Most Cohesive Bathroom

Capers

Just a perfect, natural extension of the established vibe throughout everyone's favourite Greek diner. Also a great example of how to do a tiny outdoor extension bathroom. It looks like a portaloo but the walls are lined with wood and it has nice warm lighting. Good job all round. I feel held/cosy in every one.

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Least Cohesive Bathroom

Cam's (at the Convent)

Cam's baffles me. It's just all over the place. They aren’t bad though, perfectly fine functioning bathrooms, just random. The men's and women's bathrooms are right next to each other, but they seem like they're from entirely different venues. I'd love to know why. Will I do the research? Maybe one day.

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Most "Public Toilet" Toilet at a Trendy Restaurant

Hope St Radio

If you’re dining at Hope St and need to wee it can be a bit sobering in here. But if you’re in Collingwood Yards and just need a wee, they’re fine. 

‍Surely the Collingwood Yards have some artist grant money to give someone to give the bathrooms a lil more vibe. Get the crayons out and give the bathroom the Steiner treatment!

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Biggest Bathroom in Smallest Venue

Caretaker's Cottage

Caretaker's is tiny, but their bathroom is huuuuge. This is the most space you'll find in the whole venue. Make the most of it. If you’re feeling overstimulated, go have a moment in the bathroom. They're actually really nice – cosy, dark and moody – and they have free pads. Be warned, in the event of a queue, you may be ushered into the much less tasteful bathrooms in the corporate building over the way. But.. worth the wait if you aren’t busting.

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The Last Resort Bathroom

The public bathrooms across from the Grace Darling

Look, it is what it is. I mean we’ve all used them (throwback to when I nearly shat myself). 10/10 don’t recommend, but also it served its purpose by being there and I NEARLY shat myself, I didn’t shit myself.. You know?

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Consistently Wettest Bathrooms

The Grace Darling

A slightly better option than the aforementioned public toilet across the road. If you have the courage to walk in or go buy a beer to use the bathroom, it's definitely more private, and less stressful. But every time I have been in the Grace bathroom it’s always been so wet? I understand when there's an event on but on a regular Thursday lunch, still wet.. curious.

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Best Bathroom To Be Fingered In

French Saloon (& Kirk's Wine Bar) – as awarded by a friend

This bathroom award comes from my friend. They were at French saloon and it was the first time she hooked up with a woman - double special award. I get it… If I was being wined and dined at French Saloon and was asked to come to the bathroom I would 100% say yes. There is something vaguely nautical about the wood and tiling, it's horny.

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Best Bathroom Where You Don't Have To Be A Customer

The Wine Corner

Conveniently located on the Canning Street bicycle superhighway, this is one to keep in your back pocket. You can just stroll in here with confidence and do your thing. The bathroom itself is underwhelming (it feels like the bathroom equivalent of the milk crates that chefs sit on to smoke cigarettes in alleyways behind restaurants) but it's there, and it's free, and you don't really have to be a customer. Thanks Wine Corner.

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Best Toilet, Worst Placement

North Fitzroy Arms

The pub equivalent of a sharehouse bathroom connected to the kitchen. It's a perfectly fine bathroom, nice even. Good paint job, good vibe, great lighting. You feel at ease here... until you leave, and realise you're exiting into the pool room – one of the busiest nooks of the pub – and you've just taken a shit, and everyone's looking. I swear it was the person before me.

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Most On Brand

Nasty's

It's in the name. What else would you want the bathrooms to look like at a bar called Nasty's? No notes.

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Best Urinal

Sofitel Level 35 (Atrium Bar)

You don’t need to be a guest to go to this bar, just find the elevator and head up to level 35. Unfortunately my camera gave up in the women's bathroom, but it's basically the same layout as above, only with cubicles where the urinals are (which is worse because you miss out on the view). So this one's for the AMABs. 

Shout out to the woman in here before me – while she was washing her hands I got my camera out and said “sorry I was waiting for you to finish, I take photos of bathrooms” and we started talking about the view. I asked if she’s been in the men's, she said no, and I explained the difference and how I really want a photo of the urinal. We had a moment looking out the window together, and a whinge about how the cubicle wall ruins it. She leaves, then not a minute later runs back in to grab me to tell me that the men's room is being cleaned... by a woman! Now's the chance. I go in and ask the cleaner if I can take a photom, and what a piss with a view.

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Most Haunted

The Elizabeth Street Underground Public Toilets

From up high on level 35 we move down to the subterranean, into the intensely spooky underground toilets on Elizabeth St near the GPO. This is ghost town, for sure. My skin was crawling as soon as I descended, It’s huge and no one was in there (that I could see). Look at this place, just look at it.. there's definitely ghosts doing their makeup here as we speak.

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Most Overstimulating

Melbourne Recital Centre

What a gorgeous bathroom, so decadent, so tasteful... I could imagine it being awful if you were pissed and seeing double though. A double edged sword of a bathroom.

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Best To Do Drugs In

Milney's

I mean, I literally shelved my first pinger here a couple of weeks ago. The accessible bathroom is large, has nice lighting, and a contender for most selfies posted on Insta, actually. Accessible and vibes, you don’t really see that often. The other two bathrooms there are fine, small, similar vibe, and the joy I get seeing 4 grown 6ft+ men come out of the small bathroom at once hahah, it’s cute and intimate. <3

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Bathroom Where I've Found The Most (Empty) Baggies

From my cleaning days, Neighbourhood Wine. Not much of a surprise, there's a bit of money moving through this place. Along with empty baggies I would find spews in strange places, heard stories of people peeing in the little smokers area upstairs, and I also found a butt plug here.

Nothing quite like hosing away someone's vomit from the night before and literally being able to tell what they had off the menu as it washes away. 

I do quite like these bathrooms though, nice light, and in the bigger bathroom the urinal is in a cubicle. Definitely up there with some of the better bathrooms, just depends if you go on a night that has a gremlin crowd or not. 

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Most Unfairly Maligned

The Tote

In my field research, people kept nominating The Tote as the venue with the worst bathrooms. But like... imagine if The Tote had nice bathrooms? It's exactly what you'd expect. So to me, they’re fine? Also used to clean The Tote and there would be vomit exactly where you’d expect it, broken bottles and vapes in the urinal, always a smashed glass in the corner and at least one toilet blocked.

Honestly The Tote was one of my favourite places to clean, it was easy, you can only do so much, whereas somewhere like Neighbourhood Wine is fine dining with matching levels of mess but a higher standard of cleanliness.

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Most Disappointingly Normal

Asian Beer Cafe

I wonder what year ABC made the decision to remove the vinyl wrap that used to cover the entire urinal in the men's bathroom, which was just pictures of hentai girls. I had no idea, and was so curious when I found out I had to go look, only to find a pleasantly nice, clean bathroom with a big mirror great for selfies and fit checks. It's fine, but I'm sad I missed the anime girl glory days.

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Second Pinkest Bathroom

Runner Up

Dunno where the first is, but Runner Up claims to be the Second Best rooftop bar in Collingwood (as per their PBS ads which I hear way too often) and so I feel like they probably have the second-pinkest bathroom. Also the second-best bathroom to do drugs in. Also the second best accessible bathroom.

If I was floating about Collingwood Yards I would probably come up here over the downstairs formerly mentioned Hope St / public toilets, they’re before you even enter the bar too so you could slide in and out quite easily.

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Worst Smelling Bathroom

The Rook's Return

Where's the fan? I found spew in the sink as well. I've cleaned a lot of bathrooms. This is the one that made me gag. 99% sure this was after a Jazz Party.

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Worst Toilet Seat

Fairfield Amphitheatre

In the "Worst Toilet Seat" category, you can't get much worse than No Seat. This was at the Skylab birthday party... Skylab punters, I thought you were better than this.

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Best Festival Bathrooms

Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre

A bit of Amphitheatre Redemption. How good is shouting to your mates across a dancefloor, "Are you pissing? Go to C24!" Also, one of my favourite overheards, the year that an interstitial DJ played a Justin Bieber song, "OI BABES! BIEBS IS ON! GET OUT!"

Have you heard about the Ratatouille themed one? A chef's hat comes down when you pee.

The bathrooms are genuinely decent, and every year there's a new creative effort someone's brought to the party.

Maybe one year I’ll paste up all of the photos I’ve taken of other bathrooms.

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Hell Yeah

The Forum

This bathroom is so good that if I'm in there and I hear my favourite song by the headliner playing, I don't even feel like I need to rush out. It's almost worth missing their whole set. Hell Yeah.

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Best Sharehouse

My Friend's Sharehouse In Coburg

Bring back these toilet seats. Caroma can get absolutely fucked. Minimalism ruined everything.

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Best All Round

Napier Quarter

Napier Quarter is the perfect balance between feeling fancy and being a bit of a ratbag. And the bathroom meets the standard of the rest of the venue; tucked away, cosy, feels private, clean, incredible sink, lovely soap. Always a good sign if the photo with flash still looks inviting.

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Honourable Mentions

I love my list of bathrooms, and it’s fun asking people where their faves are, and the list just keeps growing. This is all I've managed to photograph in the last few months. 

Here's some contenders that I haven't made it to yet… that rumour has it, are nice or unique; 

Lui Bar (urinal), Bar Holiday, Apollo Inn, Fathers Office, Poodle, Ophelia, Nicholas Building, Manze, Di Stasio.

A special mention to Bernie’s, it’s spacious, accessible, has nice air freshener, the smaller one in the hallway with the shower is cute and has nice lighting, not really good for photos but I like them. Same goes for Flippy’s, not the best photo, but some of my favourite graff to read while taking a wee is in there, plus a new powerful fan, great airflow. 

My last mention and most special mention goes to onesixone. That place deserves a whole article. I went for the first time in 10 years a couple of months ago and just was in a constant state of wtf, each bathroom had so much personality and so much variation between them all. Can’t wait for my next accidental night there hopefully carrying my camera with enough brain cells to try and capture SOME of the vibe, or maybe it’s best left in the ketamised fever dream memory box.

It’s nice to be back where I belong. Doing what I love. Being judgmental in the bloody bathroom.

Thanks for having me Veraison <3