notice
By Madeline Hyden and Ross Stewart
mhydew@kansan.com
and rstewart@kansan.com
it starts with a drink AND ENDS HERE
The top seven downtown bar bathrooms
On Friday nights, the women's bathroom at The Bottleneck is packed. Girls crowd around the small vanity, fluffing their hair, adjusting their clothing and staring narcissistically in the mirror. Muggy from all the body heat, the room buzzes with chitchat, the click of high heels on the tile floor and drunken laughter. Empty drink cups and wads of paper towel litter the counter and music from the band playing outside the bathroom pulses loudly every time
the squeaky door opens. By the end of the night, the bathroom looks like a war zone.
But behind the people and debris, bar bathrooms in Lawrence's downtown area hold a slew of history and tradition inside their stall doors. From painted murals to marker-written prose on the walls, a bar's personality and style are often revealed on the walls of its bathrooms. After careful consideration, here are our favorite bar bathrooms in Lawrence.
— Madeline Hyden
Photos by Alex Bonham-Carter
Painted black, the walls serve as a sort of chalkboard for artwork and inspirational quotes. One stall door shows the phrase,"You are beautiful exactly the way you are," and "True beauty lies within" paints the cabinets under the sink.A few standard concert fliers plaster the walls amidst paintings of stars and broken hearts.Housing men's and women's bathrooms. The Bottleneck's facilities were subtly artistic, with smaller pieces of work on the walls and less clutter.The night we visited the bar, singer-songwriter Sylvia Niccum was using the bathroom to warm up for her set that night.
"This bathroom has great acoustics," she says.
Madeline Hyden
The walls were once covered in paintings done by Travis Miller, a local artist who eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue his art career. The walls have since been painted over because someone blacked out the eyes of the paintings' subjects.
Bathrooms on both the main and basement levels of The Eighth Street Taproom are lit with a red light and covered with black paint, giving the rooms a dingy, DeNiro-in-Taxi-Driver feel. Photos of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers mark the bathrooms' gender and indistinguishable graffiti arbitrarily cover the walls. The hallway walls leading up to the bathrooms on the main level are coated with photos of patrons and staff members, drinking and looking generally merry.
Madeline Hyden
Peeping is taboo. So it's surprising to find six peepholes in a wall above urinals at Abe & Jake's Landing. Instead of having to stare off into a wall or at the wet floor, one has the option of squinting at the dance floor. It removes the stress of avoiding eye contact with other men while at the urinals.
The holes are not the easiest thing to spot. A manager mentioned how he had worked there for three years and never noticed them.
6
Sure, they're slightly creepy. Men peeing and watching people dance at the same time is a little strange. But, come on, there's something intriguing about it.
March 5,2009
Ross Stewart
X
2008.6.13 09:54
---