Planet of the Grapes

14th Street, Union Square

Continuing down “murderer’s row,” or the south side of 14th Street west of Union Square, we entered yet another fast food chain with a conveniently accessible bathroom towards the front of the store. After being stunned and battered by our recent bathroom experience at the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut next door, we staggered into Wendy’s, one of us deliriously yelling “where is that red-headed bitch? She owes me twenty seven dollars and I also want my copy of The DaVinci Code back!” After regaining composure, we re-focused on the task at hand and entered the facilities.

It turns out we should have known that the same forces that set upon destroying the bathroom at Taco Bell/Pizza Hut were also at work on their scarlet-haired neighbor. Once again, the door did not lock, and we started to think that these 14th street bathrooms were all designed by the same person and that that person grew up in a commune (a filthy commune–not at all worth the free love that comes with it). Sitting atop the sink, seemingly embarrassed, a dish of liquid soap humbly presented itself. If you’ve been reading our reviews you may know that we feel bar soap, while fine in someone’s home, is not okay in a public restroom (see Ray Bono Pizza review). A communal (ahem) dish of liquid soap brings to light the same philosophical conundrum that a bar of soap does, and the question is this: can soap get dirty? We didn’t have to spend years meditating in the Himalayas to give you a definite answer: yes, yes it can. And while we loathe bar soap in public facilities, liquid soap may be even worse, for the simple fact that it adds insult to injury. A bar of soap comes as it is, liquid soap is supposed to be placed in a dispenser, and thus a bowl of liquid soap basically says, “here, we’re too lazy to do this right, so everyone dip in.” In other words, “Go fuck yourself” (hey, it’s New York).

Once again, the metallic walls were victim to scratchitti (we hope the perpetrators ruined their keys and couldn’t get back inside their homes). The toilet paper dispenser looked as if someone took a large bite out of it (maybe those Wendy’s meals aren’t that filling). The clean bowl was the only redeeming quality, but that’s not saying much, as cleaning it is the bear minimum the staff should do in terms of restroom upkeep. It’s like saying you’re a good parent because you occasionally tell your child you love them in between hits on the crack pipe. The faucet was perpetually running, but then we figured out why: the bathroom was crying, a once-beautiful woman now abandoned by those who should still love her but don’t, feeling sorry for herself as tears fall into an open food container and mix with what little remains of her Wendy’s Super Value Meal. Dear little Wendy, what happened?

Rating: 2.0

14th Street, Union Square

The infamous tag-team duo Taco Bell and Pizza Hut (Known as “The Bacteria Brothers” in the WWE) has staked its claim on the 14th Street western strip. This strip west of Union Square is home to cheap stores and cheaper eats, where shopping is conducted out of dire necessity. As Union Square unofficially presents itself as the forum for the young, artistic and broke, these chains do quite well for themselves. And although many of them require that you purchase something in their establishments, most do not enforce this rule. One could walk into their bathroom at any time without buying a thing.

In the case of the 14th Street Taco Bell/Pizza Hut bathroom, you may not buy anything but you will certainly pay for it. The door’s banana-carcinogen color may fool you into thinking you’re entering a safe place. The inside doorknob hangs from its own hinges and prevents you from locking it. The walls are made of the same cheap brushed metal as the airplane-style sink and covered in filth and graffiti. Under the sink, a red pail catches the leakings from the sink pipe. The floor is wet and littered with toilet paper, as is the toilet. Ironically, you won’t find any toilet paper in its dispenser. It’s like walking into a restaurant starving and seeing everyone eating great food, only to be told that the kitchen has just closed. Two soap dispensers offer the same option: no soap or no soap. If you haven’t run screaming yet, do NOT look up. A square hole has been cut out in the ceiling, perfect for storing a camera. Would we have tried to be funnier in this review, but these facts speak for themselves. Be warned: using this bathroom may put your image on a kinky bathroom porn site, and it currently bears the distinction of our lowest rating to date.

Rating: 1.5

14th Street and Broadway

Since our last visit, the Union Square branch has changed the appearance of its bathroom and provided us with another before and after segment.

This Virgin location has a large cafe on the main floor and this is where the restrooms are. There are two “oners,” one for men and one for women, though we’d expect that’s observed very loosely. Be warned that lines seem to be par for the course here. Our first visit gave us the impression that we might as well have been transported into the womb where the idea of graffiti itself spat forth from. Knowing that Virgin tries to be cool and edgy and distance itself from the stodginess associated with huge corporations, we wouldn’t be surprised if this graffiti was written by the employees as a job requirement. Since it was present in such a large amount, it did add a consistent character to the facility. Amidst all of this, the bathroom was kept clean. Chalky mint green wall tiles offer a bit of a change of taste, the piece of gum you chew after drinking twelve Pabst Blue Ribbon beers at a downtown dive.

In an effort to improve its image, Virgin cleaned most of the graffiti from the walls and mirror, but most just doesn’t cut it. Where this bathroom was once a tribute to the punk rock underbelly of New York music, now it is simply another casualty in the war on cleanliness. The mint green tiles were replaced with black. The toilet, once surprisingly white and pristine, was now left dirty and yellow, and tragically, the soap is still missing. They have, however, seemed to substitute soap at the sink for a “Take a penny, Leave a penny” trough, as though the four cents we found was any compensation for walking away with germs on our hands. We assume they were pennies; they could have been bacteria-stained dimes.

Update 07/28/09: With both electronic behemoths (Circuit City and Virgin Megastore) now gone, Union Square suffers a small setback in its public facility population. We knew this day would come, as people are making more purchases online than in actual stores. That’s fine, have your downloads. Let’s see you use iTunes’ bathroom.

Rating: 2.5

50th Street and 5th Avenue

Why not give the chains a chance? We did, and we found they’re called chains for a reason. Banana Republic is a respectable enough outfit, but its restrooms are still bush league. After all, everyone knows it’s just a suped-up Gap. When we visited one restroom it downright stunk, olfactorily speaking. By the looks of the offerings at the nearby Rockelller Center Concourse food court, this restroom probably loses that battle daily. The black and white-checkered floor gives the disorienting illusion that it is moving towards and away from you when you stare at it, an inevitability since nothing else here competes for your eye. In fact, it looks as if several harlequins had been hunted and their unitards stretched out on the ground as some kind of perverse flooring. Provided that this is a “flagship” location for ” B.R.” (we weren’t aware this was a fleet, but then again, retail chains love to take themselves too seriously), we figured that it would house an exemplary facility. It is, however, perfectly functional as a quick-fix, and provides a good example of a mid-range restroom. The stainless steel imported from Ukrainian materials, used for the faucets, impressed us, and the soap had a pleasant viscosity.

Rating 5.5

1230 5th Ave. at 104th Street

When an establishment contains multiple bathrooms, it often is handing their customers a two-edged sword. The second or even third bathroom presents a choice, and hopefully some diversity. On the other hand, with every choice comes a question. Where is the upstairs bathroom? Why is this particular bathroom less accessible to the public? What celebrities have used this facility? Why do bad things happen to good people? Now that the needy toilet-seeker has the choice, they already develop judgements on each bathroom in the establishment without even using them. El Museo del Barrio’s gallery bathroom distinguishes itself from that of the Hecksher Building’s by requiring that you pay to enter the museum. Though it’s suggested donation, the simple presence of a price tag often sends visitors to the Hecksher’s aforementioned “oner.”

All assumptions aside, the gallery bathroom is worth the price of suggested donation (see also, “So I can pay twenty-five cents?”). The walls are white-painted brick against a dark tile floor, bringing back memories of grade school. A large handicap stall with a baby changing station at least reminds you that you are an adult, possibly a parent, and not having disturbing flashbacks. When we visited, the baby station was broken in what we can only assume was a fatal “toddler gang war.” Perhaps even more disturbing than the broken station and the cold, mechanical look of the restroom is the cryptic graffiti on the wall opposite the mirrors. A picture of a woman is spray painted on, accompanied by words written backwards. If you look in the mirror you can read them properly, but we found it more appealing when it was illegible.

Rating: 5.5

1230 5th Ave. at 104th Street

El Museo del Barrio celebrates the rich Caribbean and Latin American cultures in New York. Too tempting to avoid, we must hereby make the stock comment that if you visit the corresponding restaurants these cultures provide, especially if you sport gringo digestive chemistry, you may in fact need the bathroom after such meals, and soon. Accordingly, this museum offers a couple of bathrooms, and one resides in the Hecksher building, before you even enter the museum itself. It’s great if you’re in the neighborhood, in need, and don’t have the time to go to the museum (in our efforts to aid the New York pedestrian, we are attempting to review all the facilities of “suggested donation” museums before moving on to their more expensive, but less anxiety-causing counterparts).

The bathroom here is a “oner,” (let’s not forget that’s one letter off from “loner”). Its saving grace was the large black “foot button” acting as the flusher on the toilet. Please re-read the last sentence. Thank you. And now we must question, and hope you join us in doing so: why is this not the standard in public restrooms? Let’s face it, the motion sensor stuff is a sham, they rarely work correctly short of your having to do an Irish jig in front of them to get them to flush. And even when they do work reasonably well, they make the option of a “mid-game” flush much more difficult. Sure you can use your foot on toilets with standard handle flushers, but it’s nice to see SOMEONE just acknowledging that yes, most sane people use their foot to flush, so we not design with that in mind? And even for that mid-game flush, this button is easier than a handle to elbow.

Like a Journey tribute band, the bathroom itself looked like it had not evolved since the ’70s. No plate protected the light switch, but we must admit we did get a little nostalgia for the throwback of the hand dryer they had: the big silvery guy with the round spout. The wall tiling was large at least (most tiny tiles are easy and unattractive, like those skeletal size -4 fashion models), but for the grand finale, we leave you with this: the sink had hair and green herbs in it. They swear it was oregano.

Rating: 4.0

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

14th Street, Union Square

While it may be seen as trendy, if natural foods chains like this keep popping up and help the American diet move beyond soda and potato chips for dinner, then we’d say that’s a good thing. Strategically located at the crossroads that is Union Square, this Whole Foods is a huge destination for a cross-section of New Yorkers (who can afford it), and thus it receives steady traffic to its restrooms. Especially for you ladies, long lines will often be contended with here. Given that, it stands to reason that the designers should have thought ahead more; these bathrooms are simply too small for such a location, especially considering they are next to a busy cafe on the second floor. Someone should have told the restroom designers that this isn’t Key Food.

The colors inside the restroom are largely green and blue. We found this color combination earlier in our travels to the Toy R’ Us bathroom in Times Square and can’t help but think that it denotes a whimsical and somewhat child-like feeling, not that that’s a bad thing (if you had a good childhood, or at least a nanny who wore a lot of green and blue). In fact, it gives a certain vibrancy and character that was well-appreciated, as we all know that the majority of public bathrooms are drab and dreary. And it doesn’t stop there. The sinks’ materials are a stone with touches of green in it (we guess green is apropos with the Whole Foods mission), it’s a modern update on the stone water fountains found in the city playgrounds of our youth. The stall doors are dark blue, and again, in the context of the room’s colors makes you feel like you’re getting into some kind of compartment on top of a jungle gym. Inevitably, graffiti graces its inside walls. The soap dispenser has its own twist as well; it’s exposed so you see a little contraption squeezing the pink soap as it’s delivered to your palms. If you listen very closely, every time you squeeze it, it tells you something tragic about its youth. In the men’s room the short, small urinal makes you feel like you need to get out quickly. The restrooms have some pleasing visual touches but the size and crowding deter the visitor from taking them in. It’s like showing up very late to a very heavily-chaperoned school dance; you feel like you should be enjoying it but you just can’t get comfortable.

Rating: 4.5

1220 5th Avenue at 103rd Street

The Museum of the City of New York is pretty much what it sounds like. Some New Yorkers would argue that the whole damn city is a museum (“the greatest in the world, man!”), and we know that attitude is what you both love and hate about New York. Look, this is just a museum about New York, and we’re just reviewing some bathrooms. No need to get involved in a culture clash. After all, we’re all humans, and thus, we all have to relieve ourselves.

In a word, this facility has a nice glow. The orb-like lights lining the walls are futuristic in a classy way, vanity lights for extraterrestrials. The floor plan is elongated, the large white tiles on the floor with some black spruced in add to the sense of space. The long sink again provides room between fellow hand-washers and there’s a nice little “bar” by the window…an extended pane that gives the option of placing personal effects on it if needed as you get yourself in order. It’s as if the designers were saying, “New York is so damn cramped and crowded, but at least the bathroom in its museum will not be.” The promise of the orb lighting is offset by the exposed flourescents above the sink…it’s like putting a whorehouse next to a nunnery. If you plan on spending time here (be warned rent is $2,500 a month and pretty much guaranteed to go up next year) there is a climate control knob. The white toilet paper dispensers are sleek and modern encasements, angular mounted clouds patiently awaiting your use. There were a few things on the floor but it was generally clean–looks like the rest of the city could learn a few things from this bathroom.

Rating: 6.5

1000 Third Avenue & 59th Street

Large department stores love to utilize their basements, and the Bloomingdales “Lower Level” is no exception. In these subterranean shopping levels one usually finds clothing items for lepers, the insane, and men. Sometimes there’s even a cafe. The restroom here boasts the same type of door found on the 7th floor: black wooden paneling with a frosted glass center, a large rectangular Oreo for the installation art crowd. This bathroom asserts its individuality, however, with framed pictures of classic cars. It’s a somewhat obvious and uninspired choice, very “home office of a middle-aged Long Island doctor,” but here it shows that the designers were at least thinking, so we give them an “A” for effort. Towards the front of the bathroom is a private facility for the handicapped, always a thoughtful touch, except when able-bodied people use it for sex. That’s not noble, just in case you were wondering. The wallpaper is again a textured beige and certainly makes a case for wallpaper adding a warmth to bathrooms where shiny tiles cannot. For you audiophiles, the debate over analog vs. digital has it counterpart in the bathroom connoisseurship world in the form of wallpaper vs. tiling. The tiling used on the floors is tasteful, a classic white with black outlines. The sinks and mirrors are nice, but plain…the “marrying type.” However, maybe not all is as nice under the surface and a divorce would ensue down the line. A look under the hood shows the sinks are shoddily built, screws sticking out and all, just like some of the people who work in the makeup department.
Rating: 7.0