Smoking is Banned But Flashing is Just Fine

The Jolly Brewmaster
39 Painswick Road,
Cheltenham.
GL50 2EZ
United Kingdom


Where is it?

From the front door head to the right of the bar. Follow it around and down the steps. Pass the door on the left (which takes you out to the garden) and the men’s is on the right.


What’s it like?

This is a good locals’ pub by all accounts. That means you’ll get nothing flashy but the beer will be good and cheap. About 10 years back this place was a cosy warm place to come. Now it has started to turn from cosy to run down despite some efforts at redecorating. Mind you they do have a good BBQ on nice summer evenings.

So what bought me back? Well a hard week at the office and the introduction of the smoking ban made me wonder what a pint in this old place might be like. Well, the smoking ban, I’m sad to say, just makes the stale smell and stained walls just seem that much more forlorn. A pity.

As for the toilets, well they might have banned smoking but they certainly have not banned other activities. In fact you have no choice but to flash the other punters when you go! The door to the toilet is wedged open and as you enter you find yourself rather exposed. So you think, I’ll head to the end. Nope, that doesn’t quite do it. Sqeeze right up against the wall. Damn they could still see. Then, feeling the pressure of the last pint building up, you decide to take a quick pee hoping that no one will come past from the garden. Will this work? Quick, quick! Ahhhhh – phewwww.

Now involuntary flashing is certainly not my idea of fun, and if it is a ploy to distract you from what the facilities are really like I’d have to say it just about worked!


Marks out of 10:

3 Frightening indeed!


Comments to the management:

Shut the door for crying out loud.

Country-tinged toilets at Cecil's BBQ

Cecil's Texas Style Bar*B*Q
2800 S. Orange Ave.
Orlando, FL USA 32806

www.cecilsbbq.com

Where is it?

From the main entrance, go past the order station and buffet towards the back of the building. When you reach the cashier, turn right and enter the dining room, then take an immediate left. At that point, the drink fountain will be on your left, a soft-serve ice cream station will be in front of you and the restaurant's barbecue sauce station (with three buckets of warm sauce) will be to your far right. The various bathroom entrances are set in between these three markers, appropriately labeled of course.

What's it like?

Surprisingly entertaining. This down home BBQ spot, located just south of Orlando's city center offers, wonderful Texas-inspired BBQ. That means it's focus is on beef instead of the traditional pork. Of course, it offers pork too, as well as smoked chicken and turkey (the latter is stupendous), however brisket and spicy sausage are the specialties here, and Cecil's has some of the best in the city.

The atmosphere is much like a Texas roadhouse, with heavy wood tables, deep red brick walls and lots of humorous decor that pokes fun at the Texan spirit (Nolan Ryan posters, amusing licence plates, declarations of love to beef.....).

The bathrooms take that country spirit one step further, offering a homey (perhaps even homemade) environment that's made to look much like an outhouse. Wood paneling covers the walls. Red tile covers the floor. And, better still, the toilet stall isn't made of the standard metal divider but of wooden fence pickets, nailed loosely together with various bits of plywood and locked by a simple slip latch.

Of course, the stall does have a few scattered gaps in the wood -- not enough for someone to look in, mind you, but still enough to get the sitter to worry a little about his/her privacy, and that essentially makes up the loo's major misstep. On the flip side, however, the wood fence around the toilet offers a division line between the commode and urinal, which manages to increase the level of privacy there for the pee-er. Go figure.

The sink and mirror didn't quite match the decor (green tile against a wood look like hand-me-downs in the worst way, but they also were clean and well-kept, albeit a bit worn down and blended well with the down-home county charm exhibited here.

Marks out of 10:

7. The creativity used in the decor definitely lifts the score here. Yeehaw!

Comments to the Management:

Those little peepholes in the stall fencing make me want to paraphrase a line from the London Tube: "Mind the gaps."

Carmel's Offers Class, Elegance

Carmel's
398 21st Street
Vero Beach, FL USA 32960

www.carmelsofverobeach.com

Where is it?

A little tricky to find but not impossible. From the main entrance, head into the left-most dining room and then turn right, towards the room's back wall. Once there, go left again and then take an immediate right, heading down a lengthy hallway leading to the back of the restaurant. The bathrooms are there.

And don't worry: In case you get lost along the way, the fine, friendly waitstaff here will politely provide directions.

What's it like?

Carmel's is one of Vero's more upscale restaurants, a place to hit more for special occasions than everyday dining. While I find the food good, I was not awed by it (a little too much reliance on sauces to cover ingredients that should be tasty enough on their own); having said that, the salads and wine selection were very impressive.

The decor is stately: Boldly colored walls decorated with various pieces of art (both original and prints), white table cloths, dark wood tables and chairs, clean carpets and more.

The loos extend the motif, offering a secluded, spotless environment in which to do your business. The decor here is tidy, modern, clean and simplistic, with elegant brown-red tiles covering the floor and part of the walls, and either off-white or matted green paint used in the remaining spaces. The walls are also dotted with old photographs fitted in oversized frames -- a touch that adds an air of sophistication and personality to the surroundings and at times made me think I was in an art gallery instead of an upscale restaurant.

The sinks are made of gleaming porcelain and the mirrors hang beside them in a stately manner, almost like art themselves thanks to their ornate frames. Paper towels are offered here, but they are held in classy holders to fit the decor.

The lone stall in the men's room has been set up as a separate room, not just as a stall, with a floor-to-ceiling door built in to offer complete closure from the rest of the bathroom. It's washing facilities, albeit smaller than the main one, still radiate with the same artfulness and warmth as found in the rest of the place.

The only drawback: The place uses store-bought hand soap instead of having a built-in dispenser here. But then again, this little faux pas adds a human element to the experience -- while it aims for perfection, the store-bought soap makes one feel that the designers knows the loo will always be a little short of that mark, and that visitors won't mind because the rest of the place reaches such heights.

Marks out of 10:

10. Artful and elegance through and through.

Comments to the Management:

Well done. One of the best strip mall bathrooms I've ever seen and experienced.

Goyan, Get Outta Here

Goyan Gip Korean Restaurant
(aka Gio Hyang Gip Korean Restrnt)
1400 W Oak Ridge Rd
Orlando, FL USA 32809

Where is it?

Seemingly simple to find but in reality considerably tricky.

From the entrance, head to the western wall of the restaurant and slip into a little hallway there marked "Restrooms." From there, you will find three doors, neither of them marked. Only one leads to the real bathroom. (Hint: Try the one to the far left.)If I were Frank Stockton, I would say there were tigers behind the other two doors. But alas, one led to a supply closet and the other to a water heater/plumbing area.

What's it like?

A bit on the scary side.

The restaurant has an interesting decor in that it's walls are covered with wallpaper featuring various Korean letters and its ceiling is made entirely of mirrors -- which means that when you look up, you see an endless array of Korean lettering. However, the cheap Formica tables and odd smell (almost exactly like that found in an Oriental supermarket), offset the charm to some degree.

The food is good, and of good quality (though there are a few better Korean places in town), yet that smell looms over everything. Yes, you get used to it after a while, but do you really have to?

The loos aren't much better. While they appear somewhat clean on the surface, closer inspection reveals many items here to be in some state of disrepair. The sink looks like it was picked up used from a street corner and left in the state it was found. The fixtures happen to be both shiny and grimy at the same time - a quality worsened by the fact that there is no hand soap here. (This, of course leads to the question: Which is worse, rinsing your hands without soap or touching the sink knobs?) The floor tiles are chipped. The stall feel oddly unclean. And, worst still, the ceiling has an open hole in it -- no doubt a light or fire alarm was moved and the owners didn't want to bother plugging the gap.

Even stranger is a homemade advertisement -- in Korean, no less -- for electronics found taped to the paper towel dispenser. What is the deal with this? Can't you at least afford a real sign? Does the person who put the sign up actually think he'll get business this way? Do people really call? Does the management know the ad is there (surely they must, right?) Does anyone think this is reputable? And.... what if the scheme works? Weird, just plain weird.

Marks out of 10:

3. Needs a serious revamping here. And perhaps a table out front to house actual ads and fliers for computer salesmen.

Comments to the Management:

Why not make the bathroom's design as clever-looking as the restaurant's interior (minus the smell, that is)? Also, I'll be curious to learn the success rate of the computer ad on the towel dispenser......

Greek Flame Offers Tiny, True-to-Life European-Styled Toilets

Greek Flame Taverna
1560 N. Semoran Blvd.
Winter Park, FL USA 32792

Where is it?

The restaurant has taken over a former Pizza Hut, so the bathrooms are essentially in the same location as where they would be in a Pizza Hut: In the front of the building, beside the cashier and the opening to the kitchen.

What's it like?

Give this neighborhood joint some credit. Outside of some places, Orlando isn't really a town know for its quality ethnic eateries -- most of what we have is chain restaurants. So for a place like this to survive -- and in such a working-class part of town, of all places -- for almost a decade is something of a small miracle.

And granted, part of that success may be the fact that Greek restaurants don't stick around too long here. Outside of Olympa on Colonial Drive, most of the Greek places have been around five years or less. This one isn't exactly the best in town (that would be Mykonos in Longwood) -- and some of the food is hit and miss, it's still a charming little place, and if I lived in the area I would visit more often.

Having said that, the bathrooms here need considerable work. They are much too small. So tiny, in fact, that while in them I actually thought I was in a tiny, out-of-the-way toilet in Europe. Nothing against the Europeans, mind you, but (if I may stereotype) because Europeans built their buildings first and their bathrooms second (a logical progression, really), most of their restrooms (save the moderns ones or the ones in more luxurious areas) tend to be very small and tight-fitting (especially those in France). This restaraurant's bathroom fits that mold to a tee: A bathroom of this size could certainly not accomodate people as rotund as most Americans (how I managed to get in and do my business is still a great mystery!). And yet the designer (who really just revamped a Pizza Hut loo) has the gall to include (at least in the men's room) two stations here, when really there is barely enough for one.

Stranger still, people here enter through a main door and then pass through a sort of foyer -- really, just a two-foot-by-two-foot corridor that is barely big enough to squeeze through because you have to make room for the doors to swing open and closed on both ends. While passing through, I thought, "Geez, this is small, but at least the bathroom will by roomy, right?"

Wrong. Pass through the foyer and you'll enter that restroom that's barely got enough room for a toilet, let alone a toilet, urinal and sink. Everything feels jumbled and placed on top of itself -- which makes the idea of relieving yourself all the more difficult, since all the jetting-out fixtures force you to analyze the space around you (and how to use it) before you can actually get down to business.

Worse still, the room isn't nearly as clean as it should be. I found water stains on everything from the toilet to the urinal to the sink -- and the weathered-looking pics of the Greek Isles did little to make me forget about that. You'd think it'd be easy to clean the place up, given how small it is, right?

Marks out of 10:

4. Up from 3 simply because the appetizers were good enough to merit a return.

Comments to the Management:

It's Orlando, so perhaps adapting your restroom to the city's urban-sprawl model might make for a more enjoyable experiencing. Cleaning the place a little better would help as well. (Also, consider adding some flavor to your pastisio recipe, which is much too bland for it's own good.)