The Loo

I'll use the British convention for bathroom in the title. It makes bathroom sound so much cuter. The OED tells us the origin of loo is "unknown, mid-20th (1930 -1969) century, a water closet, lavatory." It does sound so very British.

Years ago there was a book I got several copies of, "The Toilets of New York."
The slim paperback has the longest sub-title I've ever come across: "A Handy Guide to the Best (and the Worst) Public and Semi-Public Relief Stations for those with a Need to Know. Includes Walking and Trotting Maps."

The book is useful, if not by now a bit dated. It's a 1990 publication compiled by Ken Eichenbaum that I've never seen an update to. And sine 1990 is sufficiently long enough ago that it predates the Internet, it also predates apps. The information you could gain from an app as to where to go is invaluable in time of need. And it could be generated by your phone's GPS, with advertising of course. Someone should be onto something.

I got the book as a gag gift, and apparently gave it to some co-workers who were leaving. One of those co-workers, my good friend Lady M., happened to be at my surprise birthday party the other night and reminded me about the book I gave her when I came out of the men's room at the restaurant and told any of the male attendees that they had to use the bathroom; I'd never seen anything like it. I described it for the females.

I've written about loos before. Everyone can understand a bathroom. In my kindergarten days at P.S. 22 in Flushing I distinctly remember the Kindergarten kids had their own bathroom. It was a toilet, not a urinal in a bit of an alcove. I also remember that there was a partition, but if you stood back far enough the teacher could still see the back of you doing your thing. (Even as kids in Kindergarten, boys liked to see how far they could stand back and still hit their mark.)

I remember making the motion of lifting the seat before taking my wee. And I remember the teacher, a woman, telling the rest of the kids in line that if you're a boy you should always lift the seat. It's a courtesy for the girls. She didn't say anything about putting the seat back down, so until I was married and subsequently lectured by my wife, (many, many times) I never put the seat back down. Bathrooms can cause such emotional harm.

I remember being with my boss on a business trip to a client in Pittsburgh and while we were waiting for our meeting to start he took a call from his wife. It was not an emergency of any kind, but after the call he told me Laurie wanted him to talk to with Danny or Shamus, perhaps both, that they should take better care of where they peed. Their aim has to improve. Since I had two girls I told him we don't have to have that conversation in our house.

So, what was so special about the men's room at the restaurant Del Frisco's in Huntington, New York at the Walt Whitman shopping mall?

There were two urinals, one a little lower for the younger lads, but both with a rectangular grating over drains where your feet would stand. I'd never seen that before. Thus, the misses and the drips would hit the drain and not leave the next user standing in a puddle or spray of where you were.

This is unique. And since Del Frisco's is in several cities, my wonder is naturally are all their bathrooms built to these specs?

The urinals at P.J. Clarke's have already been mentioned in a prior post, but what I always found interesting is that once P.J. Clarke's was expanded to other locations they still kept the original urinal design. Thus, when I went to a P.J.'s in Chicago and a P.J.'s near Lincoln Center, there were the same sarcophagi porcelain fixtures that looked like upturned bathtubs. Imagine, the urinal is part of your brand's image.

So, someday I might find myself in the Del Frisco's near Rockefeller Center and I'll get to check out the bathroom. Perhaps it will fall to me to update 'The Toilets of New York.'

I'm ready to serve my fellow man.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com