Planet of the Grapes

30 Rockefeller Plaza- 50th Street btwn. 5th and 6th Avenues

For those of you outside of New York, the Top of the Rock is not a VH1 countdown, but rather, the top decks of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, a very tall building. You essentially pay $17.50 per adult (less for children and seniors, unless you’re throwing them off–then it’s free) to take an elevator to a roof. Therefore, this review veers a bit from our quest to evaluate the publicly accessible, and usually free, restrooms of New York City. However, this is a big tourist spot, and let’s face it, one day we’re going to run out of restrooms that incur no costs to access and will have to “do” places like this in their stead. That’s the restroom reviewing equivalent of “the honeymoon being over.” At that point we will start dressing much worse and/or no more oral.

In the meantime, we can tell you this: there is actually a second elevator that takes you to the restrooms. If you were any higher your urine stream would go upward while relieving yourself. As soon as the elevator door opens, you are greeted by a water fountain and the respective gender-biased entrances on either side. Upon entering either you’ll find a modest facility: clean enough, though nothing aesthetically pleasing, just like Swedish pop music. The gray tiling is positively utilitarian; in fact we caught someone reading John Stuart Mill on the toilet. It’s well-lit, as we’d expect, being so close to the sun and all. And fortunately, it does not share much with its downstairs counterpart on the Rockefeller Concourse (see Aug. 07 reviews), which is pedestrian in the worst sense, and seemingly designed specifically for certain activities. We will not mention them here. The bathroom at Top of the Rock is above that.

Rating 5.5