Right Down the Toilet

Thursday, 8th March 2012 by

The toilet – home to some of humankind’s most intimate moments, and probably one of the last things you’d think you’d find on Google Maps (or think to look for, for that matter), but one might be surprised at just how many random toilets and toilet-related items are lying around on Google Maps. As part of our effort to maintain our highbrow credibility, we’ve collected a few for you here; it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

Street View has caught the aftermath of some merry mirthmakers’ acts of defamation: the classic prank known to the sages as ‘TPing’. In the US Mountain West, we’ve found at least two instances of houses engulfed in bathroom towelling (although the folks who did the deed in the second picture could really take a cue from the job done in the first picture, which was far more thorough).

Of course, if you really wanted to get someone good, perhaps you should just use something like this: a giant toilet paper roll the size of a small building. In actuality, it is a small building, namely the public toilet facilities at the Design Museum Gent in Ghent. Clever ones, those Belgians.

You never know when you’ll stumble upon a random toilet lying in the road. Plenty of North American households have mailboxes at the foot of their driveways, but how many have a toilet1? Over in Paris, this toilet sits by itself at the foot of a tree. Let’s hope it’s being installed at the public toilet next door, because if it isn’t, then the city government has a rather poor sanitation strategy.

Then again, even when provided with the proper facilities, some people would rather just chance it, evidently. Dude, LOOK BEHIND YOU.

While not as outright weird as doing your business in a giant toilet paper roll, this public toilet building in Washington is rather unique, for it is built in the shape of a volcano. Perhaps due to the ‘eruptions’ going on inside.

If you’re not a fan of uniquely-shaped facilities, how about ones that are just plain big? We’re fairly certain that it was not the intention of the International Train & Trolley Museum outside of Orlando, Florida to be housed in a building that looks like it could be the world’s largest toilet, but that is indeed exactly how it appears.

A parting word of advice for when you do manage to find a public toilet nearby: for heaven's sake, close the bloody door.


  1. Insert your own ‘dropping off a package’ joke here. ↩︎