Whole Foods: Keepin’ it green in the restroom

In honor of the heat wave currently ravaging the Northeast, I give you Whole Foods, where K and I used to spend extra-hot evenings, “borrowing” air conditioning (97th St. and Columbus, New York City).

Not surprisingly, Whole Foods’ restroom is very green and recycle-y, beginning with the fact that you get to it behind the composter in the eating area (see below for a photo of the signs that help you navigate this environmentally-friendly process). That’s right: after you eat at Whole Foods, you have to separate out compostable items — paper, food scraps, etc. — from actual trash. I actually think this is a wonderful idea, because I get all up in arms and terribly sad whenever I think about the Great Pacific garbage patch, but it’s still hilarious to pick through your giant bowl, scooping out spoonfuls of the mint-flecked quinoa salad you didn’t like and plopping it in the compost bin. Anyway. Restroom. Not much going on in here — after all, Whole Foods a grocery store, no matter how fancy and expensive its wares are (although, Wegmans does have a pretty fancy-ish restroom for a supermarket). The floors are some nameless cream-beige-gray color. The walls are hastily painted concrete blocks in a slightly different shade of nameless. But then, my friends, the pops of bright green remind us that Whole Foods hates on the Great Pacific garbage patch as much as I do. There’s a big plastic green bin exclusively for recyclable paper towels, and the toilet has a GREEN FLUSHER. I guess this means it wastes less water, but imagine if you could get designer flushers on your toilet at home, in all sorts of nameless and not-so-nameless colors. “Hey, Mr. Plumber. Emerald is the Pantone color of the year for 2013 — so can I get that on my toilet instead of recycling green?”

Those were fun evenings at Whole Foods. K and I would head over right after work, fill up giant bowls of food from the prepared section (soba noodles! seaweed salad! mango salad! gross crunchy healthy vegan nasty salad! Indian food! and those weird berry cobblers that we’d look at but not get…). We would generally not like half of what we put in our bowls, and most of the salads were dripping in oil. After we ate, we’d sit at the table for hours, reading, writing and talking, and dreading the moment when we’d have to leave and go back to our blistering hot apartment; our glasses would fog up the minute we walked outside, and we’d walk as slowly as we could back to the 96th Street subway station, trying not to sweat through our clothes before we got there…but why bother, because after 30 seconds on a subway platform on a 95-degree day, you’ll be dripping with sweat anyway. I still wonder how I survived several brutal, heat wave-infested summers in Manhattan without my epidermis melting or my organs baking. Seriously, don’t talk to me about how hot it is if you haven’t lived in NYC without an air conditioner for FOUR YEARS. Unless you live in Las Vegas. Then you can talk all kinds of smack about how I don’t know what hot is.

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

NJ Turnpike: Travel plaza restroom goes Victorian with Pears’ soap

We went on a road trip to D.C. for Halloween, the weekend before Hurricane Sandy blew in. We were nervous wrecks driving home, with some early rainstorms thundering across I-95. The subway lines had shut down by the time we got back to NYC, but the Fine Fare grocery store across the street was still open, so I bought a ton of last-minute soy milk to make caramel mocha lattes for the next two weeks when I had to work from home, following Sandy’s wrath. But I digress. On that Friday evening, all was well, and K, Everswell, Everswell’s little brother and I were barreling down the NJ Turnpike, giggling about stupid things like brown chickens, brown cows and a mesmerizing kaleidoscope app on my Kindle Fire.

We stopped at one of the generic turnpike travel plazas — Thomas Edison? Molly Pitcher? Vince Lombardi? — to grab dinner. Typical of rest area restrooms, this one wasn’t fancy. Giant “MEN” and “WOMEN” signs pointed you in the right direction, which is a great idea, considering that’s what most people are looking to do in a rest area. The restroom, less enormous than the sign, was clean and had mismatched tile work; earth tone tiles covered the floor, but the wall tiles were a bolder, more retro blue and navy. My favorite part was a vintage ad for Pears’ soap in the entrance, right next to 75-cent machines for finger puppets (I guess in 2013 you can not longer call those “quarter machines”). This was quite the classy and unexpected Victorian touch, and quite meaningful to me. My great-great aunt had a framed Pears’ soap ad in her bathroom, and I think it eventually made its way into my grandmother’s bathroom — I wonder where it is now?

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

 

American Girl Place: Bring your doll to the restroom

It’s funny that my four-year-old niece has an American Girl doll – sure, they’ve changed since I got my Kirsten doll when I turned eight, but it’s crazy that so many of the dolls and accessories haven’t changed a bit since the early ’90s. I feel like, in the same number of years, Barbie has probably gone through 12 rounds of (literal) plastic surgery, morphing her physique into one that’s supposedly more “natural.” Anyway, always the thrifty one, my mother likes to pick up my niece’s gifts at American Girl Place (5th Ave. and 49th St.) whenever she can to avoid the shipping costs.

American Girl Place is meant to be a little girl’s paradise. You’re encouraged to bring your doll(s) along – extra points for dressing in matching outfits – and in addition to a full retail experience, you can get your photo taken with your doll and even take afternoon tea with her! Because, you know, dolls drink and eat. Dolls are welcome in the restroom, too: you hang your doll from her armpits on metal contraptions affixed to the toilet stall walls. The restroom is uber-girly, with lavender striped walls sprinkled with pink flowers, and a swoopy pink frame around the mirror. The toilet stalls have numbered flower signs (maybe so mothers don’t lose track of their daughters and dolls?).I asked my father to let me know how the men’s room compared at American Girl Place. “Clean and plain white,” was the response. I guess the men dragged along to American Girl place appreciate having at least one place in the store where they aren’t inundated by dolls and the color pink.

I wish American Girl Place existed when I was a kid. I would have loved it back then, when I would count down the days to Christmas or my birthday, when I’d get a new doll or a new dress. As an adult, it just feels like another sign of American overconsumption – but I guess catering to U.S. Materialism is what New York City flagships do best.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

 

Marquis Theatre: Don’t cry for me (or Evita) in the restroom

Loyal readers know how much I love Broadway, so I made sure to snag tickets to “Evita,” starring Ricky Martin at the Marquis Theatre (Broadway and 46th Street), before the curtain fell for the last time in January.

The posh Marriott Marquis hotel houses the theater; I’d been in there several years ago to eat at the hotel’s lackluster but fun (and gimmicky) revolving restaurant, The View. Sure enough, the restroom outside the Marquis Theatre is posh, too, with more than just the sink counters made of granite. The whole restroom is made of it, or stuff that looks very much like it, from the stall walls to the floor. Hollywood starlet-style light bulbs illuminate a large mirror in the lounge area, which also features a modern, tubular vase filled with grass, a potted plan and framed prints of bucolic scenes at sunset. And the restroom was very clean — so spotless that it almost felt sterile, despite the warm colors and nice decorations. My favorite feature was right outside the restroom: a life-like painting of one of the subway stations in Times Square. I liked that the painting was just a small corner of the station, truncating the word “Subway” so it said “Subw,” so that you felt as if you were looking out a window.

“Evita” was not my favorite Broadway show — I should have done some research on the plot before buying a ticket to a show with a sad ending. Still, I enjoyed seeing a classic musical by master composer Andrew Lloyd Weber, and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” was a beautiful song, even though I prefer Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” score. Ricky Martin could have done a little more dancing on stage, but MA and I agreed that he proved that all fit men should regularly wear 1940s-style long-sleeve henley undershirts (with the sleeves pushed up) and suspenders. Dear goodness.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Richard Rodgers Theatre: Angels watched me drop my ticket in the toilet

Broadway show + great bathroom + hilarious blunder = Porcelain Press trifecta. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” currently starring Scarlett Johansson, is nearly three hours long, so I arrived at the Richard Rodgers Theatre (46th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues) early for a final pit stop. And in my haste, I dropped my ticket in the toilet.

The Richard Rodgers Theatre has a beautiful ladies’ room, starting with the arched entryway that leads downstairs (unfortunately, the picture is blurry). An illuminated box indicates you’re headed in the right direction, and the ceiling and arch are decorated with gold molding that’s very Broadway theatre-esque. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t plan to blog about the bathroom, especially when I descried the dreaded restroom attendant as I descended the stairs, but then — hark! — the herald angels appeared, chubby cherubs scattered all over the walls, which were painted blue with puffy white clouds. These angels, though, were more rubenesque than cherubic, looking sort of like adults morphed with children. The rest of the bathroom was nondescript — stainless steel stalls, white tile floors — but when a restroom’s got crazy angels on its walls, it doesn’t need much else to score points. Except — hark again! — the Richard Rodgers Theatre made the smart move of having tons of stalls in the women’s room, meaning I shouldn’t have felt so rushed that I dropped my ticket in the toilet.

About that. Yeah. I was trying to put gloves in my pocket, wrap earbuds around my iPhone, and hang on to my hat, wallet and ticket all at the same time, and the god of this heavenly restroom was having none of it. The paper soared out of my hand, and I wisely let it go, rather than dropping more valuable items in the toilet. I snatched it out before the whole thing got wet and gingerly carried it into the theatre by a dry corner. The poor ushers, though, had no idea and grabbed the whole thing with both hands. At least the ticket had  fallen in freshly flushed water… (Apparently I have problems with theatre restrooms. Like that time I dropped my wallet down a crevasse when I went to see “Mary Poppins” at the New Amsterdam Theatre.)

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”? I really enjoyed the show, and it was a treat to see a star perform in a classic play. The set was also gorgeous, and they did a fantastic job using the lighting to show evening progress into a stormy night.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

There’s something new around here… Restroom ratings have arrived!

I got a new job over the summer…sort of. I sit in the same desk; I’m on the same team (albeit with a new name); I have the same boss. But things at work are different — and it’s not just the fact that I now eat homemade peanut butter at lunch instead of the store-bought natural stuff. A former internal / employee communications queen, these days, I’ve switched gears to focus on external stuff, especially a whole new-ish field of content marketing. I’m so jazzed up about this stuff that I spent hours researching content marketing during the holiday downtime, and I figured a good place to start was with my own blog.

When I started the Porcelain Press in 2011, some readers suggested that I add restroom ratings to each post. I was generally opposed, partly because I didn’t know how to do something fancy like that in WordPress, but mostly because I didn’t care about letting people know how bathrooms ranked on a cleanliness scale. After reviewing more than 250 restrooms, though, I realized that I’ve developed my own subconscious restroom rating system, and I can converse — quite eloquently, I like to think — about the pros and cons of each bathroom I visit, relative to all of the others I’ve seen during the past two years. Time to formalize a restroom rating system.

So, this past weekend, I put my research hat back on and figured out how to add a rating system in WordPress (you’ll now notice stars at the bottom of each post), and then I sat at my dining room table for at least six hours, adding a restroom rating to every post. You can learn more about how the Porcelain Press restroom rating system works here; it will help you understand what, in my eyes, makes a bathroom one of the best, and how restrooms compare to one another. From that page, you can also access lists that break down all of my restroom posts by the number of stars they received.

I’m super excited about this new part of the Porcelain Press and hope you are, too. Add a comment to let me know what you think!

Top 5 NYC Restrooms of 2012

It’s that time of year: time to make recap lists. Here are my favorite NYC restrooms that I visited in 2012:

1. Alice’s Tea Cup (Chapter 1):  I love “Alice in Wonderland,” I love tea and I love a good NYC restroom – what’s not to love about this bathroom, covered with Alice paintings?
2. Réunion: I felt like I walked into a movie when I entered Réunion, and the beachy restroom kept that up, making me feel like I was on stage at “South Pacific.”
3. Ace Hotel / The Breslin: In addition to being generally awesome, this NYC restroom also wins for “longest journey to the bathroom” and “best positive declarations.” And did I mention The Breslin serves the best French fries in NYC (thrice-cooked does the trick!).
4. Trailer Park: Thanks to lots of pink and lots of flamingos, this NYC restroom wins the award for “over-the-top tacky, but it works”
5. The Bell House: Despite being in dingy Gowanus, Brooklyn, they take bathroom graffiti to whole new level of class here, with shiny concrete walls and only certain areas open to patron “artwork” and musings.

Plus my favorite restrooms “abroad”:

• El Vez: The restroom at this Philadelphia restroom featured dark blue curtains, photo booth castoffs and a white plastic couch – you wouldn’t expect these to work together, but they do.
• Mondrian South Beach: Like Las Vegas, Miami does everything a little bigger, a little louder and a little flashier. This bathroom is no exception.
• Grand Wailea, Guest Room: This bathroom is bigger than my bedroom in NYC, and I miss it terribly – it was gorgeous and relaxing, with a toilet room, a glass shower and a tub. Every now and again, I use some of the honey mango lotion I brought home to take me back to Maui…

And, of course, thanks to everyone who reads the Porcelain Press, whether it’s every time I post, or every now and again when you need a good chuckle. I appreciate it more than you know, and it’s because of you that I’ve reached a whopping 120,000 total hits. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Happy new year to all of you, and may we have no lousy public restroom experiences in 2013.

(Check back here to see my top 5 list from 2011.)

Metropolitan Opera

I’m mostly a Broadway girl, but I’ll go off the overly glittery, tourist-beaten path if I can get inexpensive tickets for plays, ballets, operas — you name it, if it’s a show, I want to see it. When the Metropolitan Opera performed Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” this season, at the same time that Opera was in town for auditions, it seemed like the right time to buy nosebleed “Family Circle” tickets at one of the world’s most famous opera houses.

Operas are a bajillion hours long, so I headed to the restroom before the curtain rose. The Met is a gorgeous building inside and out, and the red velvet-covered entrance to the ladies’ room gives you the wrong impression of what you’ll find within: the restroom is blah, with little to break the monotony of cream, white and stainless steel. The toilet stall frames are made of granite, which is fancy, but they all look a bit dated. The only sparks of color were a red cushion on a white chair in the sink area and a spread of programs on a counter near the entrance.

Parts of “Don Giovanni” were laugh-out-loud funny, even though I had to read the lyrics on the little subtitle screen on the railing in front of my seat, and the Mozart score was, naturally, excellent. Still, watching a 3.5-hour opera on a Wednesday evening is a bit rough — I cannot deny that I fell asleep during some of the boring, endless chick songs in the second act. I think I’ll stick with plays and musicals for the most part.

Rating: [rating=2]

Banana Republic (16th and 5th)

One of the worst things about NYC life is going shopping…and being out all day…and either dehydrating yourself or really, really, really having to go to the bathroom really, really, really badly, with no public restrooms in sight. Enter, Banana Republic — not sure how many of their stores have public restrooms, but the 16th Street and 5th Avenue location is a great place to stop if nature calls while you’re updating your wardrobe.

Retail stores don’t often have bathrooms that are open to the public, and when they do, I expect them to be gross (like at nearby Barnes & Noble, where I had to go once when Banana Republic’s bathroom was out of order). The one at this Banana Republic, though, is pretty near gorgeous, with a light gray entrance decorated with a black-and-white abstract piece of art depicting several amorphous, overlapping rings. Inside, white brick-like tiles line the walls, and the floor has an intricate black-and-white pattern. What I really like is the sink, which has a circular bowl surrounded by a rectangle, and the faucet is off to one side rather than dead center above the sink. If someone ever asked me, “What would a Banana Republic bathroom look like?” I think this sleek, monochromatic number is very similar to the image that would come into my mind.

Thank you, Banana Republic, for making shopping much more pleasant — because sometimes the need to go trumps the need to buy clothes.

Rating: [rating=2]

92nd Street Y

One of my 2012 New Year’s resolutions was to take an art class, so I signed up for a basic drawing at the 92nd Street Y (at Lexington).

For offering countless creative courses, the Y’s restroom was an unexpected snoozefest. Plain white tile with a row of turquoise. A vintage, tulip-shaped votive. A coat rack. The only sign of art was hand-sketches figures marking the men’s and women’s rooms, and a folded up table in the hallway, splattered with paint. Another thrilling feature? The first time I used the restroom, someone ha shortly before “lost their lunch” there (I first heard that phrase as a small child at an amusement park when my favorite ride — the Scrambler — was temporarily shut down; I was convinced someone had literally left a ham sandwich in a brown bag).

I didn’t learn as much in my art class as I’d hoped (partly because we got gypped out of a class because of Hurricane Sandy), so I’m still torn about the 92nd Street Y. I did acquire a love for drawing with charcoal and enjoyed trying my hand with ink. Overall, I think it was worth it.

Restroom Rating: [rating=1]