Toilet trader

The spanking clean new urinals at The Melbourne Wine Room.

It’s taken a long time and it is only now that I can account or my fascination for lavatories, WCs or bogs – anything but toilets. It goes back to junior school where the teacher punished me for using the word lavatory. Back home I was scolded for using the word toilet because it was common.
There I was a small child left like a turd squashed between a fresh pink bottom and hard wooden school chair, a victim of the class system.
I spent most of my time hiding on the roof of the school until the police found me, simply because my teacher decided to torture rather than teach me.
Eventually they decided to expel me from the state system and leave me on the special school scrap heap all because of a few ill-timed turds. It’s no wonder that I’ve taken a dislike to authority.
Luckily my mother persuaded a good Catholic brotherhood to take me in and set me right. (although I still am dealing with the rejection issues from having never been fiddled with and the carpal tunnel syndrome from doing my own dirty work).

And now to the real point of this story. The bog – for despite the fact it contained no rare orchids it can only be describe this way – at The Melbourne Wine Room on Fitzroy St has long been on my mind. The floor was usually soaked in urine and trampled with long celebratory ribbons of lavatory paper. The stainless steel lavatory itself was a lottery, the button hidden inside the cistern perhaps with or without a junky’s needle to pierce my pink figure.
Now everything has changed with a fantastic new refurbishment. Everything is new apart from the hard nuts of prostates of the Wine Room’s clientele. The lavatory, as it shall now be called, is pristine, white and home I’d like to think to a better class of knobs, which incidentally are still dripping on the floor.

Over the years while judging regional restaurant awards the restaurant lavatory was an item on the score street. It is now a habit to pop in and check the loo’s hygene credentials and for the odd pubic hair on the lavatory seat.

Here are six disappointing restaurant and bar bogs in Australia. More suggestions in comments please:

My six most disappointing loos in Australia

1. White Bar body corporate loos, Fitzroy St, St Kilda
A sibling of the Melbourne Wine Room but unrefurbished these stinking holes are the refuge of the se maniac, incontinent and the drug addicted. They stink too.

2. The European, Spring St
“You now what this place really reminds me of Europe. The loos stink just like in France,” a friend said on his first visit. And he’s right. My nose doesn’t have the sensitivity to identify the cleaning detergent but I call it “Pissoire chic”.

3. The Eureka Tower
Brand new and with a fantastic view this loo is badly designed and poorly maintained. On my visit I found knobs missing from taps and knobs missing the urinal altogether. The problem is that the tiny urinal bowls are hung on a wall at a 45 degree angle to the view. As you crane your neck to see the view you inevitably pee down somebody else’s leg, over your freshly polished shoes and onto the now knee deep floor.

4. Forty-One Sydney
These urinals are simply terrifying with a view 41 floors below. Although they don’t have The Eureka’s problems how the hell is anybody meant to go in these conditions?

5. Nobu, ground floor
Oh yes, they are very smart but have one big flaw. A cheap hook and eye device is being used on the ground floor to make up for the fact the lock on the door doesn’t work properly. Please fix.

6. Di Stasio, Fitzroy St
Each urinal is in an alcove so tight that if I brace my shoulders I can lift my feet off the floor. It’s too tight. On the plus side there’s no peeking.

Tagged as: Australia, Lavatory, Restaurant, Toilet