Planet of the Grapes

151 W. 54th Street between 6th And 7th Aves. With a restaurant on premises overseen by culinary god/enfant terrible Gordon Ramsey and press promising that its standards will exceed those of even “the most discerning traveler,” the London NYC hotel has much boasting to live up to. One of the worst trends we find in [...]

51st Street 7th Avenue The Michelangelo Hotel looks as fancy as it sounds. The lobby boasts fanciful Victorian furniture and frames with Impressionist paintings on the walls (sorry, Michelangelo). Traversing through the marble hallway to the front desk, a staircase on the right will take you across a balcony and straight to the bathroom. If [...]

54th Street & 7th Avenue Eateries like Cafe Metro are a dime a dozen in the city. The food is “pretty good,” and the place is well lit and colorful. Perhaps it is reminiscent of your single uncle’s apartment. The bathroom of Cafe Metro, unlike the dining area, is not so common. Located in an [...]

153 East 53rd Street The Citigroup Center building is the one that we used to joke about skiing down as kids because of its angled top. Clearly, you’d have to have some kind of hang glider, as you would fly off the side and still have about fifty stories between you and the street. Clearly, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

34th Street and Broadway And now, onward and upward from the Macy’s basement to the 7th floor. Whereas the color palette in the basement brought band-aids to mind, here we have that very strange combination of orange and brown. Orange and brown can work in a weird way, beautiful and ugly at the same time, [...]

34th Street & Broadway We had to, of course, save Macy’s for December. It’s the only department store the real Santa actually visits (at least that’s what we were told when kids—hiring a guy with a real beard goes far. Hiring a guy with real prison experience doesn’t). This entry features the facilities in the [...]