Power Rankings: The “Public” Bathrooms of Downtown Cincinnati
[Reposting something here that I wrote for my own edification two years ago. Despite it’s age, perhaps it could still come in handy for someone strolling through the Queen City.]
As a downtown-dweller and exclusive walker, I feel the existence of this list is long overdue.
I have lived centrally and sans car for almost two years, ambling from point A to point B (and C and henceforth) often several blocks from the sanctuary of my home bathroom. Alas, biology does not wait for proximity to call and I am often stranded from my domicile’s throne in my hour of need. Panic results from customer-only restrooms and a complete lack of public ones in downtown Cincinnati and too often have I found myself dashing from storefront to storefront, peeking in for the possibility of relief, wild-eyed like a crazed cocaine addict scouring their house and only finding empty sandwich bags stained white with the residue of what used to be in them. And even more often are the bathrooms I find — when it is almost too late — in a disgusting, Fear Factor challenge-worthy state.
Thus, this compendium of facilities has been assembled and fastidiously ranked based on all the important factors that make a public bathroom experience something less than a mortifying and grotesque debasement of one’s dignity. The criteria are as follows:
- Cleanliness (out of 10)
- Privacy (out of 10)
- Percieved hours of access (my estimated total, based on barely-lucid memories of me using them at odd hours, rounded up a bit to account for the fact that I rarely wake before noon)
- Amenity bonus (points for creature comforts such as full-length stall doors, touchless towel dispensers, etc. Bathroom attendants are awarded half a point for the social awkwardness of that interaction)
- Number of stalls (urinals awarded half a point)
This necessitates an equation that a sabermetrician would be proud of to calculate an overall score of tolerability. I have chosen to name it Gender-Weighted Aggregate Reliability — or GWAR, for short, because this column is centered around high-minded potty humor and I can only speak to these experiences as a male and imagine the criteria to be much stricter for the fairer sex.
If cleanliness = C, privacy = P, hours = H, and amenities = A, here is the formula for GWAR:
GWAR = (C + P) * [H + A + stalls + (urinals * 0.5)]/100
Here, cleanliness and privacy are the primary boosting factors. Dividing the product by 100 is a way of skewing the score downward with the potentially limitless variables A, stalls, and urinals. From number-crunching, it appears the closest thing to a perfect score would be 4.00. To further the sabermetric method applied to this, 2.00 appears to be replacement level:
4.00 — palatial
3.00 — oasis
2.50 — your house (empty, with the bathroom door open)
2.00 — replacement level
1.50 — gas station (interior, recently cleaned)
1.00 — rural outhouse
0.50 — the woods (winter)
0.25 — music festival port-a-potty (summer)
One issue is the lack of true public bathrooms, as there seem to be only three in the city. The best ones have proven to be a bit off the main path, but still accessible to the nomad or weary traveler due to overall foot traffic; that is to say, hotel lobby bathrooms.
Let’s begin, in ascending order of quality, with GWAR score in parenthesis:
10. Sawyer Point/Yeatman’s Cove (0.39)
Privacy: 2 | Cleanliness:1
An absolutely wretched place, where even the sinks are prison-appropriate and timed to dispense water for a total of three seconds upon prompting. Nothing makes a dirty bathroom worse than a Macbeth-ian inability to feel cleansed afterward. There are no amenities to speak of unless one counts vending machines that dispense warm soda and energy drinks (I, for one, do not).
9. Fountain Square (0.44)
Privacy: 0 | Cleanliness: 3
Too high traffic to use without feeling rushed or the victim of voyeurism, the Fountain Square public restrooms are at least somewhat maintained. Curiously, there always seems to be a bathroom attendant amongst the sea of potty-goers. They’re friendly enough, but the awkwardness is only amplified by transients with hundred-yard stares and panhandlers perpetually bumping into you both. Akin to peeing on a New York subway, then.
8. Cincinnati Public Library Main Branch (0.47)
Privacy: 1 | Cleanliness: 1
It’s a library in the downtown of a city. The only reason this scored so high is that there are three separate facilities in the building, though they all smell like mostly decomposed cornbread.
7. Washington Park (0.70)
Privacy: 1 | Cleanliness: 4
This gets higher marks for being newly built and somewhat dutifully cleaned. There is still a prison-like feel much like Sawyer’s Point, but comparatively sterile. Like a minimum-security California prison for Lindsay Lohan types. The park’s fountain serves as an amenity only insofar as it is an improvement upon the sinks. Carrying a little liquid soap in your hand out to the fountain is a bit off-putting, though.
6. Carew Tower’s Food Court Graveyard (0.85)
Privacy: 4 | Cleanliness: 1
Nestled amongst the hollow shells of a Sbarro and Chinese carry-out is this place, which is now a little more private following the closing of the food court. It generally smells like a YMCA pool and can rarely be counted on to have all of its toilets in working order. There will almost always be a man in there who may seem like an attendant but will acknowledge nothing from you or anyone else. I still haven’t figured out if he is actually a city employee or just a man who solely owns an orange polo shirt and blue pants.
5. The Banks (1.71)
Privacy: 3 | Cleanliness: 6
Clean and new, but oddly featuring a baseball stadium trough in place of actual urinals. Amenities include an array of nearby fountains and an elevator for quick escape. Children occasionally poop in the trough, though.
4. 600 Vine St. Building (1.82)
Privacy: 7 | Cleanliness: 7
The primary problem is that it is a single, which can shatter the illusion of privacy at any jiggle of the door handle. Amenities include a robust amount of vending machines, an adjacent quality coffee shop, and a reliable high-60s temperature setting. It is enjoyable if one can push out of their mind the thought of a line of fifteen people waiting outside the door for one to finish their task.
3. The Hilton Cincinnati at Carew Tower (2.55)
Privacy: 7 | Cleanliness: 10
Ol’ Reliable, as I like to call this facility, is a classy and clean little joint just next to the check-in counter in the Hilton at Carew Tower. Everything is fully stocked, including two paper towel dispensers as well as actual tissues (a luxury rarely seen). Jazz and the dulcet tones of Frank and Dean Martin soothe the soul and one rarely experiences a rude interruption. You can forget all your worries, forget all your cares until a meeting of executives who have been waiting an hour to urinate lets out.
2. Macy’s (2.88)
Privacy: 9 | Cleanliness: 7
Macy’s smartly sequestered this away from the madding crowd on the second floor, far from the entrances. One must only wander through a portion of the women’s clothing section to achieve as undisturbed of an oasis that can be found downtown. Curiously, the Macy’s janitorial staff always seems to be on the verge of cleaning it (though I’ve never met them just after they finished). Also, there is a high likelihood of finding an empty can of Steel Reserve on the floor.
1. 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati (3.78)
Privacy: 8 | Cleanliness: 10
This has everything going for it: Walls of art in the hallway to it, culminating with interactive floor art, full length stall doors which create a feeling of tranquil isolation, and a posh roster of frequent guests which offers a coinflip chance of running into Emilio Estevez at the sinks. One can get lost here for a while, letting your stress melt away while the soundless ambiance massages your temples like that middle-aged lady you met at the pool that one summer back from college. Incredibly, it’s all stalls and no urinals, which is conducive to valuable privacy but may cause one to panic that they stepped in the wrong door upon entering.
These power rankings are entirely subjective, of course, and based only on the fact that I assume people loathe the public restroom experience as much as I do. If you don’t, go right ahead and forge your own path. Just don’t come crying to me when a gypsy grabs your laptop bag from under the stall door in Sawyer Point.
