I thought about who would have the breadth of knowledge to make a fair and accurate assessment on the urinal situation at the city's most elite bars and restaurants, and there is but one man who is qualified enough to render the verdict: New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells. I began to question the men I felt were experts in the field: world travelers, hospitality writers, toilet aficionados. For certain there are urinals out there designed solely for the 1 percent, ones that the average man shall never have the privilege of peeing into, ones that could possibly blow Old Town’s out of the swirling water. The past century has seen the advent of such marvels as self-flushing mechanisms, loos with a view, and the entire epic category of Japanese toiletry. While their endorsments were enough for a local gal like me, I began to wonder about how Old Town fit into the ever changing world of bathroom technology. Patented and installed in 1910, this was the urinal to which all others would be compared, the porcelain altar that would change the course of history. They whizzed in a way befitting a distinguished old Knickerbocker: into a state-of-the-art Hinsdale, the Cadillac of urinals. And when our great-great-grandpas had to whiz, they didn’t do it in a tin bucket like a bunch of filthy street urchin. Its physical location is a corner point of the historic district called “Ladies Mile”–a square mile which was the shopping district for well-heeled women in the early 1900s, meaning Old Town was the inebriated daycare center for our great-great-grandfathers.

The chandeliers are electric, but with their already dim bulbs suspended fourteen feet in the air, you can fully submit to your gaslit Gay Nineties fantasies. Chili dogs and liverwurst sandwiches magically appear from a small door that conceals New York’s oldest dumbwaiter, a once-common element of restaurant design that needs to needs to come back on trend post-haste. Dark mahogany stretches from the porcelain tiled floor up to the cavernous ceiling–painted a matching shade that erases a century’s worth of tobacco smoke. It's the kind of joint where you can slink into the shadowy recessed corners of a high-backed wooden booth and sip on a Jameson straight-up til you develop a voice that makes Tom Waits sound like choirboy. In New York, a city that’s perpetually erasing itself in the name of progress, Old Town, open since 1892, is a sacred shrine. But priority numero uno: I would head straight to New York City so that I may finally step foot in the legendary men’s room of the Old Town Bar, which celebrated its 125th anniversary this year. I’d go shopping for pants that would provide adequate breathing room and offer a flattering silhouette. I’d go out for a bit of a jog, just to see how well that goes with all that business flapping around down there. Many times I’ve daydreamed about what I would do if, one day, I magically woke up with a penis.

Post haste travel shopping plaza