenter
New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World
1966
Pg. 219:
They buy plastic dog-turds and painted turtles and pennants and signs that say, “I don’t swim in your toilet, so please don’t pee in my pool!” and they buy smelly popcorn and eat it on the street and go to bad movies and stand here in doorways sneaking nips of whiskey just like I’m doing, and they’re all so nice.
     
Google Books
The Realist
Issues 71-98  
1968
Pg. ?:
This is strikingly similar in style to the private swimming pool sign which reads:
We don’t swim in your toilet
Please don’t piss in our pool.
The pool sign reflects, of course, the fact that Americans do in fact urinate in swimming pools (just as American infants urinate in their baths)!
 
Google Books
The Goy
By Mark Harris
New York, NY: Dial Press
1970
Pg. 225:
... a pleasantry which appeared to amuse the swimming father who smiled as he hoisted himself from the pool beneath the sign upon the pumphouse briefly seen, nor overdone, the camera neither lingering nor dwelling WE DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET, PLEASE DONT PEE IN OUR POOL.
 
Google Books
An Appalling Talent:
Ken Russell

By John Baxter
London: Joseph
1973
Pg. 154:
There’s a big sign over the entrance which says “Do Not Urinate In This Pool - We Don’t Swim In Your Toilet”.
 
6 May 1973, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), Dixie magazine, pg. 45, col. 1:
Indeed, it seems that pool promoters have thought of everything—right down to wall plaques warning “We don’t swim in your toilet; don’t—- in our pool.”
 
12 September 1974, Del Rio (TX) News-Herald, “Guys’ Guff” by Carl Guys, pg. 7, col. 1:
“The other day I visited some folks who had a swimming pool in their yard. There was a sign which read…‘We don’t swim in your toilet; please don’t pee in our pool.’”
     
Google Books
Today’s Been a Helluva Week
By Lois Mellor
Watford: Exley
1985
Pg. 72:
There is a sign which says, ‘DON’T PEE IN OUR POOL, WE DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET’.
 
22 December 1985, Toronto (Ontario) Star, “How do you dress to see an $8 million house?” by Susan Kastner, pg. D1:
“We don’t swim in your toilet,” it said. “Please don’t pee in our pool.”
 
Google Books
Where I Fell to Earth:
A life in four places

By Peter Conrad
London: Hogarth
1991, ©1990
Pg. 63:
Above the bath, the sign requesting PLEASE DON’T PEE IN OUR POOL, WE DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET. (This, I know, was bought in a New Jersey shopping mall.)

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New York CityExercise/Running/Health Clubs • Saturday, April 14, 2012 • Permalink


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