There’s a building at Berkeley (Dwinelle Hall, maybe?) whose bathroom stalls were filled with grout puns: Alexander the Grout, Grout Expectations, The Madness of Grouts, etc. And of course, what urinal is complete without a finely nibbed “The Unbearable Lightness of Peeing”?
The finest literary erotica I ever read was on the walls of a bathroom stall that had until recently been used by a company of female army recruits. I had gone to some vacant barracks for a sit-down, and what I happened to read there was, well, quite eye-opening: descriptions of their (female) NCOs, the things they’d like to do to them, creative uses of standard issues military kit… let’s just say I ended up spending a *lot *more time in that stall than I had intended to.
I even wrote down the name of the most popular NCO for future reference, because any women who could elicit such ardor from a gaggle of 18-year-old bi-curious girls was worth getting to know. Never could find her, though.
In one toilet stall (the women’s bathroom), someone had drawn three faces. One of them was squinting, saying “No, I swear my eyes are closed,” the other’s eyes were shut with a mortified expression, saying “Dude, dude, she’s peeing. Be cool.” The third face had a huge grin, and said “Gentlemen . . . always be polite.”
In the same stall, someone also scrawled “Help! I’m turning into a monkey!” Hmm . . .
On the entire back of a different stall door, so it’s all you’re looking at when you’re doing your business, someone wrote with a paint pen: “You just lost the game.” Luckily, I’ve won.
Another time, I saw a whole conversation unfold over the course of about a month or so.
The original statement: “I feel like I’m at the end of my life more then the beginning.” (The urge for me to correct “then” to “than” with a pen was strong, but I’m not that bad).
Someone else: “Are you OK?”
First person: “No.”
Second person: “Tell me what’s wrong.”
First person: “Fuck off, bitch!” insert doodle of hand flipping the bird
Second person: “Well that’s” - and that’s it. “Well that’s”. 
I need closer on the conversation, dammit!
Firm but cohesive let my offerings flow,
Not roughly swift, nor impudently slow.
Too wordy.
My college’s music department was previously in an old decrepit building so a certain leeway with bathroom graffiti was allowed. All the above sayings were there, but my favorite (and one I started) was a columnar list of people/places with the initials J C - starting with Jesus Christ, Johnny Carson, James Colter!? [sic] (a grad student).
The list kept growing to over 20 names (JC is really common!), so as a joke I wrote “J C and the Sunshine Band”. Someone corrected it by overwriting KC, which then started a whole another column for K C. Eventually we had a column for I C, J C and K C. L C didn’t fare so well though.
The department head later held a Christmas party at his house. He thoughtfully covered his walls with blank newsprint which he kept as a souvenir.
Bathroom walls - the ultimate message board?
I’ve often thought that if we truly want to fight ignorance, we need to expand the battlefield to include bathroom walls. Currently the forces of ignorance rule them almost entirely, hence the proliferation of racism, homophobia, profanity and so forth.
Each of us should carry a sharpie whenever we go out in public. Whenever we’re in a bathroom stall, we should write some calculus equations or facts from history and science on the wall.
Now thats funny.
“Find the value of r”. I bet some sports comments could get a pretty good graffiti war going.
Around 1986, I was in a fast food restaurant bathroom in Wheaton, MD. There was a very long, very detailed, very crazy, but equally fascinating rant on the wall. It covered many topics, and concluded by blaming a fourth-generation descendant of J. P. Morgan as the culprit of much of the world’s problems, even helpfully providing his current address in Manhattan.
Below it, someone had scrawled: “We’ve sure come a long way from, ‘Here I sit, all broken-hearted…’”
A couple of months ago, I visited Paris. On the back of a stall door in the Louvre men’s room was written (in English):
There are three things I hate.
- Vandalism
- Irony
- Lists
Possibly not relevant to this thread, so sue me, but the first time I ever heard this:
We were walking through our neighborhood looking at Christmas lights and someone had a giant Winnie the Pooh inflatable yard decoration, with Pooh looking down into a large stocking…my husband quoted that little rhyme and I nearly injured myself laughing.
“There’s only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.”
-Nigel Powers
There are only 2 types of people in this world - those who can extrapolate from incompete data, and
Over the TP dispenser: “[Name of college] diplomas; take one.”
Over a really gross backed-up toilet: “Do Not Flush–[rival school] baptismal font.”
“En este lugar sagrado
Donde acude tanta gente.
Hace fuerza el mas cobarde
y se caga el mas valiente”
Translation:
“In this sacred place
visited by so many
even the coward struggles
and the valiant shits himself”
Sadly it does not rhyme in my translation.
I’ve found that the moderators on bathroom walls do a poor job.
In this sacred stall,
Visited by us all,
The coward struggles and strains,
While the brave shit out their brains.
Does that capture the spirit of the original?
Mean version, from a biker bar:
If you pee
Upon the seat
Your ass
Will get beat
A piss-poor job? 
I used to work on a college campus where the faculty had their own restrooms, inaccessible to the students. Someone had scratched the following onto the electric hand-dryer in the men’s room:
“Push button for a one-minute message from the Dean.”
Dammit! :mad: :smack: