Planet of the Grapes

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 [...]

611 Broadway & Houston Street Crate & Barrel is the home away from home for furniture shoppers. They let you try out their chairs and sofas and call you downstairs when dinner is ready. It seems like an appropriate reward for traversing through the obstacle course of breakable glasses and dishware that guard the entrance. [...]

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 [...]

East 55th Street at Fifth Avenue The Catholic saint, John Francis Regis, established several hostels for prostitutes, and apparently set these ladies up as lacemakers so that they could gain a steady income.  Thus, he is the patron saint of lacemakers. We’re not going to say we couldn’t make that up, because we could. Rather, [...]

42nd Street and Fifth Avenue behind the New York Public Library The Bryant Park restroom and its neighbor in the NY Public Library’s main building unfolds before us as a veritable David and Goliath story. The restroom, contained in a small house on the grounds of the park, is accessible by the street, so there [...]

721-725 Fifth Avenue Expectations abounded as we entered this shrine to luxury, consumerism, and of course, Donald Trump himself. Would we find that the famous real estate mogul made sure that the restrooms were not just an afterthought, evidence that he believes they can enhance or detract from a building’s integrity, that even the toilets [...]