Wendy's (McKees Rocks)

Wendy's (McKees Rocks)

1705 Pine Hollow Rd.

McKees Rocks, PA 15136

LIVE @ Wendy's in McKees Rocks: C-. Very standard, clean enough. Door locks. Manual soap, hand dryer, sink, toilet and urinal. Sink sprays a little.

Also, a large air blower is plugged into to eliminate the chance of standing water on the floors. Nice touch.

Note: It's the Clarence Travel Plaza. On further inspection I'll raise it to a C-. Cleaner than I first thought, auto sinks & dryers but inconsistent H2O temp.

LIVE from a random service station on Rt. 90 btw Rochester and Buffalo: D. Dirty, not well maintained. Typical. Only bonus is auto flushing.

Express Mart/Mobil off of Rt. 90 outside of Buffalo: B-. Very, very decent for a gas station restroom. Door locks, auto sink + auto (excel!) dryer, very clean.

Silky's Pub in Bloomfield

Silky's Pub (Bloomfield)

5135 Liberty Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15224

LIVE @ Bloomfield Silky's: C-. 1 toilet & urinal w a bootleg cardboard out of order sign inside it. The door locks. Everything is manual. Fairly clean.

Additional Note: These small bathrooms with a single toilet and urinal in addition to a locking door always confuse me. Take, for example, last night. I went to use the restroom and the door was unlocked. I walked in, and there was a man at the sink washing his hands. Due to the small size of the bathroom, I didn't know if I should start doing my business or if I should wait for him to leave. I stood there awkwardly holding the door half-open, until I finally diffused the situation by asking the guy his opinion on whether or not the door should be locked/two men should be in such a bathroom at the same time. He responded with, "I think they just want you to get drunk enough that you don't care anymore." Touche.

(Pictures taken after the original live post. Therefore, no bootleg cardboard sign is visible.)

...foam soap, manual paper towel dispenser & auto hand dryer, some graffiti. Not totally sure why the door locks when the toilet is in a stall.

LIVE @ D's Six Pax & Dogz: C-. Utilitarian but kind of dirty, one urinal & stall, door locks, baby changing station, inexplicably nice wooden cabinet...

LIVE @ Pizza Sola in E. Lib: B+. What a pleasant surprise; door locks, very clean, nice Italian-styled brownish floor + wall tiles, low urinal, foam soap.

Shadow Lounge/AVA

LIVE @ Shadow Lounge/AVA: D. Been here so often, never stopped to consider how crappy the bathroom is. Kind of dirty, dented paper towel dispenser...

...all kinds of graffiti scratched into the mirrors, two rolls of toilet paper sitting by the sinks for no reason, trash can overflowing.

And btw, the rolls of TP sitting on the countertop by the sink are soaked, so they are useless anyway.

Chris just informed me that they were out of paper towels earlier, so someone improvised and put the TP rolls out. Really?

(Note: pics taken post live blog. Hence, no rolls of TP on the counter.)

Chris Flyer asks: why do they have child height urinals in bars?

South Side Works Cinema

South Side Works Cinema

425 Cinema Drive

Pittsburgh, PA 15203

Grade: A+

I attended a free advance screening of "Hot Tub Time Machine" tonight at the South Side Works Cinema this evening, and I'd have to say that my visit to the restroom before the show far outweighed the film itself. That's not to say "Hot Tub Time Machine" wasn't a funny movie, because it was. Instead, this should be read as a statement of just how great the men's room at the theater really is.

It's hard to get a public restroom right. The sheer number of people who pass through--especially in an establishment as crowded as a movie theater--make upkeep and general sanitation extremely difficult. As a janitor, usher and manager at a movie theater for three years, I understand the challenges inherent in maintaining a restroom frequented by patrons who combine large quantities of soda, popcorn and candy. In some cases, occasional discrepancies in cleanliness can almost be expected and excused at movie theaters.

That said, the restroom at the South Side Works Cinema was immaculate. The artistically tiled floor was scrubbed clean, the stainless steel waste bins, urinal dividers and stalls were polished and gleaming, and the countertop -- though a somewhat cheesy red faux marble -- was clearly attended to with frequency.

The sinks themselves are a hip deviation from the norm with deep, bowl-shaped basins of (again, polished) stainless steel. The faucets and soap dispensers are both automatically operating, as are the urinals and toilets. The restroom offers an automatic hand dryer in addition to paper towels, which can be found in dispensers mounted in both the countertop and wall. The hand dryer is your standard white utilitarian model, and it would have been nice to see something in stainless to match some of the other features. Still, one can't argue with functionality.

In addition to the mirror above the sinks, there is a full-length mirror mounted against the far wall to provide for proper outfit inspection before that big movie date. I noticed some slight graffiti in the upper right hand corner of the countertop mirror, though I did not have a chance to see whether it was scratched into the glass or drawn on. Why do people have to go and ruin a good thing like that?

Also, I felt as though the walls of the stalls rose a bit higher from the ground than is standard. Not so much as to diminish privacy, but the feeling of enclosure may not be as great as usual when using these stalls.

Anyway, very minor complaints aside, I cannot recommend this restroom highly enough. Be sure to visit it to see for yourself before or after your show -- or during, if it's a dud.

(Note: Pictures taken after original post. There was no out of order stall at the time of the review.)

Subway (McKees Rocks)

Subway

500 Pine Hollow Rd.

McKees Rocks, PA 15136

LIVE from Crafton Subway. Grade: D. Pretty filthy, bad condition, motion sensor lights turned off for no reason while I was in there. But what was I expecting?

New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam

4421 Butler St.

Pittsburgh, PA 15201

LIVE New Amsterdam. Grade: C+. Walls black, urinal out of order, stall has a 2nd urinal in addition to toilet, nice new sink/mirror & great water temp control.

Additional notes: Chris mentioned that he had trouble getting hot water from the faucet, so the water temp control may be iffy. The broken urinal actually had a fairly artistically written sign hung over it, but the sign was eventually removed by a patron and people just went ahead and used the thing anyway. Sometime after midnight someone threw up in the second urinal, clogging it for the duration. This is a definitely head-scratcher, as the toilet is about one foot to the left of said urinal.

Also, I find it hilarious that the ancient and non-functioning condom dispenser was not removed during bathroom renovations, but was instead just covered in black paint like everything else.