toilet

At some point my series of toilet and urinal images needs to move away from pubs and Thai restaurants. But not tonight.

Here’s the toilet at the Chat Thai restaurant in Campbell Street, Sydney. A great modern Thai eatery, all in yellow and black. Including this Dalek trying to disguise itself with a potted plant.

Continuing my photographic series on Secret Men’s Business, we visit the men’s toilet in the Suan I-San Thai Restaurant in King Street, Newtown.

I’m reliably informed that it’s incredibly inappropriate to hang a temple gong in the bathroom. I doubt that a renaissance painting makes up for that.

This urinal in a suburban office at St Ives is completely different from the boldly-patterned tiles of the Lansdowne Hotel men’s toilet floor. Starkly simple, almost bleak.

And, I should add, slightly claustrophobic.

As I mentioned in the comments, I think I will turn this into an art project. A colleague now works for Flickr and upgraded me to a “pro” account — even though I’ve published only one single image so I could comment on ’Pong’s photos.

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For some reason, I love the hexagonal tiles on the floor of the men’s toilet in the Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale, in Sydney. Could it be because I’m old enough to remember when military simulations were played out on maps with a hexagonal grid?

I’ve mentioned before that our time in Bangkok wasn’t your typical tourist experience. One day, for example, we spent six hours in the Don Mueang district government offices. Here’s a photo of the men’s toilet.

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This just has to be the classiest allusion to the Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth of Australia ever, no?

This image is printed on the front of the Porsche 2400 Turbo hand dryer, as seen in the men’s toilet at the Cyprus Community Club here in Sydney. And it is truly beautiful, don’t you think?

The kangaroo holding out its paws to dry is such a subtle indication that (a) we’re looking at a hand dryer and (b) it’s made in Australia.

And the emu! Does it feel envious of the roo, unable to present hands at all? Or does it smirk in quiet self-satisfaction, happy in the knowledge that it has feathers?

This cheap but moderately decorative light fitting in an inner-city toilet symbolises the difference between a well-run business and a bad one.

This toilet is in a restaurant — a Thai restaurant on George Street, Sydney, called Crocodile Senior. No website, but great food, fast and efficient service and Thai pop music DVDs on screen. Nicely fitted out too.

Many restaurant toilets seem to come from a forgotten land. Bare bulbs hang from dust-covered fittings. Soiled paper towels overflow the rarely-emptied bin — when towels haven’t run out, that is. There’s a brown stain under every tap — and yes, that is urine you can smell. As you dry your hands on the back of your pants, you wonder where else they’re skimping on the cleanliness.

Did that kitchenhand actually wash his hands after he took a slash?

Green salad, anyone?

You finish your meal. It tasted OK, and next morning you’re moderately certain that your upset stomach is about the eight glasses of red you downed, not the chicken. But Doubt niggles at the back of your mind, and that restaurant drops silently off your list.

Crocodile Senior’s toilet, on the other hand, is fresh and clean. The flowers are artificial, but their colours are bright and there’s no layer of dust. This cheap light fitting creates a little bit of sparkle that helps convey the message: this is a nice place to be.

So many businesses seem to be like the Toilets from a Forgotten Land.

Some businesses piss away three days deciding the colour of the stationery, and $200k fitting out the spectacularly fashionable foyer. The salesman — sorry, “Business Development Manager” — has a PowerPoint presentation with 3D animation and sound effects. But the back office staff struggle because the computers are riddled with spyware and no-one’s paying attention. The driver reckons the truck really should be serviced, but nothing gets done and of course it breaks down the very day of The Important Delivery.

It’s like the slum-lord’s apartment, where wallpaper literally papers over the structural cracks. It’s the aged whore, well past her use-by date, whose sedimentary layers of pancake make-up distract you from the fissures and pustules beneath.

Sooner or later, there’s going to be leakage. And it won’t be pretty.

Even if it’s your local pub, there’s a limit to the kind of photographs you can take in the urinal and still use the excuse that it’s for “Art”.