The city's subway bathrooms may be "overflowing with filth," but is it the same case for the bathrooms in the city's parks? Though there are a few websites out there with databases of free public restrooms (including Starbucks: "America's Restroom"), there are only 19 restrooms throughout the sprawling 843 acre Central Park, and not many elsewhere. The Times' Ariel Kaminer set out to see which of all the city's parks were the cleanest.
Notable facilities include the secluded restrooms in the southwest corner of Van Cortlandt Park, the cherry tree surrounded privacy of the north end of Meadow Lake in Queens and the weird, perpetually broken pay toilet outside of Madison Square park. But the winner was the spotless, elegant restroom in Bryant Park. Decorated with fresh flowers, wood and marble, the space is the exact opposite of what the thought of a public bathroom usually inspires. Professor Harvey Molotch, author of “Toilet: The Public Restroom and the Politics of Sharing," said, “The cleanliness and the high standard of the maintenance signal that not only is something right about the restroom, but something is right about the park, and by extension the city.” So by that logic, something is very, very wrong with the subways.
