Planet of the Grapes

1105 5th Avenue at 92nd Street

The Jewish Museum, far from the Jewish Heritage Museum in Battery Park City, resides on the Upper East Side on Fifth Avenue – known also as Museum Row. It is one of the better-known museums here besides the Guggenheim and the Met and receives pedestrian traffic accordingly. With security right at the door, checking your bags before you can even get your coats off and throwing you through a metal detector, the Jewish Museum trumps its neighbors in security. Perhaps the measures are to protect the work of the touchy subject of religion and heritage. We think maybe it’s to keep messhugenehs like us out. Of course, it seemed like a bad sign that they were even open on the sabbath. There is an upstairs and a downstairs bathroom, but the basement one is closest and best for anybody just looking to get in quick.

For any place that houses works of art, one would think that even the design of their bathrooms should be considered as such. Sadly, this is not the case here. The basement floor bathroom of the Jewish Museum is as basic as can be: no bowl of candy, no mother telling you that you don’t eat enough or call her enough, and certainly no dancing. The off-white wall tiles complement the black floor tiles in the same way one would tell a concert pianist after their performance, “Your hair looked good.” Two items that add a hint of character are worth mentioning: One sink offered two fancy boxes of Kleenex tissues instead of the cold metal dispensers, and an odd-looking seat/changing station greets the user upon entry. The bottom line is that this bathroom is kept pretty clean… and that’s it. But what do we need fancy bathrooms for? It’s nothing, we’ll use a plain bathroom like anybody else. It’s not like we went out of our way to find a nice bathroom…

Rating: 5