Planet of the Grapes

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

1000 Third Avenue & 59th Street

“Let’s go to Bloomy’s” has been said on the Upper East Side of Manhattan more than “let’s help someone less fortunate than us” by a ratio of 250:1. It’s an obvious destination when both looking for hats to wear to the U.S. Open or when having to take care of business if you’re in the area. Like the other big department stores it offers restrooms on several floors, and here we go all the way up to Lucky Seven…though the only lucky ones here are those whose parents at least offered to pay for the therapy after giving them credit cards but then forgetting their names.

This restroom greets you with a frosted door surrounded by black wooden paneling. It made you feel like you were about to enter a very chic bathhouse (but that’s a whoooole other kind of review). The black painted wood theme continues inside. It surrounds a full-length mirror, always a plus, especially when you’ve just gotten away with stealing an article of clothing you’re currently wearing and want to admire your sense of fashion, shoplifting skills, and general panache. The sinks are also black, a black marble, possibly unearthed from the great underground kingdom in the caves of what is now Tangier…or maybe Bloomingdale’s doesn’t go to the lengths we do for interior decorating. At any rate, they need to go to better lengths to maintain their restrooms; one toilet was out of order, and if you’ve ever studied restroom planning and crowd control you will know that just one broken toilet can create a ripple effect that results in longer lines, minor arguments, riots, and sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) death. The textured wallpaper was a very nice touch (pardon), and in general the restroom’s brightness and cleanliness made it feel radiant and pure, like a little debutante just prior to her ball…and subsequent fall into a life of petty arguments, rides to the Hamptons made more bearable by Vicodin, stuffed-shirt husbands who cheat on them daily, child bearing (but not rearing) as a form of social currency, and secret anguish over a purposeless life.

Rating: 6.5

1215 Lexington Ave and 82nd Street

Somehow, some way, a lot of men named Ray go into the pizza business in New York City. Or at least that’s what they want you to think. Not to get involved in ancient pizza feuds, we’ll just say there was an original followed by many impostors using the name “Ray” in order to lead people to the (false) assumption that they were affiliated, and we will leave it at that. We value our legs.

Anyhow, the subject of our observations here is not the pizza, as we would hope you realize by this point. Being that this is a pizza place, it falls into that grey area between, say, Starbucks (where anyone can walk in and use—or sometimes attempt to live in—a facility), and a nice restaurant (where you’re going to have to be very stealthy or very persuasive in order to relieve yourself without being a paying customer). This particular pizzeria gets points for seeming pretty laid back on the subject, but you never know who’s going to be behind the counter or what kind of mood they may be in. Whether it was luck or just how they are, the staff was very accommodating when the present reviewer requested toilet paper.

As for the bathroom itself, the walls are a swirl of light purple and white, a pattern we must hereby call “grape cream.” It seemed intuitively appropriate for a New York pizzeria. As for the sink, goose neck faucets serve you well by providing some room to move your hands around the sink, and we appreciated it here. However, what we did not appreciate was the soap bar. Putting a bar of soap in a public restroom is like eating in a t-shirt and underwear at a restaurant: both should only be done at home. Additional points were deducted for graffiti on the paper towel dispenser, the lack of paper towels and the dirty garbage lid you had to lift yourself. It had the essentials of cleanliness and room, relative to what you may expect for a pizzeria. All in all, if this were a slice, the crust, cheese and sauce would be pretty good, but some of the toppings were a little off.

Rating: 4.5

33 East 17th Street

And here we find ourselves at another Barnes and Noble, at what can be called one of the centers of Manhattan (or the furthest uptown that hipsters will venture), Union Square. There are facilities on both the second and third floors, although they are so similar that two separate reviews are unnecessary. Essentially, they are the same, but you’d be wise to note one fact: most of the characters from Union Square Park, desiring the shortest distance between Point A and Point B, use the second floor bathroom. And by characters we don’t mean “funny haha” (Groucho Marx and anyone whose picture is on the wall at Sardi’s). We mean “funny get the fuck away from me” (the Unabomber and anyone whose picture is on the wall at the FBI headquarters). Now, perhaps you seek out said characters and desire to engage in conversation with them in a public restroom; that’s fine. We’re just providing information, do with it what you will.

These bathrooms cover their walls with white tiles and one strip of green tiling, keeping with the Barnes and Noble colors: white for the purity of an open and seeking mind, green for the color of money. The floor tiles are grey, beige, and dirty (a color never found in the Crayola palette, but all too often found in our reviewing). The metallic paper dispenser provides a crisp and modern touch, the prettiest girl in an otherwise dingy brothel. The mirrors are modest and offer no adornments, the trash is just a tall pail left out. Pretty much everything here is purely functional and the lowest common denominator in terms of basic necessity, a veritable Plain Jane with a little dirt under the fingernails. Perhaps that’s what Barnes and Noble thinks of its clientele.

Rating: 4.5

14th Street and 4th Avenue

Circuit City offers a plethora of electronic gadgets, computers, televisions, electric-heated diapers, and digital portraits of 17th Century Chinese Dynasts. But Circuit City is not just another electronics chain. It understands the needs of today’s power-consumers and shopaholics. If you search hard, you can find the home theater section where they offer comfortable seats to experience life in a $10,000 living room. Though you’re supposed to be examining the TV’s crystal clear display and the cutting edge audio, you’re really there to take the load off your feet. Another rare feat is a public bathroom located in the store, not always an option at electronics outfits.

A gray tile wall with one red stripe recalling the company’s logo colors greet you as you enter. The gray may not look good with the floor’s thin layer of filth, but the bright red stalls bring a sense of life — a life solely spent in a warehouse or firehouse, albeit. The pale light brings the dirt out of the tiles like braces on un-brushed teeth, and they are once again that bane of bathroom tiling, small grey square tiles, the restroom design equivalent of marrying your safety choice. The restrooms are spacious but in the men’s room one lone urinal, tiny and low to the ground, pathetically hangs there as if the wall is very slowly shedding a porcelain tear. The sinks are not much better, looking like they only are there because they have to be (see: most retail employees), and one sink handle was broken. Several bottles of water littered a stall; at least it was water. A bare trash can underneath the baby changing station is too macabre to comment on. Even though the stuff Circuit City sells is current, it’s restrooms still have some catching up to do.

Update 07/28/09: With Circuit City’s global closing, we may have seen the last of the red-striped grime racer. Enjoy the pictures, they’re all that’s left.

Rating: 4.5

59th Street and 3rd Avenue

Being that Home Depot has become the mecca for people who like to build their own homes with their bare hands, we were expecting to find a glorified port-a-potty when we went searching for the restroom in their midtown Manhattan location. Instead, we found the bathroom equivalent of a surreal blind date: not only was the person very attractive, you actually had sex at the end of it. No, that does not mean we had sex with strangers in this bathroom (were you at school the day they went over metaphors?), it just means that our expectations were thoroughly surpassed, to our utter surprise.

Not only was this bathroom clean and well-kept, time and thought obviously went into creating a mood and atmosphere. Fake potted plants greet you in the entryway and adorn the sinks, and a deep brown wooden bench sits against the opposite wall. We could already hear the people in the suburbs snickering at us New Yorkers for having such amenities in a Home Depot bathroom: “Oh, please, that’s not a real Home Depot! It looks like that guy from the Home and Garden Network designed the bathroom.” But it gets better/worse. There are framed prints of leaves with some sort of explanation about the leaf and its family in Latin. Also, someone wrote “Marcus’ daughter will give you a good blow” in Latin on one of them; we guess that’s what you’ll get in New York, especially in a neighborhood near good private schools. In addition to the mirror above the sink, there is a gold (we’re guessing fake) plated mirror on another wall, as if the designers at this point are just saying “F. you” to all the other retail store bathrooms in the area. During our brief stay here, an employee came in to clean up, even though it wasn’t dirty. We got the impression this happens regularly. The light brown painted walls complemented the rustic light brown floor tiling. And for the coup de grace: there under the soap dispensers are little bowls to catch the excess soap that may drip after you pull your hand away. Are they kidding? Obviously not. Perhaps we should have known better.

Rating: 7.5

83rd Street and Fifth Avenue

There are two types of modern bathrooms. One is the ideal modern bathroom equipped with tinted glass stalls, ergonomic toilets that clean your privates and designer sinks and lights. Then there is the bathroom that prevails in the modern age: peeling walls, graffiti, broken toilets, and that familiar aroma from your resident crack addict. Approaching the bathroom by the Modern Gallery, one would think the Met of all places would know the difference.

The room is very small, poorly laid out and decorated in that same green floor and pink marble wall we’ve seen before. The graffiti in the stall is not nearly plentiful enough to be considered intentional. A large garbage can serves more as a roadblock than a trash receptacle. In a bathroom this small and crowded, the phrase “Suck it up” is probably repeated often. There are no urinal dividers in the men’s room, and we found yet another broken toilet. The sinks were the only redeeming quality, and for once they were found in their proper place, not in the middle of this gallery on the floor as an “exhibit.” They were clean and in good condition. Still, Edward Munch would scream at this bathroom.

Rating: 5

83rd Street and 5th Avenue

Part four of our Met tour takes us to the Far East, which according to the museum map is to the far east (rimshot). A great amount of thought appears to have been put into laying out their collections. Among this collection is a traditional Japanese garden where one can walk through, sit down, even meditate until closing hours. Of course, if you’re really good at meditation, you can make time stop and stay for longer.

If all that introspective thought gives you the urge, you can go past the room of Buddhas and left around the Chinese armor, you’ll find the Asian wing’s bathroom. You won’t find any zen gardens here. The room is shaped almost like a horseshoe and greets you with yet another full-length mirror. The floor is made of brick-colored square tiles; good for a Mediterranean kitchen, but here it just reminds you of elementary school in the way metal bars remind an ex-con of prison. However the floors and the white brick tile walls are fairly clean, like a geisha girl’s skin. The sinks are also well-kept and functional. We did find another stall casualty. One of the toilets was broken and filled with what can only be described as “bodily waste water.” Apparently the Yakuza are trying to send us a message.

Rating 4.5