More Proof That the Web’s Gone to Pot

Some people think the Internet has gone down the toilet.

Well, there is a Web site that will take you to toilets. In 12 cities.

Besttoilets.com (https://www.besttoilets.com) is a guide to hundreds of bathrooms--complete with cleanliness ratings and brief reviews--that can be accessed by the general public in commercial buildings, hotel lobbies, government offices, department stores and restaurants in metropolitan areas without causing undue notice.

Besttoilets.com’s motto is that it’s “The place to go before you have to.”

The site--now being promoted by a national wireless Internet company as just one more reason life is better with a modem-equipped hand-held computer--was the brainchild of New Yorker David Vought, who personally did the research on the restrooms in his hometown and in Philadelphia.

For information on relief spots in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Atlanta, Miami, Toronto and Washington, D.C., he relied on information supplied by fans of the site.

“It basically all started because I do a lot of walking around town,” said Vought, 37, a former bartender who now owns and runs an apartment-cleaning service. “I’m very much into architecture.

“So I got to know where the bathrooms were.”

A couple of years ago, when he decided to teach himself HTML--the computer codes used to create Web sites--he made use of the knowledge he had gained.

“It was basically a Web learning experience,” said Vought, whose early site listed and rated the bathrooms he knew in Manhattan. “I didn’t expect anyone to actually visit the site.”

But they did. Word of a unique site spreads fast on the Internet, and Besttoilets.com got a deluge of visitors, many of whom had their own suggestions of bathrooms to add to the list in New York and other cities. Each entry includes the address, a brief description and a rating of one to four stars.

The Los Angeles section of the site has grown to the point that it’s divided into 12 areas, including downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, the San Fernando Valley and Pasadena.

Exploring a few of the downtown restrooms listed on the site showed that it was basically accurate but in need of some updating. Full disclosure: Only men’s rooms were checked.

* Regal Biltmore Hotel: The bathrooms off the palatial Rendezvous Court of the landmark hotel are described in Besttoilets’ four-star review as being “ornate” with “accents of marble and gold and beige fixtures.” If so, they sadly have been redone since the review was written. The men’s room was clean but basically utilitarian.

* Central Library: The clean, chrome-and-tile restrooms in the Tom Bradley Wing are, as the review noted, of quite high quality, although the half doors on the stalls are an unsettling compromise to privacy.

* Music Center: There are indeed restrooms inside the Mark Taper Forum theater, but they are hardly open to free public access. You would have to have a ticket to the show to get to them.

* McDonald’s in the Wells Fargo Center food court: It’s not difficult to use the restrooms at this busy establishment without buying so much as a Coke. But the review, which describes this McDonald’s as “upscale,” is a bit misleading when it comes to the bathrooms, which are clean but spartan. Hardly a three-star bathroom.

* Los Angeles Times: Our own building made the site, but it’s another outdated listing. The Times now has an electronic card entry system that leaves outsiders beyond the reach of any restrooms.

Even though his site is now in the limelight because of the campaign promoting it as a paragon of wireless Internet service, Vought probably will make little if any money off of Besttoilets’ new fame.

The wireless Internet service, YadaYada Inc., did not even inform Vought that the site would be highlighted on the service as part of its promotional campaign. “I didn’t know about it until I started to get phone calls,” Vought said.

YadaYada’s CEO, Raj Gupta, said it was a mistake not telling Vought. But he said the company--which claims it can deliver any Internet site to a wireless hand-held in a readable form--should not be expected to pay for what is essentially a link to a site.

In the meantime, Vought continues to expand the site. Recently, he added a feature that allows users to send greeting cards from the site, complete with pictures of some of the more sumptuous bathrooms.

“It’s all pretty tongue in cheek, the whole site,” Vought said. “This was initially not a serious endeavor, and I still have fun with it. It’s a hoot.”

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Times staff writer David Colker covers personal technology.