By Dan Gocek '11
Entertainment Editor

As Entertainment Editor, my new article content restrictions (that pieces somehow concern the law or Charlottesville) left me with what I thought was little choice but to begrudgingly contribute to the recent deluge of restaurant reviews that have been published during the last few weeks. Luckily, as I began my review of C & O with a few paragraphs on my thoughts concerning the eatery’s bathroom, I realized that bathrooms around Charlottesville are something I may be nearly overqualified in addressing. Because of the breadth of my knowledge, I’ll be separating my review into restaurant bathrooms and bar bathrooms. Anyone who’s ever taken care of business in both types of establishments knows that the needs and expectations vary greatly for each.

Restaurants

As I stated in the draft of what was to be my review of C & O as a restaurant, I believe that a restaurant review is fairly worthless without some appraisal of the “facilities.” I’m sure there are those who would claim that restroom quality is irrelevant to general appreciation for a restaurant as a provider of food, but I would vehemently disagree.

First, if this is my first visit to a given restaurant (which, in the case of C & O, it was), how am I supposed to know how my bowels are going to react to the food? I need to know I’m covered in the event of an emergency. Second, even if it isn’t my first visit, what if I need to sneak away to avoid a boring conversation and/or to snort a line of coke? I’m going to need reading material and room to kneel in front of the toilet.

Unfortunately, C & O failed on all fronts. The bathroom was single person, which is never good. There’s nothing worse than sitting on a toilet, red-faced with your arms wrapped around your knees, hoping desperately that you remembered to lock the door while watching it shake on its hinges as someone tries to enter without knocking. Thankfully, my visit on this occasion went unmolested; however, this did not assuage the claustrophobia that besieged me upon entry into the coffin-like room directly below the stairs, which could be heard creaking through the slanted drywall on their underside.

This compares with a much more pleasing experience at one of my favorite Charlottesville haunts, Zocalo. Zocalo’s bathroom is much more spacious and even has cool tiles on the floor to distract you from the inevitable awkwardness that awaits you when you return to your table after having been gone for ten minutes and your date knows with almost complete certainty that you were just dropping bombs 50 feet away. The only drawback of Zocalo’s setup is that I lost cell reception. Not only am I an avid fan of toilet-texting, I’m also not opposed to taking a call if the situation warrants it. What can I say? I’m a multi-tasker.

Bars

Bar bathrooms are a whole other animal. It take some stones to take a seat in a bar bathroom any time past about 10 p.m. I’ve done it, but I can’t say I liked it. It’s like pooping at a house party; sometimes you have to do it, but you know it’s not going to be fun listening to your drunken friends laugh at you from outside the door as you pray to God that there’s another roll of toilet paper under the sink.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend quality time in a number of bathrooms on The Corner, but I’ll limit my discussion here to three. First is Biltmore, which, for a bar, is actually doing pretty well. The fact that it has a stall with a lockable door is a huge plus, and one that I’ve been unfortunate enough to have utilized. I’m always confused by bar bathrooms without stall doors. I’m already pooping in a bar bathroom, why do you have to make it worse than it has to be? But Biltmore’s bathroom also benefits from being sizeable and having a large mirror. I was in a bathroom in South Dakota once that had no mirrors, which just didn’t suit my crippling vanity. Additionally working in Biltmore’s favor is the fact that the bathroom is not near any of the bars, which allows me some plausible deniability when I return from it. Maybe I was making out with a chick on the deck; how could you know?

The bathroom at Three, on the other hand, is not as enjoyable an experience. Aside from being cramped with small, smudged mirrors, the bathroom at Three always seems to have vomit on the floor. Bathroom maintenance is a very important part of general bathroom quality, and Three has been dropping the ball. Also annoying is the fact that the bathroom is right past some door through which employees seem intent on constantly entering and exiting. This leads to log jams (pun intended?) that no one wants to deal with when they’re rushing to pee their brains out or, alternatively/apparently, puke all over the place in relative privacy.

Finally comes Coupe’s, which, although the bathroom lacks the ever-present stench of vomit that lets me know I’m home, still manages to sit at the bottom of the barrel as far as bar bathrooms are concerned. A tiny, single person bathroom in the middle of a crowded bar is just a bad idea. I’ve never once been to Coupe’s without having to awkwardly navigate through a line of dudes waiting to urinate, and it’s just not acceptable. The only thing worse than random people trying to enter the bathroom while you’re working on a stubborn one is random drunk people trying to do so. Also fun is making eye contact with the guy behind you in line, who, after staring you down as you exit, yells, “Jesus, dude!” as he enters after you.

This has just been a small sampling of the various lavatories around our wonderful city. I’ve conspicuously not addressed bathrooms at the Law School, facilities with which I’m much more familiar and which, in my mind, deserve a review all their own; however, because of the impending life-suck that is final exams, such a review will have to wait until next year.