This is going to be super-quick. I hazz no time. So, I’ll just get to the point, ask my question, and let you guys take it from there. Sound good? Good.
A few days ago I went into the men’s room at the Wendy’s near my house. I try not to use public restrooms, on account of the the awkwardness and the shit mist that hangs in the air. But sometimes you’ve just gotta let the piss pony run. Right?
So, I went in there and was instantly reminded of that bathroom’s ludicrous configuration. It’s a small room, weirdly-shaped, and there’s a sink and one stall. But inside that stall are both a toilet and a urinal. So… how’s that supposed to work? Two dudes go in there and engage both pieces of hardware simultaneously, behind a locked door? That’s too weird to even contemplate. Who thought of this layout??
Thankfully nobody else was in there, and I was able to complete my urination equestrian event without incident. But it got me to thinking about the worst public bathrooms I’ve encountered in my life. A few notables jump to mind.
I’ve been in multiple situations where there are no individual urinals, just a big open bathtub-like trough against the wall. So, you have to sidle up to that thing, and pee shoulder-to-shoulder with some stranger. It’s horrendous. Maybe I’m the weird one, but I don’t want to urinate with a bunch of other dudes… wangs out, with the very real possibility of friendly-fire splashback.
The worst such situation was in an old stadium somewhere. I can’t remember where… It was an old place, built during the early part of the 20th Century, it feels like. And they had a big circular piss-catcher in the middle of the floor. There was water running through it, continuously. But what kind of freak thought of this?? You not only have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder like the bathtub thing I described above, but you’re also standing across from some other guy with his schlong extracted from his trousers. It’s unbelievable! It’s as if they invented it with maximum lack of privacy as their goal.
What do you have on this? I’ve also been in bathrooms that were laid out OK but trashed. Like the one in the basement of a rock club in North Carolina. The men’s room was just a big room with a toilet, two or three urinals, and no dividers whatsoever. I walked in there one time and a guy was attempting to take a dump in the toilet, and he was right there. The seat had long ago been wrenched off and was gone forever. So, he was attempting to hover above it and barely able to keep his balance. I think I audibly reacted to that terrible scene, and so did he as I walked through the door. Ugh.
And I remember the bathroom at a ZZ Top/Loverboy show a million years ago, at the Charleston Civic Center. I went in there and it was loaded with drunken hooting hillbillies urinating into anything that was even mildly toilet-suggestive. That included all of the sinks, the trash cans, old beer cups, and the drain in the middle of the floor. People were just pissing everywhere, and it sounded like Niagara Falls in that room. It’s obvious at this point that I’ll be scarred for life.
What do you have on this subject? Please use the comments to fill us in.
And before I sign off, here’s your link to the Thursday podcast episode. And this is the summary:
In this one, I go against my own advice and tell you about a weird dream I had involving a cigarette-smoking 1970s TV star, a job interview that took a surprising turn at the end, my new 256-gigabyte memory card and thoughts about my first computer, which had a 1.3-gigabyte hard drive. I also tell you about my triumphant return to KFC and reveal the Whistle Dick of the Week. Enjoy!
Have yourselves a great weekend, my friends!
I’ll be back on Monday.
Now playing in the bunker
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First…
Uritrottoir
and a gas station in rural Colorado that was such a hellscape I just pissed at the side of the road instead
Wasn’t there a video making the rounds at some point that showed drunk bros sliding across one of those stadium piss troughs?
yes, it is at Wrigley in Chicago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7w24-J9aWA
Strange, while these ‘troughs’ are disgusting, I’ve never really had any trouble with it, I just whip it out, do my business and move on. I just try to melt as much ice as I can (usually they pour ice in the massive urinals to help keep the smell down).
‘Scuse Me While I Whip This Out
Several years ago, we stopped at a McDonald’s in New Stanton, PA to get a coffee and take a pee. The men’s restroom was unbelievable, clogged up over-flowing toilet, poop smeared on the wall, puddles on the floor, broken mirror, garbage all over the floor, grime (mold?) in all of the corners, a thousand flies, smelled horrible. Obviously, nobody had cleaned up in there for many days, if ever.
I walked up to the counter and cut to the front of the line, all teenagers and one older fat woman working behind the counter. I asked the fat woman if she was the manager. She turned towards me, and answered yes with a big smile on her face. I proceeded to tell her (very loudly) that this was the dirtiest restaurant I had ever seen, that I should immediately call the health department, that I would not buy food in here to feed a stray dog, and that she was a lazy pig, and announced that her house probably looked the same way, and that she should be ashamed of herself. My tirade probably lasted about a full minute at maximum volume.
I am quite sure that every person in that restaurant heard me clearly. When I finished my professional bitch session, you could have heard a pin drop in there. Even the kitchen staff was standing at attention with their mouths hanging open.
The look on her face was priceless, the look of horror and embarrassment and shame. When I walked out of the place, every person in line (maybe 15 or 20 people) followed me right out the door.
Normally, when I temporarily lose my shit, my wife reminds me to calm down and not act like a maniac. That time, she did not utter a word about it to me, like it never happened.
Cmon man, you didn’t get THAT on You Tube??? I would pay for that sucka!!
I’m positive the old Cleveland Stadium used to have one (probably many, actually) of those circular piss-catchers that you describe. It was the early 90s and I was in high school, but I distinctly remember being in the exact situation that you described with lots of awkward eye contact and unintentional, yet unavoidable, schlong views. There was probably some splashing too.
Worst public bathroom I’ve ever encountered? Nothing leaps immediately to mind, but if I begin to think of a colossal pile of steaming and festering feces; my mind immediately arrives at Orrin Hatch.
I’ll take your Orrin Hatch and raise you one Robert Byrd (KKK leader).
As an avid road tripper, I’ve seen many nasty terlets and bathrooms. Most of the time, I just stop off in the middle of nowhere and take a piss, and save the shit for my destination. But sometimes nature calls and you gotta go.
Worst I can recall is at a small taco place called “Mi Taco” in Montclair, CA (or Upland, near the 10). Stopped in for a delicious taco burger, and got the taco shits. Ran to the back (needed a key since it was accessible only from the outside) and it was absolutely vile. Literal shit smeared on all the walls, no toilet seat, no toilet paper, and reeked of something god awful. Ended up going to a supermarket nearby, and barely made it. Place shut down soon afterwards…I wonder why.
Next up would be one of the very few public restrooms left in the NYC subway system, at a stop in Brooklyn. Walked in, was humid and stunk of high shit, and when I opened a stall there was a homeless guy bundled up in layers (summertime, btw) sleeping in the stall next to a shitty toilet. I left him undisturbed, and went to street level and found a supermarket (see a trend?)
Went to a dive bar in a small town that had the trough style urinal. Some change was in there so it was a bit amusing moving the assorted coins around with the stream. A few beers later, I went for a second visit and the quarters were gone.
I guess none of us has visited The Worst Toilet In Scotland.
The one I encountered in Colorado was basically that. It is seared in my memory.
Holy shit this was literally and figuratively the funniest post I’ve ever read. Brilliance for reals mothrtfucker.
I have no idea why dick jokes are funny and shit stories are shit, and I haven’t time to think about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL4c9gCRSKY
Fenway park has one of those long horse feeding trough type urinals. Nice seeing an entire row of dangling weiners.
I can’t say this was the worse restroom, but certainly the most unusual (I’ve obviously lived a sheltered life after reading the previous comments). There’s a public restroom in Darling Harbor in Sydney where one entire wall (maybe 20 feet long) is a big ground-level trough. You stand on a metal grating that is set a couple of inches above the ground, and the pee runs down the wall and drains off to the side. Makes you feel like pissing in the shower. It was actually quite pretty though, with a colorful mosaic covering the wall and the occasional “flush” when water would be released down the wall. Luckily no on else was in there, so I took some pictures to show my wife. It was the first public restroom that I had used upon arriving, so I was terrified that they would all be like this. Fortunately, the rest of Australia had “normal” restrooms.
When the “new” Mountaineer Stadium in Morgantown was first built, it had those long troughs for the guys. I haven’t been there for a while, so I don’t know if they are still there. When I was 10, my parents took me to Europe for a vacation. We drove all over Europe. At one restaurant, I don’t remember where, I went to the men’s room to drain the lily. and there wasn’t a speck of porcelain in the place. There was a hole in the middle of the floor , and that was it.
At Whitefish Mountain Resort there is a bar called “The Bierstube” that is awesome for communion (beer) after a great day of skiing. The bathroom there has a sink that is 5 feet off of the ground so people would stop pissing in it.
Not really a WORST bathroom story, but here goes: I went to one of the Farm-Aid all day shows some years back, and they had one of those big industrial stainless steel troughs against the wall in the men’s room, for mass urination. It was crowded as hell, with some guys even peeing into the drain holes in the middle of the floor. The ladies’ room situation must have been much worse. The lines for them were so intolerably long that a lot of women were coming into the men’s room, and backing up to the trough to relieve themselves. Of course, a gentleman always makes room for a lady at the piss trough. All present were well into a day of beer drinking, so the mood was quite convivial all around.
Gravity toilet on top of Independence Pass, CO.
Big hut with a solar powered fan.
I always wonder which direction my wizz went, I was on top of the Continental Divide..
Michigan stadium (go Blue), used to have a long, double sided tank trough with a short wall runing down the middle that you’d pee onto. So you’d be taking a whiz and looking across was some dude looking into your eyes. Weird as hell.
My guess is that your giant circular piss-catching bowl was designed by a WWII vet who had experienced the most grisly depravity, desperation, and destruction ever known to man, and who upon hearing about your delicate sensibilities would question everything he had fought for.
That’s just my guess though.
Okay, here we go:
1. Murrayfield (Edinburgh, Scotland), before any renovations – mid 1970’s. After standing for 2 hours to watch Scotland’s national rugby team beat Tonga 55-4, I needed to pee bigtime (2 bottles of Bulmer’s Cider and counting). The toilets were on the perimeter of the standing room only terraced stadium. I encountered concrete huts with an entrance on the right and an exit on the left, and a long line of anxious Scotsmen. Once inside, you were confronted with a trough that was literally dug out from the ground up against the far wall. No ceramic, no aluminum, no sinks (!), just a trough dug in the earth. And this was the country’s major sports stadium. Lined up with my cohorts, I did my business and exited stage left. Once outside, I noticed the dugout continued with everyone’s pee right out the stadium main doors into the central sewer system. It smelled just as you might imagine.
2. Again mid-70’s, a disco in Zurich’s night life district at 2 am. No sit-down crappers in the men’s room, only two stand-up urinals absolutely full of cigarette butts (more than 300 of them) and overflowing with piss. I had to work hard not to gag.
3. Mid 90’s. Basement of GUM department store in Moscow, Russia, near Red Square. Exact replica of the worst toilet in Scotland from Trainspotting. After pissing I came out and told my Russian host that the toilet had not been cleaned since the Bolshevik revolution. He went in after me and when he emerged he said “I will not challenge your statement.”
Makes me think of a sign on a urinal in Scotland. “Please don’t dispose of your cigarette butts in the urinal, it makes them soggy and hard to light”
We were walking the trail to mirror lake in Yosemite and they have these ‘long drop’ toilet cabins dotted around. My wife was caught short and went to go, opening the door to see a large rattler curled up asleep on the rim of the seat, obviously basking in the hear generated by a previous tenant!
Suffice to say she didn’t dwell, but lost the urge and fled!
Dayton, Ohio. The whole town is a shithole (expect for Wright Patterson air force base).