Via Shutterstock
With the former Arlington landmark Bardo set to re-open in Northeast D.C.’s Trinidad neighborhood, owners Bill and Andrew Stewart are scrambling to assemble all the elements a brewpub needs. The current item on their agenda: What kind of toilets to install in the women’s restroom.
On Bardo’s Facebook page, Bill Stewart wrote yesterday that the bar is considering squat toilets—which are sunken into the ground—for the women’s room.
“Okay Females!” Stewart wrote. “We are trying to set up the Women’s bathroom to make everyone happy. question for today… Would ladies use / prefer SQUAT toilets ( the kind they use in Asia) with these, women don’t have to sit on dirty toilet seats. comments please! thanks.”
Squat toilets, which are common throughout Asia and the Middle East, can help bathroom-goers avert direct contact with unsanitary toilet seats, but are they appropriate for an American bar where, presumably, people will be getting sloshed? Some of the responses to Stewart’s proposition are optimistic.
“YES YES YES,” one woman wrote back. “If you got squatters, I’d be your best patron.”
But far more find it a dubious proposition. Among the doubters are people who offered the following:
- “As one who used a squat toilet for a couple of years, I would say NO to squat toilets. Whose brainchild was that?”
- “Wouldn’t work for women wearing heels, flip flops,tights, leggings, pantyhose, long skirts/dresses, short tight skirts.”
- “No! I prefer to sit on a toilet seat.”
- “That seems like asking for drunk ladies to fall in.”