March 25,  2005 - Ed is the Potty Pooper

Today’s Daily Edhat is about public bathrooms. If you don’t like the topic, don’t complain to us.  Complain to Matt McAllister from the Early Show on KTYD. His email is matt@ktyd.com.  You see, every Monday starting way back when last week, Matt, his cohorts, and the KTYD listeners have been picking topics for the Friday Daily Edhat. Last week, they had us driving around town at 1:00 AM taking pictures of the fry cook at Denny’s as part of our Insomniac’s Guide to Santa Barbara.  This week, as we said, it was bathrooms.

The good folks at KTYD wanted to know what was the nicest public restroom in town. Ask most women, and they’ll tell you it’s at Nordstrom.  Yeah, but have they done the research?

Yesterday, the co-Ed dedicated staff of edhat.com set off to find out the poop on the best and worst public restrooms in town.  We decided to define “public” as any place you could go (go) without making a scene.  We went to city and county parks, gas stations, department stores, grocery stores, designated “visitor restrooms” in the downtown, and some of the public facilities along Cabrillo Blvd.  We took pictures, checked the seat position, flushed the toilets, and sampled the paper product offerings. Some places definitely required squatting, but all places would have worked in a pinch – if you really had to go (and a couple of times, we did).

Well, let the dedicated staff tell you, after you’ve seen one urinal, you’ve seen them all.  And, as for toilets, well, as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog says, they are just something “for me to poop on.” The interior area is also very similar among restrooms – usually tile.  At the less upscale places, the floor is just plain cement.  Most have drains in the floor.

At Gelson’s the *wine* to the bathroom was long! Janelle at Peet’s told us that their bathroom was the best because there were cool pictures of Peet’s employees on the wall. At Hendry’s we verified that you can, in fact, see the urinal from the outside lawn.

As for Nordstrom, there is a big difference between the men’s room and the women’s.  While the women’s has TV sets, wireless Internet, 8-track, cassette, and stereo (not really, but they have lots of couches), the men’s just has a changing table with diapers for sale. No wonder the women’s room was packed like a crowd of Buddhists waiting to see “A Walk of Wisdom”, and the men’s room was as empty as the ocean on a wave-less day.

As part of our Tour de Flush, we journeyed to Santa Barbara’s new “Four Corners” region, at the intersection of Carrillo & Chapala.  There we visited the restrooms of Ralph’s, where a women had taken up residence in one of the stalls, at Greyhound, where four yellow plastic barricades and a coin-required entry blocked our access, at Shell Gas Station, where we waited for a man to change into shorts and return the key, and at the Hotel Andalucia, where it was no problem to slip past the front desk and downstairs to the head below.

Nordstrom be damned! The bathrooms at the new Andalucia Hotel kicks butt.  They are clean, well stocked, offer plenty of facility options, have full-on bullet proof doors in the stalls, and … they have the most awesome paper towels on which to dry your hands. These towels are like two Bounties put together. Don’t tell the Andalucia staff, but we brought a couple home to wash the car with!

Yesterday’s Edhat contest was about seats being left up in restroom stalls.  Of course, with easy-to-use urinals standing by, there is far less deployment of standard toilets for number one. And, even when used for that purpose, germ phobia dictates minimizing skin to toilet contact. Sometimes, the seat just stays down.  But, overall, 4 of the 30 (13.3%) men’s room toilets we inspected had the seat up.  Interestingly we saw 2 women’s room toilets in that position - for reasons unknown.

The closest subscriber in yesterday’s contest was Mr. Peabody (were not making this up) with a guess of 13.2%. He wins a Santa Barbara Axxess Card that is good for discounts all over town!

Our photo gallery has ALOT more pictures of the bathrooms in town. Place your mouse over the picture to see where it was taken.

Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today’s contest

We want to hear from you ... tell us what you think of this tidbit