Comments

1
The Stranger's solution: "go to someone that advertises with us!!"
2
Q did this years ago...
3
@1 Hey Shillary, Optimism Brewery is not a Stranger advertiser.
4
I wish all bathrooms were as nice as Optimism's. I hate stalls where there are cracks to peer through and 3/4 doors to look over and under. Gimme some privacy!
5
I may never understand why it is that Americans have come to accept bathroom "stalls" that provide minimal privacy. In many other countries' public restrooms, Optimism's style of enclosed mini-rooms is the norm.

None of this, however, explains why Optimism is seemingly on a quest to serve nothing but similar-tasting straw-colored beers. I saw their "flavor pallette" sessions one afternoon, but man, there isn't a lot of diversity on that beer menu.
6
I am all for the enclosed room. It makes illicit sex much easier. Not that I would know anything about that.
7
Went to a fancy schmancy club recently with a similar setup, only imagine it at Liberace's house (I wish I could find a picture, it really was something).
Of course the solution is individual, unisex stalls; which is to say the solution is space and money.
8
The Starbucks Roastery has the same setup, and pretty sure Mezcaleria Oaxaca has a communal sink, though separate stall sides.
9
Still seems sleazy, not of polite society.
10
@9???? Sharing a sink??? WTF is wrong with you?
11
Chix dig urinals
12
"As a mom, the baby-changing table is always in the women's restroom and never in the men's restroom," Gilmore says. "And so we were like, we're putting it in the generic restroom and now everyone can change their babies' diapers!"

Actually, that's not true. Baby changing tables or "Koalas" are in men's rooms in some venues for example, Safeco Field. And while I think from the photos this establishment's rest room show a pleasing design for "unisex" or non-gender specific toilets, the idea is not original. I'm for them but it's hardly innovative.
14
@12, I agree - as a dad who's changed a bazzilion diapers while out and about, I have generally not had a problem finding changing tables in men's rooms. I can't speak to bars, but actually I thought babies weren't allowed in bars. Maybe I'm thinking of another state?
16
By the way, couldn't this system be simplified even more by having some sort of "urilet" or "toilinol" (urinal + toilet), combining the benefits of both urinal and toilet into one object? Hasn't such a thing already been invented?
17
@#12. Ditto everything. Our "babies" are now in their late twenties, but even back in the diapers era for us changing table in mens restrooms were nearly ubiquitous.
I have seen this toilet room idea around the world and in the US for years. Perhaps it is slow to catch on because it makes so much sense.
@#16. Many have tried to develop and sell a women's urinal, with total market failure. Google it. I was involved in a stadium renovation project where dozens and dozens of these things were ripped out and replaced with standard toilet stalls in the women's rooms. It is more of a cultural issue than a product design issue.
18
Seeing how women are unable to use the urinals, the word "urinal" necessarily = "MEN".

Triggered.
19
@18 I've seen a chick use a urinal before... Hard to un-see something like that.

@16 Yeah... if only guys could shit and/or piss in the same receptacle... you would think that a standard toilet could be modified to be peed into from a standing position... Guess that's impossible though.
20
@17, I was thinking not so much about a women's urinal (I've seen pictures of those before) but a toilet that somehow just goes straight up in back, so it can either be sat upon, or peed into.

@19 I obviously know that you can piss into a standard toilet. If that were the only issue, there'd be no reason for this bar to have urinals. Presumably the added the urinals so people don't piss all over the toilets seats. What I'm envisioning would be the best of both worlds. Quick, if that's what you need, clean, and sit-uponable.
21
At SEAF this year, they relabeled the default "men's" & "women's" bathrooms with big signs that said:
Toilets & Urinals
. . . and . . .
Toilets & Mirrors

You could take your pick depending on what you needed. Worked a treat.

This whole 'gendered' bathroom thing is kinda weird anyway, if you think about it.
22
@20
I was a bit snark heavy there (sorry). I get where you're going. I've thought that the way to deal with the toilet seat piss splatter problem would be to put it on a spring loaded hinge so that if its not held down by someone sitting on it, it automatically goes up. Ladies will have to learn to put the seat down... Reversing an age old battle. But it'll be a clean seat.
23
@21. I agree. I guess I can see why a pee shy straight guy might go into crisis at an open urinal with a woman doing her makeup in the mirror next to him, but that's not the fear being bandied about... It's that men will hang out in women's rooms... Doesn't the private stuff in a women's room happen alone in a stall already??? Does the pro segregation crowd think women strip naked upon entering a rest room???

I say put all the shit/piss recepticals in thier own cozy booth with a lock on the door and stop worrying about who's doing what in the booth next door much less at the sink.
24
@5: I think it has to do with the history of previous moral panics. In the past the fear wasn't that people would peep at each other, it was that people would get up to no good (sex, drugs, sex with drugs) in the privacy of an enclosed stall. Making them partly open removed enough privacy to allay that fear. It's also easier to clean stalls that don't reach the floor.

In my middle school they'd gone a step further and removed all the stall doors.
25
As a transgender person, I think that this might be an idea that's nice on paper but not so great in real life. I think that any bathroom design that does not give women the opportunity to get away from men is a flawed one. Bathrooms have long been the refuge of women escaping the bad behavior of men, and while I realize that there are individual stalls, it's a very different situation if that guy has the option of standing outside your tiny stall until you come out. And, just on a fairly insignificant but still relevant note, realistically, you know that this is just going to give guys the chance to totally hose down 100% of the toilets with pee rather than just 50%. :-p
26
So...when a guy needs to change a diaper or poop, he can just walk into this bathroom where ladies are. I can't be the only one feeling HORRIBLY uncomfortable by the idea of changing a pad with a man in the next stall can I? When I was young and still getting used to my period, it was acutely embarrassing to deal with those problems with only women around me, let alone men. NO. Just no.
27
@26: This restroom is in a bar, which means anyone changing a pad there has been menstruating for at least six and as many as eleven years. Does "getting used to" it take longer than that?
28
@25 I worked as a janitor for 10 years, and I can assure you that women "hose down" (and clog) more toilets than men.

And to your first point, if a man is following a woman into the bathroom and standing outsid her stall, she should probably get away from that guy, and maybe even call the police.
29
It's a good start, but why not save space and have one trough urinal in one large WC/oversize stall?

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