Back on the Bog Again
- T.J. Smith
- Jun 8, 2020
- 3 min read
Hello, Crappers!
I promise that it's all downhill from here with the consistency of my posts since I've now graduated!
A disclaimer before we start: all over the world, public toilets are closed due to the risk of them spreading the novel coronavirus that's ravaging the world right now. New Zealand will be back to some semblance of normality as of midnight tonight but I still don't recommend going on a Toilet Trek around NZ. Most of these reviews will be from my backlog of bookshops and toilets I've saved up since my last post. Be safe!
Now that the serious part is done, what have we today?
Did you know that some of the Washington DC Metro stations have public toilets? Me neither! And honestly I wish I'd never found out!
Introducing the public toilet at Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Station.
Oh yes, she's a beauty.
Right off the bat, I had to beg the guy running the kiosk to let me into the loo. They did have a sign saying they had a public toilet but I couldn't find it for the life of me. I was in the middle of nowhere Maryland, I was desperate and I had a forty minute drive ahead of me. According to the guy in the kiosk, they weren't actually supposed to let people into the toilet (why they had a signposted toilet then, I don't know). Lucky for me, this guy was really nice and told me that, although he wasn't supposed to abandon his post or, in fact, allow me access to the advertised toilet, he'd do me a favour. Thank God, right?
Wrong. There was no God here. As I followed him down a dingy concrete hallway, past what looked to be the staff's break room, a collection of their lockers, and the cleaning supplies for the station to a locked door labelled "customer restroom", my bladder said yay but my mind said oh hell fucking no. I think shoddy is the wrong word for this set up. If public toilets got high school superlatives, this one would easily win "Most likely to be the set of the slasher film."
But I was desperate so I thanked the guy and he went back to his kiosk and I locked myself into what looked to be the location for the first Saw movie. The door did lock thankfully. Small victories. I went about my business and I can safely say that I've never felt more exposed while peeing. This room was way too big to be a single stall. Nothing makes the old detrusor muscle have a flying fit like sitting on the bog in a tiled, poorly lit room the size of my dorm room deep in the secret catacombs of a DC Metro Station.
As you can probably guess from the picture, I had a lot of questions about this whole situation. Why were there two toilets with literally nothing between them? Why are the sinks completely different and why does one look like a converted bidet (the one closest to the camera in the picture)? Why was the toilet touted as public when it was through a locked door in the secret staff catacombs of the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Station? Why was that where they decided to store the buckets of de-icing salt? Why did they even have de-icing salt in the middle of summer?
Surprisingly enough, it was a relatively clean public toilet. There were a couple of suspicious puddles on the floor as well as the dirty buckets of de-icing salt in the corner but the room was so ridiculously large that those were easily avoided. There was soap in the dispenser, the door locked and I didn't have to sit next to anyone despite the double toilet situation. My only issue with the functionality of the whole affair was that the bidet-like sink was not at all effectively and sprayed water everywhere.
So thank you to Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Station for having a public toilet. That's a low bar but honestly, in America, it's one that's rarely met. If the DC Metro wants some pointers on how to make their public toilet not look and feel like a murder dungeon, I'm more than willing to help. In conclusion, not my worst experience but still wouldn't recommend.
Happy crapping, folks!
