Salu­ta­tions to all UW Bathrooms readers!

As some recent posts allud­ed, the Univer­sity of Wash­ing­ton is presently involved in that unique bastion of Panhel­lenic service and inter-fra­ter­nal harmony: Greek Week. With that in mind, I hope all you frat-tanked read­ers “pre-funked” for this review: it’s the Paccar Hall bath­room drink­ing game.

Pretty simple, anytime I refer­ence a excre­tory bodily func­tion… consume the bever­age of your choice. Perhaps you’ll be using this review sooner than you expected.

Paccar Hall is the gleam­ing box of sexi­ness that stands in juxta­po­si­tion to the damp pile of asbestos — Denny Hall. Paccar is a place with dry-erase walls, Star­bucks coffee, well-groomed MBA students and — most of all — over­flow­ing entre­pre­neur­ship. As I step into the tiled bath­room near­est to the food stand, I am hoping that “entre” is the only thing over­flow­ing in this I-Robot-esque edifice.

A quick survey of the land­scape yields some bizarre obser­va­tions. All four towel dispensers are located right inside the door, and they exhibit a bijec­tion with the trash­cans. Each paper towel dispenser gets its own waste bin? I shake my head as I walk past — some­one should run some cost-ef­fec­tive­ness analy­sis on that. Tsk Tsk.

I choose the standie with an anar­chy symbol painted right above it. We are the 99%, I think to myself. Hope­fully every suit that steps up to this urinal looks up at that silly ska-punk graf­fi­ti, consid­ers all the skate­board­ing he gave up for life of bean-count­ing, zips up, and walks away with a day’s worth of ennui…

Alas, Sharpie is just Sharpie, and busi­ness goes on as usual. Speak­ing of busi­ness — this bath­room has plenty of options for doing it — three luxury stalls and five spacious standies with all the room needed to check the market on your smartphone.

The final touch on any bath­room is the mirror. That rare moment of literal reflec­tion is as vital as any other action in the restroom. Paccar’s mirror is large enough for all the future CEOs to “pow­der their nose” just fine, and the counter is a taste­ful luxury apro­pos of its context.

Paccar Hall’s cafe­te­ria bath­room has a spirit of coming and going. Some might argue this is the true nature of visit­ing the toilet. Yet, like a blad­der-re­lieved Midas, I felt an empti­ness (not of the urolog­i­cal vari­ety). The Paccar bath­room truly has style, but it lacks in substance. The waste of paper, the depress­ing and melan­choly-in­duc­ing graf­fi­ti. This is not the bath­room it appears to be. Though — like its promi­nent mirror — it obliges us to contemplate ourselves.

PACCAR near Orin’s Place

3.25 deep thoughts out of a life­time of wonder.

PS. I real­ize that I not once mentioned human waste. I figure that this is Greek Week, and my post might be the only thing you’ve read in the past three days besides drunk texts. But here’s a couple for the road: poop­ie, caca, wee-wee.