Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Blaðsíða 24

24
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011 24
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2014HYGIENE
When writing these reviews, I went to
some of Reykjavík’s most popular bars to
check out their bathroom facilities: Did
they have soap and toilet paper? Was the
number of the toilets sufficient consider-
ing the place’s size and popularity? Was it
clean and did it smell nice?
When visited:
23:00-03:00, on “party nights”
Places visited:
Vínsmakkarinn
Dolly
Bar 11
Kaffibarinn
Stúdentakjallarinn
Kaldi Bar
Café París
Paloma
MicroBar
Brikk
Dillon
Celtic Cross
Húrra
Ölsmiðjan
Legend:
There is soap
There is toilet paper
You don’t have to wait long
It's Clean
It smells good
The rating system goes from one to three
stars, unless the bathroom is really shitty.
In that case, the rating will be denoted by
a pile of shit.
Vínsmakkarinn
Laugavegur 73
Vínsmakkarinn offers some of the best
service I’ve ever experienced, but sadly,
this is only a review of the bathroom fa-
cilities. Their bathroom, unlike the ser-
vice, was not perfect. On the upside, the
most important things—namely, soap
and toilet paper—were in stock. How-
ever, the bathroom wasn’t very clean;
furthermore, two silverfish ran past my
feet while I was in there, which was both
gross and indicated a possible humidity
problem.

This bathroom has the potential to score
a full house, but a couple of sneaky bugs
deprived it of the prize.
Dolly
Hafnarstræti 4
The first bathroom stall I tried had its
lock all bent and broken, as if some-
one had tried to open the door with a
crowbar. On to the next one. It was tiny,
which would have been okay if the door
didn’t open inwards. I’m probably skin-
ny enough to squeeze in there, but my
dress didn’t allow me to climb over the
toilet to close the door without risking
falling into the bowl.
My journey continued upstairs, to
the stalls next to the smoking area. The
queue time would have been okay if it
hadn’t been for drunk people cutting
in front of everybody. The stall I finally
got was adequate enough for a decent
review, but one shouldn’t have to go
through so much trouble to find a work-
ing bathroom.
If you're looking for a decent toilet at
Dolly, head up the stairs.
Bar 11
Hverfisgata 18
Poet Pálmi Freyr Hauksson recently
declared the men’s bathroom at Bar
11 the worst-smelling place in Iceland,
describing the scent as akin to having
someone constantly peeing right into
your nostrils.
Pálmi pretty much sums it up. The
air down there is toxic, and more often
than not you try to avoid being in the
basement since the smell tends to stink
up the entire floor. I could have been
annoyed by the fact that there wasn’t
any toilet paper (apart from what was
clogging the toilet), but the only thing
that seemed important at the time was
getting in and out as quickly as possible,
before I would faint and suffer brain
damage from the lack of oxygen.

Reykjavík’s smelliest bathroom.
Kaffibarinn
Bergstaðastræti 1
There are two good things about Kaffi-
barinn’s bathroom; it’s spacious, which
gives you a little break from the crowded
dance floor where you have sweaty peo-
ple from all directions grinding against
your body, and it has a hanger so your
coat and/or purse don’t have to touch
the dirty floor.
However, there was pee all over the
seat, toilet paper was nowhere to be
found and the room reeked of urine
and cigarettes. Also note, Kaffibarinn
harbours a lot of sexual tension (hence
the grinding people on the dance floor),
which serves to stretch out the bath-
room line, as a lot of patrons like to go
there in pairs for some reason.

Dirty and stinky, but spacious.
Stúdentakjallarinn
Sæmundargata 4
During weekends, this place becomes
a total stink bomb. I’m pretty sure the
students cramming for their exams at
Háskólatorg prefer to sneak down to
the bar to use the private bathrooms for
their number twos instead of the half-
open stalls next to their study areas. How
else can you explain the chronic smell of
poop?
Furthermore, the smoking area sits
by the entrance in a totally wind-free
area, so the smoke tends to waft inside
to the bathrooms (and sometimes all the
way into classrooms). The area needed a
thorough cleaning when I visited—there
was some toilet paper on the floor—but
still, there was plenty of toilet paper left,
and soap in abundance. On the plus side,
there were a bunch of bathrooms avail-
able, making the chances of a waiting
time slim.

A slightly dirty bathroom, with a really bad
ventilation system.
Café París
Austurstræti 14
Considering there was more staff at the
bar than customers, someone should
have checked out the bathroom situ-
ation. The booth handle was sticky for
some reason, and there was a lot of ap-
parently used paper on the floor. Still, all
the necessities were present, and the
standard queue was absent, with abun-
dant booths.

Unlike the posh style of the café, these toi-
lets were simple and mediocre.
Paloma
Naustin 1
Paloma gets the honour of having the
longest line to a female bathroom (of
all the places surveyed). Men enjoy the
use of a urinal in addition to their pri-
vate bathroom, and indeed I saw many
females sneak in there while I waited for
the women's bathroom. When it was fi-
nally my turn to go and I was about to sit
down, I realized that the seat was actually
not a seat; it was a broken toilet lid with
a very large hole in it. The edges seemed
sharp and dangerous, and the thought of
someone sitting down without noticing it
was pretty disturbing. Of course, neither
bathroom had toilet paper or soap on of-
fer.
While waiting in Reykjavík’s longest
queue, Paloma’s customers can look for-
ward to a disturbing experience...
Words by Esther Þorvaldsdóttir
Photos Kjartan Hreinsson
A Guide To
Reykjavík
Bathrooms
The Nighttime Edition
Something that always seems to be missing in reviews of restaurants, bars, cafés and what-
not, is the bathroom. And when you think about it, the flowery potpourri smell in the bath-
room might make up for a semi-flat beer, and stumbling upon a clogged toilet could make
you forget about all the great food you just got. What good is a good service if your experi-
ence is shadowed by a dirty bathroom?