Mmmm…Hof Brau! Honestly, I had never been to a Hof Brau before, but I tell you I can’t wait to go back. It seems like it was years since I visited (in actuality, it was 5/6/2010…a post-Cinco de Mayo meal…and since I’ve been really bad about eating breakfast lately, that’s dead on…it was a post-Cinco meal!). The restaurant itself is warm and inviting, dark and decorated in a deep red and rich dark woods, with photos of the area on the walls. You can get an idea of the restaurant’s look and feel by the first picture in the series (a slight deviation from my norm, but I didn’t get a good “entrance” picture…and I like to mix it up to keep the excitement levels high with my readers!) I had a pastrami sandwich on a kaiser roll—I’d never had thick-sliced pastrami before, but it was goooood. I also had some mashed potatoes and cottage cheese…both were good and fresh. My eating companions had corned beef with mashed potatoes and vegetables and a corned beef sandwich with mashed potatoes…the potatoes were a hit! The restaurant was pretty full, not too shabby for having missed the 12 PM lunch crowd.

So onto the bathroom…to be honest, I expected something as grandiose as the restaurant. I was sorely disappointed! The bathroom was clean, but super-boring. They had an ad in there for Sam’s Hof Brau free Wi-Fi (which is pretty cool). That and the door were it. Bathroom was pretty standard, light colors with white tile; looked like it had seen better times. Sadly the economy isn’t booming right now, because I think a bathroom overhaul, getting it closer to the restaurant itself, would be great. However…Sam’s prides itself on providing good food at a relatively low cost…and the bathroom is very much what you might expect an older restaurant to be, where they don’t put a lot of emphasis on bathroom design. Finally, taking into account that a great deal of the patrons are senior citizens (at least when I went that seemed to be the case), it’s likely they’re far more comfortable in a “normal” bathroom…and at the end of the day, making sure the clientele is happy is what matters most! Three rolls for an average bathroom.

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“I once got busy in Burger King bathroom“—ah, the immortal words of Humpty and Digital Underground…

I dropped by on 10/5/09, and while there was no “gettin’ busy” (hey, this is a family site!) I did take photos of the bathroom and even reviewed it (even if I am two weeks late in posting it).

As a nice touch, they kept the red-and-yellow BK color scheme through the bathroom. I especially love the hand-washing instructions posted near the sink and the reminder to employees to wash their hands over the paper towel holder. It seems slightly more thought-out to post them on the door though, as a “last-minute” reminder to wash your hands in case you “forgot.” Three rolls for being a clean well thought-out bathroom and another half because I love handwashing instruction posters (seriously, has it come to this? We need to tell people how to wash their hands???)

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So Friday night (9/11/09) at Raley Field…the Sacramento River Cats beat the visiting Tacoma Rainier 13-2. That’s a couple rough innings for Rainier fans, and put the River Cats up 2-1 for the series. During the game, someone got hit with an errant ball (this is why paying attention during sporting events, and baseball games especially) is so important (important enough for it to be mentioned on the relatively large stats screen before the game). Seriously people, you’re on the first base line, the crowd reacts quickly when balls go into the stands, you need to be aware of your surroundings. As Cotton McKnight says, “There’s a souvenir for a lucky fan.”

On Saturday (9/12/09), the ‘Cats won 13-8…there were some parts where it looked like the Rainier were comin’ back with a vengeance—but then both teams brought in relief pitchers and that was the end of that. You’ll notice in the very last picture they had a sign talking about saving water and how the toilet you’re sitting on saves water. Interestingly enough, the sign was printed with “Sacramento River Cats” logos, but not with the name of the local water authority (instead it said “Regional Water Authority”). Those last 3 pictures are from Saturday…everything else is from Friday.

Onto the bathroom!

If you’ve already seen the pictures, I’m sure you can tell that I love this one (probably based on the sheer volume of pictures)…it’s clean, it’s colorful, and it includes quotes of some of the greatest (some would say Harry Caray and Yogi Berra were the greatest) announcers ever. Keeping with the theme, the designers put up posters/advertisements for River Cats “specialty” nights (like “Flashback Baseball”—baseball from the 40′s to the 80′s), the current run for the pennant, etc. When you think about it, this really makes a whole lot of sense…because when lines get long, it helps to have something to take your mind off how badly you need to use the facilities. Four rolls for design, keeping people stuck waiting thinking about other things, keeping the bathroom clean (have you seen Oakland Coliseum?), and keeping it interesting with the quotes.

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Man the flushing sucks (or doesn’t?) though. I’m all for wanting to save the earth, and I’m all for limiting water usage. However, I don’t think you’re saving much water when the flushing is so weak that it takes 4-5 flushes to make sure the bowl is clean. Maybe it was just the stall I used (some poor sap in the handicapped stall was not having a good morning…and I wasn’t up for either waiting for him or using the toilet when he was done). Since I never test more than one toilet (come on, how silly would that be?), I have to base my review on what I do use.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I feel kinda bad about having to give this bathroom a low review, but the reality is I probably wasted about 10 gallons of water (give or take a couple) on a system that was either clogged (which might explain the cloudiness of the water coming up after the flush…really reminded me of precipiates in college chemistry courses—as a side note, you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to find that word lol) or just weak. Either way, it was a real pain to have to flush the toilet that many times. On top of that, the soap was watery (I guess you gotta make up for the cost of the extra water usage somehow).

On the up note, Brookfields really does keep the restroom clean, didn’t see any grafiti (pretty impressive considering the surrounding area) and it’s of average appearance. Normally they’d get a 3-roll rating, but the number of times I had to flush that stupid toilet costs ‘em half a roll. If that poor guy in the only other stall in there was more miserable, and/or funnier, I might have credited back that half-roll. Sorry pal, been there and done that, but potty humor is my thing (probably pretty obvious, since I run this site and all…).

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