Let me, for the benefit to  start by saying if I were to be labelled a “fanboy” of anything…Mercedes-Benz would be one I’d be close to being guilty of. Exotic cars in general, but Mercedes has a special pull for me…I’m not sure if it’s my German heritage crying out to me or just something about them…I couldn’t put my finger on it, but hey, they make some pretty cool cars. Anyway…disclaimer aside, here goes… (btw…I was here 2/23/2010)

This has literally gotta be one of the coolest bathrooms I’ve ever been in. If it were in a Honda or VW or Ford or Kia or any other car dealer (despite Honda’s near-stellar reputation, I’m not a fan…I like Ford trucks, their now-defunct Excursion, and they did probably the best job of any company of renewing the retro side of the pony car-era with the new Mustang…VW owns Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Bugatti, so there’s some love there, and truthfully, although it took me a while, I like the New Beetle…I still wish it were a rear-engine configuration, but oh well)…I would feel exactly the same. No joke…this bathroom is cool! The first thing you notice when you walk in is the TV screens built into the mirror (see picture #5) and right above the urinal (see picture #1). I’m not sure if there are TV screens in the stalls, I didn’t check. Ironically, as you can see in pictures 4 and 5, the channel was on CNN, where James Lentz, President of Toyota USA, was discussing before a Senate panel the issues Toyota was having with sticking accelerators (some of those stories turned out to be fake). Finally, in pictures 6 and 7, you can see the sink they had in there. I tried to capture how the thing worked in picture #7, but it didn’t come out very well…anyway, there are no sinks per se. This is a solid slab of granite sloping toward the mirror, with a trough running behind it that collects the waste water and soap. The sink heads are automated and start when you put your hands under them (pretty standard).

For all the cool stuff in this bathroom, I’m giving it four-and-a-half rolls. “But, Bathroom Guy,” you might be asking yourself, “why only four-and-a-half? Why not five?” Let me tell ya, pardner! I’ve seen some amazing bathrooms on the web and in person (for some reason more when I was a kid than now…hmm). Although this bathroom is really cool, it can’t compare to the bathrooms in the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo for orginiality or design, and as I remember them, some of them are five-roll bathrooms).

Rating:

If you’ve never been to John’s Incredible Pizza, and there’s one near you, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. When you do go, you must try their Spicy Peanut Butter Pizza…it sounds weird, but it’s fantastic. John’s has games, rides (yep, a mini-roller coaster, a bouncy-up-and-down dealio, and bumper cars!). Disclaimer: John’s is not paying me to push their site or restaurants, nor are they advertising through BathroomGoodies.com—it’s a cool place overall and I gotta use up space. Warning: employees over-use the word “incredible”—it’s funny for a while, gets old, then gets funny again (because it’s so overused)…but that might just be me.

To the bathroom!

On a side note, I’m like two days late with this…got caught up in being so busy over the Labor Day weekend…

As you can tell by the entrance photo, it’s not just a dull white bathroom. I like the black and blue-gray tiles, and the fire alarm is a nice touch (and probably required for some code or other). They keep the bathrooms well-stocked with soap and paper towels, and from a previous pre-BathroomGoodies.com visit, toilet paper and toilet seat covers as well.

The particular urinal depicted here is kinda strange…I tried to capture it better but my ability is limited by the technology (my Instinct) and my minimal ability to take photos. In the second photo you can kinda see a trash can right next to the urinal, which is all by itself, instead of hanging out with the other urinals it’s right next to the stalls…as you walk in the door, there’s a trash can (for convenience and privacy, maybe) and then the urinal. Seems to me they were pushing for one…last…urinal! Looks like the squeeze-one-last-urinal mission was a success.

3.5-roll rating for an above-average bathroom using color and tile design, plus the success of the last-urinal-standing mission (I think it might be lonely without friends though). Incredible work guys!

Rating:

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!

Rating: