A Pretty Penny...

In honor of Holiday Travel, this post is dedicated to that supremely annoying, no-frills Euro airline, Ryanair. Because if all goes according to their plan, soon one of the "frills" they won't have is a toilet on the airplane that you don't have to pay for. That's right. Ryanair is hoping to charge £1 or 1 Euro for passengers to use the washroom. That's because they want to knock out the two restrooms in the back to make room for either more seats or for "standing room only" areas on commuter flights.

If they even happen, these changes would not take place until 2012 at the earliest, according to a Guardian article this past July. First, of course, the company has to pass some pretty high safety standards - but that's all having to do with the standing room issue. No one seems to be investigating the "safety" of having but one on-board restroom for an entire plane full of people with nowhere else to go (so to speak), and on top of that, charging for them to use it.

According to Ryanair, the goal is to discourage passengers from using the toilet at all. They are expecting people to use the restrooms at the airport before and after, and therefore not on the plane itself. I suppose that, flying around Europe, that is almost a reasonable request. Your flights aren't going to be more than a couple of hours long. But I can tell you that, as a person with not the hugest bladder in the world, using the loo right before I get on the plane does not guarantee that I won't have to an hour or even a half hour later. Sorry guys! Which leads me to believe that the people inventing this crazy system are all men, with enormous bladders, who believe that women who can't "hold it" are somehow weak or incapacitated. Yeah, and some of those women might even be pregnant. Great. So now you want to charge us for having a slightly different organic set-up than you, and then tell us it's our fault. No thanks, Ryanair!

But it's not only women who object to this policy. Ben Dickson of the Random Perspective has written a clever article on the topic. And there's an entire Facebook page devoted to "Links on 'Don't pay to use a Ryanair toilet - piss in their seats for free.'"

My advice? Don't take Ryanair. At the end of the day, they're not any cheaper than most other airlines - sometimes more expensive. And my experience is that they are just generally obnoxious and a pain in the neck. If you want cheap, pleasant travel from here to there in Europe, fly Easyjet. At least they haven't forgotten that, while people do enjoy saving money, they also don't like to be treated like cattle. Cattle that can somehow hold their bladders indefinitely at will.

{Photo courtesy the Daily Mail}

Extra Fluffee

Via I Has a Hotdog. Need I say moar?

Aeroport Toilets Genovese

Our brand-spanking-new Agent MMR has done some excellent reconnaissance work (unawares at the time) in the Geneva International Airport, when he was there in August of 2009. He was so impressed with the urinals in the men's room that he took a photo. "Unlike the toilet sequence from Trainspotting ('The worst toilets in Scotland'), these were clean, sanitized low flow urinals at Aeroport Internacional de Geneve," he writes.

I really like how there is one placed at a lower height. I guess for the kids and/or shorter individuals. But I'm wondering what are the horizontal bars on the tiles above each unit? Are they flush bars? Or do they somehow serve the function of getting you to stand closer, thereby improving your "aim"? Somewhat like the fly painted in the inside of the urinal, perhaps? That's pure conjecture on my part...

"Note that it was actually at the Amsterdam aeroport where the sanitary seat cover was a mechanized sleeve that spun around the toilet seat itself, relieving you of the somewhat tedious task of placing one over the lid yourself while [dancing anxiously] and then forgetting to knock out the center."

Now, unfortunately, there is no picture of the mechanized arms for seat covers, but that's something we'd really like to see!

{Photo: Agent MMR}

All Thai'd Up

Here's a little post from Agent NH:

"I wish I had taken a picture, because I saw a completely illogical bathroom the other evening. It was at Osha Thai on 2nd Street in SF, if you want to check it out. The women's restroom, when you enter it, looks like a one-person restroom, with a toilet, sink, etc. But then, tucked back around the corner, is a stall with another toilet in it. How does this ever work? I'm really curious about what design process led to that solution!"

We, too, are very curious. Maybe there used to be another stall? Maybe they had extra space, and thought, why not add another toilet in the washing-hands area? And is it even possible to lock the outside door? Or maybe it's just handy when you and a friend adjourn to the powder room together. One day perhaps we will go and check it out, and then we'll be able to offer you some first-hand pics. Or maybe our Architectural Agent NH will do us a nice little diagram ;)

{Top photo from Yelp, below, from the Osha Thai Website}

World Toilet Day!

So, in case you missed it, World Toilet Day was last Friday, November, 19th. BUT you still have time to make a video about poo for this contest, run by Water for People. Well, they say make a video about poo. But it's really a video about toilets. All the stuff the TP blog is really about: toilet failure, toilet success and toilet innovation!

The World Toilet Organization (www.worldtoilet.org) has more info on World Toilet Day here. (Not to be confused with International Toilet Paper Day, which is August 26).

Meanwhile, get out your cameras/recording device of choice. The deadline for your poo-filled , toilet-happy video is December 2, 2010.

And if you are looking for mugs to hold your coffee, various containers for other liquids, or a tote for all that solid food you're going to eat, all to help you keep going back to the toilet again and again, you can shop the Water for People store here. Oh, and they have pens, too. So I guess you can keep a record of it.

Thanks to Agent BP for alerting us to this contest!

{Image via WaterforPeople.org}

PSA of the Day

We already love the Oatmeal, purveyor of clever, quirky comickery. We also love actual Oatmeal, but that's a different story. We love it that much more when the big O decides to tackle public toilets! Namely, those annoying, flimsy seat-cover things that give you the illusion of a sanitary toilet-going experience.

Of course, why should we say it when Matthew Inman says it so well?

I will say this. When I moved across the country the to San Francisco area, I noticed those seat covers in public bathrooms a lot more. They must have them in Boston, I just don't remember them being a common fixture. Or maybe I just didn't grow up using them. I cringe to think of the nastiness I must have encountered unawares as a small child. But now I realize there are many more options, besides the awkward hover, which tends to not be conducive to actually relieving oneself. A clean toilet seat is always appreciated. Or, like the saying my friend's parents had on the wall in their bathroom, "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat, and wipe the seat."

I think a portable cloth seat cover with non-slip coating on the bottom would be quite useful. You could fold it up, put it in a carrying case, and take it home and wash it. At least you'd know it was only your bum that touched it! By the way, if you're reading this, and you think that's a good idea, consider this idea copyrighted. (Which means if you go and produce it, then I will expect some of the profits! There it is, in writing, just like my lawyer says.)

Or, if you like the Oatmeal's idea, you could always just bring your own spray cleaner to the bathroom with you, if you feel that strongly about it. Well, enjoy!

And you can thank us later...

{Thanks to new Agent AP for bringing this to our attention, and all credit for the images to The Oatmeal!}

House of TP

Okay, so Halloween is just over - joyous celebration of fear, candy, costumes, and the time-honored tradition of TP-ing your neighbor's house. Just stepping out the front door to find your trees, shrubs and lawn all covered with TP? Start planning now to get back at your neighbors and/or their kids with this (very detailed) Wiki How-To from Wired magazine. They cover everything from planning and preparation to throwing technique, to the perfect finish. And, oh yeah, legal issues. So get ready. Get your TP game face on...

Go forth and conquer!

{Link thanks to Agent Double-L 7 (who didn't know she was scouting for us), and the photo courtesy of Wired mag.}

A Food Expert on Toilets

I was listening to NPR one day this year when a rerun of this episode of "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell me" came on, featuring Michael Pollan answering several questions about Japanese toilets.

Michael Pollan is, well, Michael Pollan. He lives in the Bay Area, and he tells an embarrassing story in this clip about getting caught buying some Fruity Pebbles for his son in the Berkeley Bowl. If you don't know Berkeley Bowl, it's about the crunchiest grocery store you can imagine in the crunchiest town you can imagine. And Michael Pollan, writer of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire" defends local, organic food consumption - you get the idea.

You have to listen to the end of the clip to hear the part about the toilets, but it's well worth the listen. In the process, they discuss Twinkies and Ring Dings, etc. And they actually say, in the course of the interview, that the scriptwriters of "Wait, Wait" discussed what kind of topic they were going to address, trying to figure out a subject Mr. Pollan wouldn't know much about. Since he deals mostly with food, they went with - well, the opposite end of the process.

But Pollan does say, at the end of the interview, that they gave him a good idea for a sequel. So we look forward to sharing with you Pollan's discourse on "what comes out the other end."

A full transcript, with audio, is available here.

Yard Duty

see more dog and puppy pictures

Sink it to me, Baby

Leave it to a Japanese designer to come up with a sink/urinal combo apparatus that atually looks attractive. AND it saves space. We already have a toilet+sink combo for the average tiny-sized bathroom. Now we have something for space-challenged public men's rooms, so they hopefully don't end up with something like this.

Here's how it works:


Relieve yourself in the lower portion, then, without even having to walk across the room, wash your hands in the upper bit, and the water from hand-washing clears away the remaining liquid waste. Pretty good, right? It's logical AND ecological.

Only thing I'm wondering about is, why the glass-bottomed sink? Is there really a need to see through to what you're doing? Don't most guys look around and try to at least act distracted while they're at the urinal, for fear of accidentally looking where they shouldn't, while they do their best not to talk to anyone? Guys, you can help me out here. My urinal etiquette is pretty limited. On the other hand, you might have the issue of "aim," so from that angle, it could be useful. Or else the designer, Mr. Yeongwoo Kim, just thought it looked good in glass.

Now if you really like glass bathrooms, you should check out some of these designs.

{Thanks to Agent B for this week's topic. Images courtesy of Geekologie}