December 7, 2007
When You Gotta Go Number 2.0
Mark Renton knew what the ideal bathroom would be like: "Brilliant gold taps, virginal white marble, a seat carved from ebony, a cistern full of Chanel No. 5, and a flunky handing me pieces of raw silk toilet roll."
Of course, like the rest of us, under the circumstances he'd settle for anywhere. Now, thanks to MizPee, you won't wind up in "The Worst Toilet in Hogtown" again. Just type in your location and you'll receive a list of the closest public toilets. Each one is rated by other users, so you know to avoid Coffee Time. (Like you didn't know that already!)
MizPee might not be the sexiest web 2.0 start-up, but it's hard to deny its usefulness, and that the service works well with your mobile phone really makes it killer. The database of Toronto washrooms is still growing, so do your part and contribute locations and ratings for the loos in your area.
Hat tip to Accordion Guy.
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Hmm...it just gives me 500 errors.
Really? I haven't had any problems with it. You can't access the site at all? Does it hate Mac?
Same errors for me. Can access the site okay, but searching based on address pops up errors.
I just sent their customer service a screengrab of the error message and how I got them. Hopefully they fix soon!
Great idea for a site. When I was a bike courier, I used to know a whole bunch of offices whose bathrooms you could use without having to get through any security. It was always so much nicer than using a dirty retail bathroom. Would have been great to add that knowledge to a central database.
Yeah, I'm getting the error now too. It was working fine earlier, so hopefully this is just a temporary situation. It sucks that this happened right when we posted about it!
Looks like they've fixed the problem now.
According to the site, the closest public bathroom to me is at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. That's a long time to hold it...I think I'll just find an alley.
That ideal bathroom is quite offensive.
a cistern full of Chanel No. 5 That's just disgusting.a flunky One of those people who pressures you into giving them cash while you're in the washroom? Or (judging by the rest of the list) are we supposed to assume this person is tied to the floor with a rope made of thylacine skin? handing me pieces of raw silk toilet roll This is quite a wasteful use of silk.Brilliant gold tapsmining in general is pretty damn bad for the environment virginal white marble Marble quarrying is also really bad for the environment. Marble comes from deep in the ground, generally below the water table.a seat carved from ebony I'll let wikipedia handle that one:
:P
Ben: hilarious.
Marc: what address did you use? I tried a few, my own as well as a few downtown and all seemed to produce reasonable results. I'd like to know if others are receiving similarly bad results.
Yes, I got the Museum of Natural History as well as the Apple Store in Manhattan... based on two different addresses in Toronto.
There's definitely something screwy going on with the site today. Running the same locations now that I ran earlier produce garbage results, with everything claiming to be only "0 feet away".
Obviously they are having problems. It's too bad this is going on today, it's embarrassing for them and for us.
They told me to go from Bloor to San Jose. That's just a wee bit too much.
Hmm, I also got the Apple store. Maybe it's some marketing ploy by Apple to get everyone to go to their 5th avenue store?