A good article about how the 297 bathrooms are designed there and other modern faculties. But I got a chuckle about the “cost” of going to the bathroom:
“Long lines for the restroom are what architects call a “friction point,” and, potentially, a costly one. The average price for a Super Bowl ticket is currently hovering around $9,800. That means a 15-minute wait for the restroom could cost attendees $612.”
What I’ve often wondered about venues like this is how they account for gender ratios. When someplace like that is used for a football game, the audience is likely to be mostly male, but if it’s a Taylor Swift concert, the audience likely skews female. Are some of the restrooms gender-convertible, to account for different demographics at different events?
I’ve been to a Melissa Etheridge concert that definitely skewed more female, and they did nothing to account for the long lines at the womens room. Another guy and I were joking as we went into the men’s room that the ladies now know how it feels to have to wait, but when we got inside it was packed with women who just didn’t care what the sign said or that their were men at the urinals. In fact, they told us that this was their concert and that we should just deal with it. I’m thinking that Swifties would do the same.
They now know? In my experience, public restrooms usually either have the same number of fixtures for men and women, in which case the average wait is longer for women (both because it takes a woman longer on average, and because women have to go more often on average), or they put in the same amount of floor space for both, in which case it’s even worse, because a urinal takes up less space than a toilet.
I was at a Pride event a while back at a bar in San Francisco that, sadly, no longer exists. It was packed, and the gender split was fairly even. The women’s room had 2 stalls, and the men’s room had one stall and one urinal. The women’s restroom wait was an hour. The women had commandeered the men’s room stall. When a man would bypass the line of women to go in the men’s room, he was told he was told he could use the urinal whenever he liked, but he would have to stand in line for a stall.
My reaction exactly. Longlines at the W facility and none at the M facility is the norm, or at least has been for decades.
When I lived in Las Vegas my wife and I liked to attend live low- and mid-level boxing that occurred at least monthly. Which were held in the convention center areas of one casino or another. Which areas had more or less equal floorspace or stall+urinal counts for each gender. But for these events the audience was about 80% male. And of course, unlike a convention, the seating is real dense and the gaps in the action are few and short, so everybody got up to use the facilities at the same time.
She loved sashaying past the long line of fidgity waiting men then waltzing into the no-waiting W room and coming back out prompty to survey the non-progress in the men’s line. If any guy gave her any lip her answer was “Payback’s a bitch!” Good times.
It’s the lines for the women’s room that are typically much much longer.
Last night I saw a show at City Center in NYC and the line for the women’s room was probably 20+ people. There was one person waiting in line for the men’s. So women just went and used that one.
One of my more colorful girlfriends (mumble) decades ago loved to spend Halloween on the gay side of San Francisco because they had the best costumes and the best parties. She was in a bar that was absolutely packed, had to go, and it took her forty-five minutes to work her way to the back of the bar where the restrooms were.
When the got there, the ladies’ room was locked with a sign, Anatomical females only. See the bartender foe the key. She didn’t have 90 minutes’ capacity left and the men’s room next door was unlocked with guys passing to and fro so she went there. The moment she walked in, everybody blinked and said, “Those are real!”
“Yeah, I’ve had them for some time. I’m desperate; can I use a stall?” She could, of course, then when she was washing her hands the guy next to her said, “I got this problem all the time with my eye shadow creasing. Is there anything I can do?” She spent an hour in there giving makeup tips. Every new person coming in was, “Those are real!” “Yeah, yeah. Leave the lady alone.”
I’ve been in Allegiant for a football game and my recollection was that there was just enough time at the half if you moved quickly. With the longer halftime there’s plenty of time, especially if you have no interest in Usher.
Fenway used to have bathrooms where the urinal was a 30’ long trough with water coursing through it. Maximum utility, if a little more…social than most bathrooms. I assume those are gone–that was 40 years ago.
I thought interesting the bit about how some toilet stalls may remain empty even when there’s a long line, because those waiting can’t see which are occupied. Seems like there could be a light above each stall indicating if it’s in use.
@FinsToTheLeft , you beat me to it. I remember those at Maple Leaf Gardens. Thankfully, they were low enough that even when I was 8, I could still manage to go.
And all the smoking! Not in the seating areas around the ice, but in the concourses where the washrooms and concessions were. When you left after a game, you left through a fog of smoke.
I remember going to a concert in the early 1980s with two male friends - IIRC it was Loverboy and Donnie Iris - and while the genders were pretty even, they must have been selling beer by the megagallon because there was not only a line going halfway around the arena (I’m exaggerating only slightly) my friends, who like me didn’t drink beer because we were underage, said that guys were sharing urinals, and even going in the sinks.
I’ve also heard that men are more likely to line up at each individual stall and/or urinal, whereas (and I can testify to this) women are more likely to form a line and whichever stall is vacant first, the first person in line goes there.
p.s. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be wearing adult diapers to the game.
You have this backwards.