No idea if this is common in women’s restrooms but some fancier restaurants and resorts like to put soft pornography up in the men’s restrooms. On the walls, over the urinals, etc. Usually in frames.
I don’t care that much personally unless I have to take a little one to the restroom. But I mean, why have them there at all? For most people it is more difficult to urinate with an erection, so that’s not the point. And clearly the pictures aren’t there to actually masturbate to. During dinner? While out golfing? In a public or semi-public restroom? Who does that?
Did I mention that kids use the same restrooms as grown men?
And then there’s one place where I guess the owners have a thing for girls in chains. Nothing says good ole boys club like sharing your soft-porn bondage collection in the restroom, I guess.
It’s better than bloody pictures of war scenes, but terribly awkward nonetheless.
Looks like a whole pulp macho theme going on. And they are part of paper collages along with non-pin up pics, many in B&W, not individually framed, which gives a very different aesthetic from what your OP suggested. Sort of a 50s, men’s adventure mag or fumetto, retro type thing.
I wouldn’t call it porn, is what I’m saying. Just pseudo-edgy.
As for kids? Why are you taking kids to some pretentious mock-French brasserie, in the first place?
And I didn’t see anything in the Yelp photos that you can’t see strolling past the newsstands by the Seine in Paris, where they don’t hide the covers of Lui, and so it’s on-theme.
I was recently a guest of a member at a volunteer fire department bar. We stopped there because the drinks were very, very cheap. When I used the men’s I was shocked by the fire porn photos framed over the urinals and sinks. Pictures of fires. An arsonist’s dream. WTF.
This is what I’m wondering. There are at least three bar / restaurants I go to that have their bathrooms covered in Page 3 (page 6?) pinups (mens and womens rooms). Of course, these aren’t high falutin’ places like the OP mentions, but I guess what I’m getting at is that it seems to be an actual intentional “style” (as opposed to just tacking them up there because the owners are pervs).
I can’t say I’ve ever seen this, except 40 years ago in the Playboy Club in London – and they had the pinups on the walls outside the men’s room, too.
The only things I’ve seen over the urinals, if there’s anything, are video screens (tuned to a sports channel) or that day’s pinned-up newspapers (sports page or, rarely, business page). A few times I’ve seen chalkboards with actual chalk (one of MIT’s restrooms has this).
But I can’t say I’ve seen pin-ups anywhere except that one. And I certainly haven’t seen Bondage Porn.
I must not go to the right/wrong bathrooms.
I can appreciate a photo of an attractive woman without pitching a tent or masturbating. I’ve never been to a restaurant or even a bar sporting soft core pornography or pinups on their walls. Either the places I go to aren’t fancy enough or they’re not skeevy enough. As to why they’re there: Someone finds it aesthetically pleasing.
Kids also read the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. It was popular at my school library when I was in middle school. Before we had the internet.
A local restaurant had framed pages from classic works that had been modified. One was a page from Moby Dick. It went along normally, then the sentence, “and all would have gone well, if only the captain had remembered to wash his hands after using the bathroom”.
In tiny print at the bottom, the Allegheny County Department of Health took credit.
Where do you take your children for some decent moules frites? Long John Silver’s, I suppose.
Seriously, though… what an obnoxious comment to make about where someone takes their family for a meal.
As to the OP, I suppose some can be tasteful and others less so. You might mention something to the manager if you find them to be inappropriate for young children. Though you risk coming across as a bit of a prude because I doubt very much the restaurant owner isn’t, a) fully aware of how he intended to decorate his establishment, b) hasn’t heard others complain and simply didn’t care. In the case of Le Diplomat, they aren’t exactly lacking for customers to fill their tables on any given day or night of the week.
I’ve never been to an establishment that has decor like that.
It seems to align with a certain type of upscale retro cool that is in right now; an idea of “classy” that is grounded in mid-century, James Bond-esque attitudes. Hedonism, but restrained, and in suits, and with expensive cocktails.
Whether or not it’s the worst thing ever, it absolutely perpetuates and props up the misogynistic elements of our patriarchal culture.
