My shuls bathroom is beige, yours is probably painted beige as well, it may be gray or some sort of sky blue, but most shul bathrooms are painted beige. I’m not sure about the ladies bathrooms, but I know that many of us men can pretty much say that most shul bathrooms suck. Yes, the colors are drab, but most important is the shul bathroom smell or stench, depending on how often you attend shul – because after a long while of 3 time per day attendance, you may get used to that shul bathroom stench. I can’t get used to the stench here, it’s permanent. You can get all the blue urinal cakes you want, add those post flush toilet bowl cleaners and load up on febreeze, but it will still stink.
Another sad issue with shul bathrooms is that no matter how much space there is, they always seem to be lacking in the room department. Shul bathrooms resemble bar bathrooms, you have to wait to wash your hands and listen to someone in the stall right behind you as you make way for someone else who wants to use the urinal. Some shuls don’t even put up those urinal cubicle walls and for some reason old Jewish men love whipping it out for all to see, maybe its got something to with going naked in the JCC shvitz.
I will put it to the readers, but I am curious as to which shul bathroom issue is worse, the stink or those little squares that all shuls try to pass off as toilet paper. In order to combat the issue of ripping toilet paper and the other issue of overpriced tissues – shuls across the land have always had (as far back as I can remember) these little flimsy square pieces of rough not quite tissue/not quite paper towel papers that are dispensed out of a rusty little box nailed to the side of the stall. Usually one has to really yank on them and in order to do a proper wipe, you need a whole bunch of em. Would you rather proper toilet paper, or a nice smelling bathroom?
The redeeming factor of shul bathrooms is that the urinals are usually large and the toilets are usually so old that they flush properly. Pre-green environmental nut job toilet bowls can really flush and that;s a good thing after a nice bowl of cholent.
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