Warm Lighting

Homestead in San Francisco apparently wants you to feel like an iguana in a heated enclosure while peeing. Or maybe the red bulb was an oversight? The effect is positively tender, until you spot the eerie movie posters in the frame by the sink. CAT PEOPLE!

I love it.

Women Skeletons and Men Skeletons May Pee Here and Here, Respectively

I do love the decor all over the Red Bones and Under Bones in Davis Square, Somerville. However, I would question whether skeletons continue to have gender "men" and "women" even after the fleshy and culturally significant part of the body has decomposed...

But then upon closer inspection I realize I have overlooked the clothing (and hair?), which clearly proves that skeletons do indeed continue to stand as specimens of their gender category.

The Virtues of Trendy Wallpaper

Courtesy of Starlight Lounge in Somerville, MA, I had a few interesting thoughts regarding the merits of wallpaper in the loo.

This toilet tickled my fancy, and seemed to echo a trend I've been seeing in toilets recently. Namely, why not cover the walls with something whimsical and distracting, perhaps even over-stimulating? That way, you achieve an attractive though possibly divisive decorative statement. This design, apparently pulled from old 50s/60s magazine advertisements, are particularly a l'epoque given the recent darling obsession with this era (a la Mad Men, and so on). As a decorative choice, furthermore, it distracts from the standard furnishings necessary to make this space a toilet. Looking around this bathroom, it's almost difficult to pick out the toilet, standard support bar, sink and paper towel dispenser. It's almost to say that these furnishings are too unspeakable to be accented, so let's draw the eye away from them by means of amusing and in this case, saucy wall paper. Hooray, what a delightful exaggerated statement of our implicit feelings towards the bathroom.

As a thought experiment, what if these decorators had papered EVERYTHING in the bathroom? Now wouldn't that have been interesting.

Also. There is an interesting flavor of social commentary that occurs when we introduce sexually provocative imagery in the very space sanctioned for crapping. It's a sort of sordid confusion of acts all associated with the body that brings to mind a very puritanical sense of shame that we ascribe both to crapping and shagging. Lovely.

I greatly enjoyed this toilet, not least because I sort of felt like I was watching TV, or engaging in some other escapist media while performing a routine behavior. It was sort of strangely luxurious. Oooh la la.

Top Toilets on Dezeen

A nice collection of the top toilets profiled by Dezeen. It's nice to see the Peepoo bag representing a real departure from the way we think about toilets as a private, luxurious porcelain seat in a bathroom. Still, isn't it eerie how all of these toilets stand alone without any sign of human use? I'm not just trying to be provocative, but I'm hoping some day a design company will provide photographs of their creations in use. They could even include one of those ubiquitous long-exposure shots with a blur of a beautiful human body using their delightfully designed crapper!

Set up your in-home piss powered video game

From Boing Boing

Wallpaper: oh my

Thank you Regal Beagle in Brookline. What delightful, furry wallpaper you have.





Also scoring pretty high is this coy wallpaper at Socarrat, a fun paella bar in Nolita, NYC.

Under the sea!

Center Street Cafe in Jamaica Plain: AMAZING underwater scene.