So it’s time to take a second away from our regularly scheduled programming of catching up on bathrooms I reviewed last year, and visit something on the local news this morning. I don’t have any pictures, because I haven’t been there (and according to the story, which you can find here, I wouldn’t want to). You’ll see that I did grab a picture off MapQuest, the bathrooms are (based on the news report and video) the white building to the left and just below the red star).

Apparently they were built in 1972 and haven’t really been maintained; they’ve become an eyesore…the womens’ bathroom is boarded up and the men’s is supposed to be pretty bad. You can watch the video on the link, but based on what I saw, the bathrooms at the Guadalupe River Park in San Jose were worse. Although the smell in Nevada City may be worse—and as I recall, I never saw anyone use the ones in San Jose either (besides myself, but when your stomach tells you you’re down for the count, you probably oughta listen).

I found it interesting that it’s only $10,000 to rebuild the bathrooms but $15,000 to repair them…the Nevada City City Council decided tonight what was going to happen to the restrooms…so of course I downloaded the minutes (find them here; the date you’re looking for is January 28, 2010…you can watch the video if you prefer).  It turned out the answer wasn’t in the minutes, so I attempted to watch the video…but that didn’t work for me either (I assume it’s a 64-bit thing), so I still don’t know what the resolution was.

Based on the evidence in the news article, I have to give this bathroom just a roll…after all, reporter Ron Jones said the one open bathroom smelled terrible, and the other one is boarded up. Since one bathroom has been put out of use due to faulty pipes I’ll rate it slightly less than Guadalupe River Park even though the homeless in the area refused to use those…

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Wow…

…and not the good kind of “wow,” either.

Sure, I’ve been in worse bathrooms.

First the pluses…the park is pretty nice from what I could tell (admittedly I had to rush through…I was looking for a bathroom, it was hot, and the ol’ insides were not happy ), right across from the HP Pavilion in San Jose (we were there for Strikeforce’s Carano vs. Cyborg…great night of fights).  The small portion of the park was pretty normal, there was a family having a kid’s birthday (or I assumed it was) and were grilling something or other (smelled great…thankfully ) on the provided barbecue stations. I thought it was pretty cool they provided stations (or maybe they were grilling with a portable grill?…not 100% sure). There were other people scattered about as well…seemed like everyone was pretty relaxed (which might be expected for a park setting ). I wasn’t even sure they were gonna have bathrooms, when lo and behold…I saw a sign pointing to my left with that magic word (it sure seemed magic at the time…I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming)…”Restrooms.”

I figured they were in a publicly used park and wouldn’t be in great shape, and you know what? I was right!

If clean and well-stocked, the bathroom would have been pretty nice. However…they were out of toilet paper (at least they had seat covers) and apparently no one thinks to dispose of said seat covers in the toilet…I think 4 out of 5 preferred the floor. Carefully making my way around the piles of used seat covers, I took care of business and hightailed it out of the stall…only to discover they didn’t have soap, either. Okay, no biggie, the doors will open in an hour (turned out to be an hour and about 35 minutes), at least I can rinse my hands and dry them off. WRONG! There was water, I had to dry my hands on my pants…oh well, at least they were mostly clean.

I thought it was also interesting that the stall had a urinal and a standard toilet in there (both stainless steel), and no lock on the door. There was a second outside the stall, so I’m not really sure why there’s both in the stall…still haven’t figured that one out. There was lots of open space, I assume to keep it smelling as pleasant as possible, and the design was really pretty cool (with an entire wall made of glass bricks). I wish I had gotten pictures but truth be told, I didn’t think about starting this blog until after I had used this one (in fact, this bathroom is why I decided to write this blog). Trust me…it’s better for all of us that I didn’t get pictures inside the stall. The bathroom gets a bonus half-point for the design and use of non-porous stainless steel instead of porcelain (and a black seat on the toilet…I don’t think anyone would have wanted white).

I got back in line only to find out from another group there that some bums had used the trees the night before at the weigh-ins. Yay!

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