Located past the fitting room like our previous Banana Republic review, the sibling company “Old Navy” doesn’t care if you sneak in by yourself. Gap, Inc., designed Old Navy like the ratty younger brother who perpetually lives in the mental state of freshman year at college. That way, if Banana’s upscale image turns you off, the company still gets your money in the end. However, Old Navy settles into the neighborhood of SoHo comfortably and embraces the space it occupies by leaving it looking like a warehouse.

Their acceptance of the industrial look would benefit them quite well in their facilities, had they gone all the way with it. But only going halfway with the Bohemian look is the same as when an uptown banker tries to come down to this neighborhood to “pick up artsy chicks”–all the cool kids see right through it. Sorry, but the INC is still the biggest part of Gap, Inc. The bathroom is lit brightly by caged, industrial fixtures. The top third of the wall is left as exposed brick to “legitimize” things, and the floor has a brushed concrete look with half a coat of paint on it. But the stalls, gray as they are, look a little too polished for the image they were going for. Also, there is an odd smell lingering in the air, something that will never be cool no matter how uncool it is. Overall you get the sense that they could have done much more to make it “look the part.”

Rating: 6.5

Banana Republic has always kept a stiff upper lip when sneering at its rivals in the retail clothing industry. No matter where you go, you can always count on BR to sell the “safe” look. Its presence alone can deter the marginally adventurous shopper from experimenting at the next door leather shop. It comes as no surprise that the establishment is very guarded about their image, but the measures to which the SoHo branch’s bathrooms are kept secure is a bit too much to swallow. When we asked for the bathroom we were lead individually by an attendant through the fitting rooms to a locked restroom where only employees had the key. Once inside, we were able to lock it, though that didn’t make us feel any more welcome.

There are two oners here, and neither one passes the mark of impressive. A brushed marble green tile hugs the lower half of the walls, the only sign of color, the lone plant growing through a crack in the city sidewalk. To the establishment’s credit, the room is kept clean and functional with a few amenities such as toilet seat covers. We were starting to see that the “conservative-with-a-hint-of-personality” aesthetic that informs the clothing also applied to the bathroom design. At least they’re consistent. At the washing station a very wide half-length mirror offers more than the idea that you’re just in a public bathroom; it also works well for people who are only trying on tops (or, people whose legs are not their best feature and want to focus of their well-proportioned torso). However, the sink and counter top, and almost everything on it, is made of industrial brushed steel and reminds us that the public bathroom designers care only about one of the “F”s: function*. Thankfully, they care enough to do it right.

*The other three being feng shui, feel-goodedness, and fornication.

Rating: 6.0

Presenting “Uniqlo,” from the country that brought us “Unico.” Yes… Decidedly not in our element, we walked around Uniqlo initially trying to figure out what is was, and what “Uniqlo” could actually mean. It almost sounds like “Uniglow,” who almost sounds like a super hero in a lost ’70s comic book series… who wears a chalk blue unitard, white pleather boots, sports a rainbow-colored unibrow (which provides magical powers) and has a glowing shield that he hurls at villains as they try to escape but also serves as a diaphragm when he makes love the to the enormous Nubian princess, Aunt Va-jay-jay.

Okay, so, exactly what is Uniqlo? Our best guess is that this clothing store was started by a group of Japanese school girls who won some kind of lawsuit and decided to open a store in SoHo upon graduating from whatever type of school Japanese school girls go to. Walking through the women’s underwear section made us feel both emasculated and aroused, like the time a gang of middle-aged female gym teachers force-fed us Viagra as a joke at a party. To confirm our aforementioned suspicions, there was a sale commemorating Golden Week in Japan, the week that a golden marshmallow descended from heaven and blessed all the people of Mt. Fuji. We must admit that the marble sinks in the bathroom were nicer than we had expected, but the motion sensors were tough to coax water out of; it was like trying to find a secret G-spot in the air under the faucets. The bathrooms were all white, like the clientele of the store (guess the Japanese school girls are exporting their sensibilities to the unsuspecting Americans–isn’t it usually the other way around?).

The paper towel dispenser worked about as well as a canoe made of saran wrap. Modernized gender signs replaced the better-known men’s and women’s icons on their respective bathroom doors. The updates were a stick figure pushing a stroller through Park Slope (the man) and a stick figure agonizing over an appointment calendar (the woman). We were not sure where we had just been as soon as we left, but were glad we were gone.

Rating: 6.0

Soho Bloomingdale’s will always live in the shadow of its older, snobbier, prettier sister, the original Bloomingdale’s on the Upper East Side. At least the one in Soho is, well, in Soho…which is good if garbage on the streets makes you feel more authentic, and you prefer cocaine to prescription drugs.

While this will always be Wings and the UES side location will always be the Beatles, this location’s bathrooms make a mark for themselves, like the aforementioned younger sister trying out for the rugby team just to stand out. But these bathrooms succeed in offering some unique accommodations. The stars of the show are the walls, covered in beautiful, textured tiles that we deemed a cross between jade and limestone that reminded us of our stay in the palace of an unnamed Chinese princess. On the walls hang a series of modern pinup pics, and kudos to the artist for choosing an authentic-looking model…she was pre-heroin chic and looked like she could enjoy a hamburger without guilt but still gets to the gym. Long lights hung on the sides of the sinks like vanity lights dripping downward as painted by Salvador Dali, and stainless steel baby changing station give well-to-do tots a chance to get up close and personal with their future refrigerators. An almost full-length mirror lets you almost assess your entire outfit. One of the toilets on our visit was unfortunately stuffed with toilet paper and God knows what else…receipts, therapist bills, Sex and the City ticket stubs? That of course was incidental and can happen anywhere, and unless it reflects a negligent cleaning staff, these bathrooms do the Bloomingdale’s name well.

Rating: 7.0

At least one of us has a love/hate relationship with technology, at least one of us is a gadget man, and at least two of us will be nicknamed “Cream of Wheat” during brief prison stints. Regardless of all that, there is a Mac Store not only uptown on 5th Ave, but also downtown in possibly-not-as-chic anymore SoHo. (For you out-of-towners that stands for “SOuthern HOspitality does not exist in New York”).

During our search for the second floor bathroom, we witnessed a large in-store theater being used for an official Mac store presentation: a perky young girl was teaching a group of middle-aged people the joys of using bookmarks on their Internet browsers. At least they wasn’t trying to reel the folks into investing in condos on swampland in Florida.

As for the bathroom, its silvery minimalism is reminiscent of the uptown location. The faucet has a very ergonomic design, but apparently it’s already obsolete technology as of this writing. Steve Jobs reportedly has a faucet in his house that only requires you to think about water and it starts flowing (guests still have to pay $499 to use it, however). People in orange shirts scatter in and out to clean the bathrooms on an alarmingly regular basis, the female staff in particular is not shy about walking into the bathroom of the opposite sex. One of the urinals was out of order, covered in a plastic tent like a body not yet hauled off to the morgue. A plunger and toilet brush in the stall implied that they want you to use the toilet only for urinating. The bottom line is that this bathroom is generally clean and pleasant, but Jobs has left several hints to get his message across: “Urinate quickly, then get back to buying my products.”

Rating: 6.0

Confusingly, “whole foods” refers to both a category of foods (generally unprocessed, unrefined, and using no added ingredients) and a chain that sells natural foods. Perhaps the chain is hoping to do to food what Xerox once did to making copies.

After going up to floor 2 and passing their version of a cafeteria, complete with a sushi conveyor belt, we were greeted with something of a lobby preceding the restrooms. There were stone bleachers like the ones found in some city parks, and a mural on the walls that could alternately be described as “graffiti-chic” and “neo-classical ghetto.” Apparently Whole Foods is “cool.” Once we had established that, we entered the bathrooms, an unexpected orange due to the (free range?) orange wall tiles. Graffiti adorned the paper towel dispenser, but after a close scrutiny of the marker strokes we determined it was not done by the same artist who had created the aforementioned mural outside the bathrooms. One soap dispenser was empty and another low; they were dangerously teetering on the brink of major mandatory point deductions, just like when an Olympic gymnast wears a ski mask and cape during a floor routine. We observed all this in spite of a clipboard hanging on the wall with an employee checklist for bathroom maintenance on it.

Appropriately, Whole Foods uses “paper without trees,” made of recycled fiber, tea leaves, helmets, scarves and action figures, in their “paper” towel dispenser. Now if they would only invent toilets without splash. The urinals in the men’s room are extremely low to the ground, perhaps reflecting the main demographic of this Lower East side neighborhood, thumbing its nose at all the hipsters who are just not growing up, still suckling at the trust fund teet. Perhaps they could have really gone for the gauntlet and had wooden toilet stalls, compost toilets, and a few leaves to rub your hands on as “soap,” but they gave a decent showing nonetheless.

Rating: 6.0