Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/28/reviews-of-new-york-citys-su.html
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worst job ever.
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I’m more shocked there were any bathrooms in the subways to review. Most of the municipal bathrooms in NYC we’re bolted shut in the 90’s and forgotten about. Apparently to keep homeless people, drug users and those devious gays out.
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So, what is the flashpoint of shrimp-fried rice and brown-breaded nuggets?
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Recently I noticed that all of my city’s tram stations have ratings on Google (Maps? Or is it all the same?), and they are usually pretty low/bad. Because of their natural ambiguity they attract different motivations: compulsiveness (rate everything for fun and profit), irony, venting/ranting against the public transport company, to rate a business (stores can sponsor station, like stadiums) and to rate an… area. And, you guessed it, the latter are usually classist/racist.
And we read the best-of & made it into a radio feature, “The top 186 of Leipzig’s tram stations” 
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Why? For the love of God, why?
Awww. That was the best item in the free bathroom buffet. Now what are patrons supposed to snack upon as they take care of business?
I dunno if it still exists but at one point there was an app for NYC that would mark all the publickly accessable bathrooms and rate them by cleanlyness. There’s so few public restrooms that there’s a perpetual “where’s the nearest Starbucks” conversation going on. But if you know where too look there’s all these hidden bathrooms in like supermarkets and hotel lobbies you can use.
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There must be an app for that. And it must be named Costanzapp.
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That picture makes me want to modify a cordless drill to hold an empty toilet paper tube, and then make a video of me stealing the toilet paper by quickly winding it onto the empty tube using the drill.
As for this article, it’s interesting, but I would like to see the idea mashed up with the guy who slept in the cheapest hotel room in NY, and get a story of how it is to sleep in a subway bathroom.
Anyplace can be a hidden bathroom if you’re quick enough.
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Or even a non-hidden bathroom. And seeing as I never thought I’d ever have an excuse to share it, and then I did a few weeks ago on another thread, I’m not going to pass up an excuse - however tangential - to share it again: Here’s an amusing tale of what happens when one “goes to the bathroom” in a public place. Stick with it - the ending is worth it. (It’s the M4V file.)
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The public restroom in NYC that comes to mind is at the Dana Discovery Center in Central Park. It’s just a stainless steel prison toilet sticking out of the wall. There’s no toilet paper, no toilet seat, no stall, no way to lock the door to the restroom. I think it was intentionally made to be a last resort bathroom for a #2.
Did you see the curb your enthusiasm season about a Seinfeld reunion? One of the plot points of the episode within an episode was that George has invented a bathroom finding app and made a bunch of money off it.
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Wow! This author really didn’t do their research. There was no mention of the bathroom situated between the subway cars where people go to piss, shit and smoke cigarettes, usually while intoxicated.
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Nothing could actually be as bad as I think subway bathrooms are, so probably not.
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That’s also my recollection, along with the fact that in all my years riding the subway, I never saw a single person enter one of those things. Never. The short, tile-walled L-shaped entryways (in many locations) looked quite sinister and uninviting; they exuded a… dead-end-iness.
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Because when ya gotta go, it would be good to know something about… where ya gotta go.
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There are only two public restrooms in the Boston subways and they are located in the commuter rail section of South Station just wide open to the public. Any other station on our lines requires begging an attendant to unlock it if they’ll even admit one exists.
