Would You Order Lunch From a Public Bathroom?
There are a few simple rules of first-world hygiene. Don't share needles. Abide by the five-second rule. And under no circumstances* are you allowed to eat in a public bathroom.
But what about a meal made in a public bathroom? International meat-and-bread chain Earl of Sandwich thinks it's totally okay, so okay, the company has bet over a million dollars that Bostonians will spend the next 15 years devouring juicy steaming Cannonballs!, freshly prepared among the ghosts of bathroom emergencies past.
Yesterday, Earl of Sandwich celebrated the grand opening of its newest location: a 660-foot former public restroom on the rat-infested Boston Common. The Boston Globe reports:
For decades, the crumbling men's comfort station on Boston Common had been locked, a tomb encasing ancient urinals and rusting pipes.
Mmm, sounds delicious. Go on!
On Monday it reopened with grandeur, housing not restrooms but a sandwich kiosk fit for a king—or, at least, for nobility.
See, Earl of Sandwich is named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich, the British man credited with inventing sandwiches, which makes this crapper-pantry somewhere Kate Middleton would frequent.
ANYWAY, Earl of Sandwich is so thrilled about their new location, they have crushes on it.
"We have a 15-year-lease with the city and feel very good about it," said Robert Earl, whose company will pay the city $50,000 annually. "We're in love with the location."
That's nice, $750,000 can make anybody fall in love, and the question remains: would you order lunch from a public bathroom?
Arguments in favor of lunch served from this former toilet:
- The restroom had been closed since the ‘70s.
- Earl of Sandwich spent "a seven-figure sum—in excess of a million bucks" renovating the tiny space, which means all the yucky stuff is long gone.
- The Original 1762® does look pretty good.
Arguments against eating food prepared in this former public bathroom:
- The Globe also notes that this "was built in the 1920s as a men's comfort station, but has sat unused since the 1970s." In short, this structure was a PUBLIC TOILET FOR 50 YEARS.
- Earl's company won a bidding war for this space in September 2011 and aimed to open within a year, but "complications with restoring utilities to the abandoned site pushed that back." Complications, you say.
- This structure was called the "Pink Palace" because of the "hue of its stone blocks." Uh-huh, that's where it got the nickname, especially when the Combat Zone was in full swing just a few blocks away.
- PUBLIC TOILET FOR 50 YEARS.
Even Boston CBSLocal spectator MAIdiots, not the brightest bulb in commenter nation, has reservations: "Yes I would like 2 philly steak and cheese, please hold the feces, both rat and human. Light on the urin. [sic] Thanks that will be $32.00."
(*Okay, here's one rare imaginable circumstance in which you are allowed to eat in a public bathroom: you can't walk on your own, you've been taken to the bathroom just as the zombie apocalypse strikes, the zombies get your escort, but not you, and there's non-expired packaged food within reach—then, and only then, you can eat in a public john.)
