College Johns Go Coed

Field Museum facilities offer 'calming' art' and areas for kids

(NEWSER) - If you’re ever in Chicago and you really have to go, stop by the Field Museum—its restrooms are officially the best in the country. The natural history museum’s bathrooms have won the 10th annual “America’s Best Restroom” contest, run by restroom-supply company Cintas. So what’s so great about these toilets? Well, they’ve got environmentally-sound faucets and driers and are cleaned hourly—but that’s just the beginning, the Chicago Tribune reports. More»

Want to visit a nice public restroom? Try Japan

(NEWSER) - Toilet habits are a taboo subject for most of us, but not for Harvey Molotch. Salon spoke to the sociology professor, who co-edited Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, about the bathroom fixture. Highlights:

• We should be using water, not toilet paper, to clean up: It's more eco-friendly, and also offers "more complete cleansing," Molotch says.
• Public restrooms should be unisex: Segregated bathrooms are inefficient, make no sense for LGBT people, and are not as secure as unisex bathrooms would be, he argues.

Up to 20% of rural high school's boys would rather be girls

(NEWSER) - A high school in rural Thailand has given its many transgender students their own restroom, the BBC reports. Situated between the boys' and girls' rooms, the room has a half male/half female figure painted on the door. Inside, effeminate teenage boys preen. As many as 20% of the school's male students would rather be girls, the headmaster estimates. More»

Inventors help the wary leave the loo without touching doorknobs

(NEWSER) - For germaphobes, few sights elicit as much terror as doorknob in a public bathroom. Sure, you washed your hands, “but then someone else didn’t wash their hands and you have to touch the same door handle,” explains the inventor of the SanitGrip, an L-shaped, elbow-operated handle that helps just-cleaned hands stay that way. And he's not the only one grabbing the hygienic opportunity, the Wall Street Journal notes. More»

Visitors take their pick from 1,000 toilet stalls

(NEWSER) - Time for tourists to ditch the Great Wall and head for the city of Chongqing in southwest China, which recently opened a startling new attraction: a sprawling public restroom. The free facilities lie behind an Egyptian facade that conceals 1,000 toilets spread over four stories and almost 33,000 square feet. "We are spreading toilet culture," one official tells the AP. More»