Zagat is taking a stab at the loo reviewing with the 11 Sexiest Bathrooms in New York Restaurants. We have not tried any of these out yet, but the aesthetic at the Standard Grill is right up our alley, so we might have to give that a go.
The Resident over at Babelgum has a great review of some of the best places to pee when you’re wandering around NYC.
Chapter 509.221(2)(b) of the Florida Statutes
This statute provides an exception to the law requiring the bathroom facilities for a restaurant to be in the same building as the restaurant. The statute exempts theme park [FN88] restaurants from this requirement so long as the bathrooms are “reasonably accessible” to the restaurant facilities.
Chapter 553.5041 of the Florida Statutes
This statute is part of the Florida Americans With Disabilities Accessibility Implementation Act. It permits theme parks, which provide “continuous attendant services” directing disabled persons to accessible parking, to have eight-foot wide disabled parking spaces in lieu of the twelve-foot wide spaces required by statute. [FN89] Chapter 553.5041 also exempts theme parks from the requirement that each handicapped parking space include an eighty-four inch high sign designating the space as reserved for the disabled so long as the theme park provides a designated lot or area for disabled parking, and the signage at the entrance to the lot indicates that it is reserved for disabled parking. [FN90] Disney has taken advantage of this exemption and the parking *16 lots for each of its theme parks have large, well-marked disabled parking lots close to the entrances of each theme park. [FN91]
Chapter 565.02(6) of the Florida Statutes
This statute permits operators of a theme park to obtain a “master” liquor license for the operation of its on-site bars rather than having to obtain an individual license for each bar. [FN92] An additional tax is imposed for this privilege.
Chapter 616.242(10)(A) of the Florida Statutes
This statute exempts large theme parks, such as Disney, from the permit, inspection, and accident reporting requirements imposed upon fairs and amusement parks. [FN93] The exemption applies to any theme park, which employs at least 1,000 full-time employees and maintains full-time in-house safety inspectors. It would be difficult to argue that this statutory exemption provides less assurance of safety at Disney than other amusement parks. Indeed, the contrary is likely true; Disney’s in-house safety inspectors are likely more thorough than the inspectors from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, who inspect non-exempt amusement parks and fairs. [FN94]”
We recently read a little bit about litter box cakes – these are real, edible cakes that look like kitty litter but are actually made of German chocolate cake and crumbled cookies with tootsie rolls to look like poop. They are served in (clean) litter boxes using (clean) litter scoopers are utentils. It turns out that a lot of people like to serve these cakes on April Fool’s Day and on Halloween as a sort of saucy, spooky, witty, holiday-appropriate take on dessert.
It got us thinking: wouldn’t it be funnier to serve up a box of actual (dirty) kitty litter as a cake using (dirty) litter scoopers as utentils? You could throw in some real tootsie rolls just to throw people off a little.
We learned the other day (from a friend, we think, though one can never be sure about these things) that employees at the GAP are required to let customers use their restrooms, regardless of the number of pairs of khakis you may or may not be buying. In fact, we learned that many a street vendor will walk in off the street, ask to use the bathroom, and then, having done their business, walk right out again. We were unable to confirm this policy, however – anyone have the inside poop for us?
In the course of our extensive research, we did come across a site that seems to be as well visited and updated as our own, addyourown. The section of interest to us is the one entitled “addyourown: Manhattan restrooms and reviews” and while the site itself purports to be a “fast, easy, free way for people to find restaurants, coffeeshops, bookstores, and other places in major cities worldwide,” this one particular section could prove useful to someone finding themselves in Manhattan with the urge to go and access to the Internet but no toilet.
Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the other cities listed on the site, and if you happen to find yourself in, say, Manhattan Beach and in need of a loo, you are – ahem – SOL.
For a while now we have been working in Saipan’s most govern-mental building: it houses the Governor’s office, the Legislature, and the Office of the Attorney General.
For even longer than we’ve been here, this building has suffered a major problem – the water in the bathroom goes off at around 4 pm every day. We usually work until around 5:30 or 6, which means that we are frequently without easy means to wash our hands after using the loo.
Which is disgusting. We like to be sanitary, and so we always use a cup of drinking water to wash our hands when hands should be washed after 4pm. But most people don’t; this we know for a fact.
There was recently a big election on Saipan. A lot of the people who work in this building will be leaving soon. Perhaps it’s time for cleaner hands in Saipan’s government?
We’ve never actually stayed at a hostel before, but we recently learned from the New York Times that the hostels of today are no longer the room-sharing, toilet down the hall adventures that they once were. Many of them even offer private ensuite accommodations, which makes us wonder what makes a hostel and different than a sans-“s” hotel. Regardless, on our last visit to London, damned if we were going to stay somewhere that required a trek out of the room at 2am to visit the loo and so “ensuite” was our keyword of choice. Wanting to be fairly central, we discovered the Arosfa hotel, a smartly appointed hotel on Gower Street that struck us as neither overly generous in its amenities nor overly stingy (I believe that the “full English” breakfast was on all occasions missing at least one ingredient that would have brought it up to the level of being a “full” English as opposed to, say, merely toast, tomato and eggs; also, there was no Internet to be found at all on the premises; but there was a breakfast involved and the entire building was immaculate).
True to its advertisement, the room we got (on the top floor no less) did feature private facilities, but the true marvel was the engineering required to deliver the room with a full shower, toilet and sink all in a space smaller than 5′ square. The shower was designed such that we had to turn the water on with the shower head pointing at the wall, lest the spray from the nozzle soak the entire room. Once the temperature was to our liking we were to step into the shower area, pull the curtain around us, and only then swivel the shower head into position.
The toilet itself was situated in such a way that our knees pushed up against the bathroom door when it was closed, which made for a rather distracting experience, and which required us on several occasions to use the loo with the door ajar. This in itself was something of an adventure for to get the plumbing in place for this loo-in-a-box, the entire unit was placed about a foot off the floor, which gave us the feeling of relieving ourselves from a very, very high place.
While it was not the most comfortable hotel bathroom experience we could have had, it continues to give us much joy in discussions of it as an engineering marvel, and for that we can do nothing but whole heartedly recommend it for all London-bound travelers.
B. and I made a last-minute decision to spend yesterday afternoon on Managaha, which is a tiny island around ten minutes by boat from Saipan that a lot of tourists go out to visit. Managaha has gorgeous white beaches and clear water that you would never know just by looking is hideously polluted with human feces. Anyway, it’s a really beautiful place, and we like to go there and pretend we’re on vacation every few weeks.
Managaha and all the other gorgeous beaches are polluted because Saipan has terrible waste management. Basically, the hotels which line the beaches here just dump sewage into the ocean. So here’s my review of the oceanic loo: Stunning. Just drop dead gorgeous. Perfect beach, water that’s about a hundred different shades of blue and green, and fish that come in more colors than your poor little brain can process. Too bad about the inevitable eventual cholera outbreak, though!
The Hammer Museum at UCLA is named after Armand Hammer the man, not the baking soda, but that does not affect the cleanliness of the toilets there. Though the museum itself is small (we only counted three exhibits when we were last there), they spared no expense on the loo which is on the far side of the second floor walkway surrounding a lovely courtyard. The weather is always wonderful in Los Angeles, and the open air walk to the toilet is made even more lovely by this fact. Once inside, the men’s room is arranged and lit spectacularly.
Hawaiian shirt Friday. Only we’re in the tropics, so we’ve also got Hawaiian shirt Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as well as Hawaiian shirt weekends. And the Hawaiian shirts are just called ‘shirts.’ Well, they’re called Aloha shirts. They should be called Hafa Adai shirts, because Hafa Adai is how people say Aloha out here.
Me, I’m wearing a camo skirt and plain green shirt. My boss noticed the camo skirt and said ‘You’re wearing a camo skirt!’ and I said, ‘Supporting the troops. Got to support the troops.’ This led us into another discussion about how bizarre this whole Iraq war is.
Speaking of which – Jarhead is a good movie. OK, so nothing happens. But it’s riveting. At least I think it is. I don’t find it to be anti-soldier at all, either. Anti-government, yes, but rightly so, and here’s part of why I think that. One night at a bar called Godfather’s I met a guy who works as a merchant marine, and he told me that after the tsunami last year he and his ship were sent off the coast of Aceh to do relief work. They boated out to Aceh and anchored (is that the word?) two miles from the shore, where they waited for instructions from the government about what to do next. The instructions came about a month later: turn around and go home. That was their relief work.
So last night I was at Godfather’s with a friend and we were having a drink and some pizza (me) and salad (she) and catching up since we’ve both been off-island recently, she in Hawaii and me in Osaka. A guy from another military ship that’s in town came up and started talking to us. He sat on my side of the booth and said his name was Rxxx (to protect privacy), but that he hated that name. He said that his mother was in love with a Panamanian guy named Rxxx, and had an affair with this guy, and that he was this guy’s son. His father isn’t his father, he said. So one day he went to Panama to see Rxxx and found him selling peeled oranges by the side of the road for ten cents each. Rxxx said to the guy that he’d come to meet him, and that he was his father. And then he never finished the story because he started telling us about his beautiful lesbian aunt who lives in New York and by the time I remembered that Rxxx never finished telling us what happened in Panama I was at home in bed.
The bathroom part of the story: both my friend and I had to use the bathroom but neither of us wanted to leave the other because we didn’t want to leave the other alone with Rxxx, who was a nice guy and not at all dangerous seeming or anything, just seemed like someone who could talk for a while. (Actually, I would have left my friend, but Rxxx was sitting on my side of the booth and I couldn’t get out.)
When we did, at last, get to the bathroom, we found it to be as it always is: it’s a single person bathroom that’s surprisingly clean for a bar bathroom, and it’s got soap,TP, and paper towels. There’s one of those huge Calvin Klein jeans posters featuring the guy from Limp Biscuit (I think) that’s been in this bar’s bathroom for a few years now, even before the bar was called Godfather’s and when it was still called Beefeater’s. There are plastic flowers in the bathroom, too. It’s a nice touch.