Since classes have started up again I’ll be able to do a lot more regu­lar reviews. While I spent some time on campus during the summer there was never really a need for me to use any bath­rooms, which is my justi­fi­ca­tion for letting the updates be border­line nonex­is­tent for the last three months. So with the grand open­ing of the 2012–2013 school year I want to commem­o­rate it with a review of our newly-ren­o­vated Student Union Build­ing a.k.a. the HUB.

The HUB is kind of foreign concept to me because my first two years of under­grad were devoid of its exis­tence as it dwelt in the purga­tory of exten­sive exte­rior and inte­rior reno­va­tion. I always knew it was there because it never got torn down but I had never been inside it prior to its reno­va­tion, not even when I visited campus for the first time the Janu­ary before construc­tion start­ed. The fact that it exists does­n’t really mean anything to me. I’m not really sure how it will posi­tively affect my under­grad tenure. The only posi­tive I have found so far is that all the lame uncool people, the kind of people that wear fedo­ras around because they think it’s cool, will all get attracted there and not bother me with their awkward, unnerv­ing pres­ence in Red Square.

Because of the newness of the HUB I’ve only been in there twice, both which included prolonged stops on the floor with all the dining options to buy junk food and soda (pop? soda pop?). I took a peek around the bath­rooms on that floor that were rela­tively close to the two places that inter­ested me most, the Etc. market­place which has the Trolli gummy eggs (of which my room­mate intro­duced me to and they are the shit) and glass-bot­tled soda (pop? soda pop?) vari­eties, includ­ing Mexi­can Coke, and the Pagli­acci joint that’s prob­a­bly guar­an­teed to be infe­rior to any other dine-in or deliv­ery kitchen loca­tion but I’ll still end up getting pizza by the slice there anyway.

The first restroom I visited was on that floor but to the right (look­ing from the east entrance [the door­ways clos­est to Allen Library for those that can’t orient them­selves to cardi­nal direc­tion­s]) of the food court. This one was fairly small with no urinals from what I remem­ber. It just had two stalls. I peed in the non-hand­i­cap one and was happy to see that it had the smart-flush toilets that flush differ­ent water quan­ti­ties depend­ing on your use. Any happi­ness from that obser­va­tion was replaced by my next one when I saw that some dude threw up in my toilet and got some puke on the rim of the toilet. There was toilet paper and paper towels and water and stuff all over the bath­room floor as well. This is the prob­lem with compact bath­rooms in high­-vol­ume areas: they take a beat­ing and require a lot of main­te­nance. Obvi­ously the HUB’s going to take a beat­ing the first couple weeks of class because of how new it is to every­one but this has the poten­tial to become a prob­lem if heavy traf­fic keeps up. Other than that the decor was noth­ing very special, although the verti­cal fluo­res­cent lights are a nice modern touch.

The second restroom I visited (not used, just visit­ed) was under­neath the stairs you take from the afore­men­tioned east entrance. It’s consid­er­ably larger than the other one I visit­ed. After going through that short corri­dor that creates the two over­lap­ping walls that block any views into the inte­rior (I’m sure there’s a tech­ni­cal term for that but I don’t know it, deal with it) there’s a large area with four or five urinals and the same amount of sinks. This area also had the trash prob­lem of the previ­ous bath­room but since it was larger the trash was dispersed more scant­ily which gave it the illu­sion of being a little clean­er. The back right corner of it had a narrow hall­way sorta deal with stalls all on the right side of it. It was an inter­est­ing design tactic to isolate the stalls in one area and in a way it sort of works to keep the smell of poop all concen­trated in one area and it gives you a bit more priva­cy. At the same time, this might be a little too inti­mate of a poop­ing setting for some people in a pinch (see what I did there?) and it is a little awkward. It reminds me of the hall­way in The Grudge where it’s being recorded and all of a sudden some black ghost appears out of nowhere and walks towards the camera and screams and scares the shit out of you. Call me a pussy but that movie scared me out out of my mind in 8th grade.

To conclude, the HUB’s bath­rooms are not bad if you’re comfort­able with bath­rooms in a busy area and with kids wear­ing fedo­ras with their beat­-up New Balance sneak­ers. Down­sides to this are its traf­fic and clean­li­ness but these issues might dimin­ish as time passes and the initial shock of this hip-hap­pin­in’ place on campus opens up. Three out of five over­priced slices of pizza for those two, respec­tive­ly. Stay tuned for more reviews through­out the school year.