The American Museum of Natural History (cue Intelligent Design joke) knows how to wow. It greets its front-door visitors with a gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton (or as creationists call it, “Untitled Bone Sculpture”). The visitors then embark on a journey of plexi-glass and fossils, taking them back through time and space. It’s one of the few places where you can get your picture taken next to a woolly mammoth, there and at Sean Connery’s house.

The main entrance’s closest bathroom, however, will send needy visitors running away screaming. The first step inside takes you down a long narrow hall and into a room with an ill-conceived number of walls. The large mirror is not in front of the sink, but off to the right. Any new users will easily get in the way of those already grooming, perhaps sparking some competition. Maybe the bathrooms are being video monitored and used as research for a future exhibit on “Early 21st Century Restroom Etiquette in Humans” (we’d better be invited to the fundraiser party). The walls sport an off-white, slightly greyish-blue hue found only in abandoned beach houses. One of the sinks were broken on our visit, and the towel dispenser was empty. An upstairs bathroom provides a better option with clean white tiles, brushed steel stall, and a handicap “oner” with its own sink and soap dispenser; it was overall better stocked and in better shape. Logic stands to argue that the better bathroom should be closer to the entrance and not something a customer should have to work for. Perhaps natural selection will fix this problem in time.

Rating: 5.5

The Container Store is an organizer’s nocturnal emission, offering a very insightful angle in the commercial world our economy relies on. Where other stores try to sell devices, gadgets and all sorts of “things,” The Container Store sells you a way to store those many things you have undoubtedly been duped into buying (it’s okay to admit it; we’ve all been down that road). And as we accumulate more things, we come closer to resembling the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs in their quest to accumulate. The Container Store will be rolling out a new line of slim yet spacious tombs later this year.

It’s almost too easy to expect the bathroom to reflect this store’s obsession with space, so we must first ask ourselves: what would a bathroom have to store? Aside from general toiletries, there’s really only two things people put here — three if you count morning sickness, four if you’re doing lines. Unless they have replaced urinals with funnels that don’t need to be flushed, creativity can only go so far here. Space is the key, and the Container Store shocks us by containing only two stalls and (two urinals in the men’s room). The decor is a cold, steely gray, lightly adorned with shiny white brick tiles along the wall. It’s a strange contrast to the colorful plastic bins you trip over on your way to the bathroom. The playground-pattern gray marble sink sports yellow rings around the faucet handles, causing us to question where the Container Store gets its water supply from. The mirrors above the sink have stress marks around the spots where they were welded to the wall. The aforementioned stalls are made of brushed steel paneling, and in the larger of the stalls is a foot-pedal trash can with a sweater inside. We suspect Mister Rogers dumps his outfit here and becomes a superhero?

In a day where studios can be arranged to look as big as mansions, The Container Store should have considered their bathroom as another strategy to sell their brilliance in saving space. Sadly, not even Super Rogers can help here.

Rating: 5.5

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

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

The main bathroom in Yahdderman’ home was hilighted recently, and now two other members of this organization must turn the looking glass on themselves, exposing all the glory and all the sorrow that comes when one stands face to face with his own reality. They live together and call their apartment “Pharaoh’s Landing,” though 1) they are not Egyptian divinity/royalty and 2) their apartment is not a wharf. A case in point for breast-feeding, as neither of this apartment’s inhabitants suckled on the maternal teet.

The bathroom’s centerpiece undoubtedly is the shower curtain. It’s deep red with writhing gold rings is at once regal and ridiculous. The curtain is the true hero of the day, as the rest of the bathroom is what you expect from a typical apartment: cramped, walls with heavy paint caked on sloppily, a toilet designed only for function, and a tiny sink. A hand towel hangs beside the sink as if it had been there when Moses lived here. Despite the building’s limitations on the bathroom’s construction and spotlessness (see general grime between tiles buried under decades of previous owners’ neglect) the facilities are kept clean and stocked so you will never go without the basic amenities.

Rating: 5.5

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 basement, often called the “cellar” in order to soften the blow. Whatever you call it, this underground level doles out full servings of overpriced food and consumerism at its best, or worst, depending on which side of the cash register you’re on.

The sinks here are band-aid colored; we didn’t know whether or not to be alarmed by that…turns out they complemented the beige marble walls quite nicely. The baby-changing station, on the other hand, did not inspire confidence; we wouldn’t trust putting a doll on it. There was, however, a well-lit sink next to it, a nice touch that earned some points. The flooring here definitely exhibited some dirt, though we must say in their defense that the color of the floor tiles is light and that Macy’s of course is a high traffic location (insert joke about young dumb female “celebrity’s” bathroom here). Even in such locations we welcome a little exposed dirt if it means the color of the floor tiles is not that ugly and depressing grey used in so many bathrooms. Whoever designed this place, though, still should have anticipated the traffic and chose another color, and/or the staff should see that it’s attended to more often. Or maybe Santa has his own private bathroom and they don’t worry as much about everyone else the rest of the year. The doors on the stalls are cabana-style, providing privacy as well as ventilation, like dark linen pants. The bathroom overall is functional but still has that unfortunate factor we call dinginess. Maybe it just goes with getting used so much (insert…).

Rating: 5.5

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

It’s sometimes hard to find a little peace and quiet at this place, the irony of which is astounding. No doubt due to its (ill-founded) repute as the best place in the area for the toilet, we found it difficult even to take a photograph there owing to the high volume of traffic. To be fair, however, it was a Saturday. The restroom of course resides in a beautiful building, an architectural landmark, and we give kudos to the original designers of the restroom, where we see their intentions laid before us in the classical white marble motif.

Where this location fails perhaps is in the restoration, like a potentially attractive older woman who refuses to spruce herself up, because rather than emitting a stately and refined appearance, the restroom rather feels like it needs some refurbishing. Not technically dirty, it nonetheless feels tired and old, and thus is not very welcoming. The urinals in the men’s room were leaking and only saved by the fact that they had high partitions. Then there was the oddity of one lone stall, a seeming afterthought, separated from the row of several other stalls on the other side of the sinks; you could practically hear the designer saying “wait, you wanted six, not five?” The sinks themselves are provided for in a very narrow space, as if someone were about to shake this box of bookworms to see if they will fight for territory when agitated.

Rating: 5.5

When the shopping complex at Columbus Circle, aptly titled “The Shops At Columbus Circle,” premiered in 2003, it was greeted with much hullabaloo and for a certain type (the type with no imagination), became the place to be. Granted, there are trendy, pseudo nouveau riche “guaranteed action if you take a date there” restaurants on the upper levels of the mall… again, for a certain type. And while the shopping center’s founders resist the use of the word “mall,” the editorial staff feels that, well, you can’t turn a whore into a housewife.

At the end of the day it’s still just a shrine to banal consumerism, with no aspirations towards the pursuit of truth, beauty, and culture, and thus, its restrooms are exceptionally uninspired. They are unfortunately hidden down a long maintenance corridor on the second floor. While we are aware that due to the nature of restrooms they shouldn’t be prominently placed in the middle of everything, they also shouldn’t feel as if the architects were ashamed of them. Perhaps the right design would make up for the restrooms’ placement within the building. However, dull lighting reminiscent of Freud’s subconscious while he toiled over the subject of marriage crisis, dime-a-dozen grey tiling, and hand-motion sensing paper towel dispensers that are almost surely playing games with you do not add merit. Where it does make some amends is in basic functionality: there’s room, and it’s clean.

Rating: 5.5