A licensed massage therapist is suing the city, claiming she was falsely arrested at a legit massage parlor and then forced to clean an overflowing toilet at the stationhouse before cops let her go—without even issuing her a ticket. In a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday, Gabrielle Vignolini, a 31-year-old mother of three, says she was giving a fully-clothed friend a "chakra rock treatment" at the Morounfola Beauty Spa in Stapleton one day last August when cops wrongly arrested her. more ›

What would New York City's sewer system say about its residents? We'd prefer not going there, but Boing Boing is pointing us to this article about sewer sampling revealing patterns of drug use, noting that in Oslo, the drug ecstasy spiked in the sewers around the time of high school graduation! Other drugs found there included cocaine and Zyrtec. more ›

The Brooklyn Paper's Police Blotter is always interesting, but there's this standout (or sitdown) item from the Brooklyn Heights-area roundup: "A nutjob stole a lawyer’s toilet and threatened to kill him on Valentine’s Day." more ›

While many people were startled by the hail pelting theirs windows last night, Mother Nature left some Brooklyn residents an unwelcome gift in their bathrooms—it seems that hail really knows its way around plumbing! One family wrote to us, "We were alternately thrilled and a little scared by the loud hail storm this evening. Then we heard rushing water from the bathroom... the golf-ball sized ice chunks backed up the storm drain, backed up the tub and toilet and sinks and came rushing into the bathroom. Sooty, dirt-laced water. It just kept coming, and coming. Two inches (?) filled the bathroom, spilled out into the hall, threatened to go further but for every towel in our closet." more ›

Get ready to have nightmares forever! A Bronx man entering his bathroom in the middle of the night was shocked to find the toilet was already taken—by a three-foot long Corn Snake. He was so freaked out that the only thing he could muster to cops when they came was, "There's a giant snake on my toilet." How very 2007. more ›

The owner of Georgi Vodka, multi-millionaire Martin Silver, was not very happy when Sean "Diddy" Combs took the mic at a nightclub in NYC last week and declared, "If you're not drinking Ciroc vodka, then you're drinking pee pee." more ›

A pair of tiny southeastern Queens neighborhoods have finally been linked to the city's sewer system, meaning the water that goes down residents' drains will no longer be dumped directly into a creek that terminates in Jamaica Bay. "When I first moved here, they told me, 'You're all getting sewers soon,'" said Lenny Zamiello, 88, a retired carpet and linoleum installer. "That was 60 years ago." more ›

It's the question that's baffled every four-year-old in America. Where does the water go when you flush the toilet? Now, thanks to this map from the environmental health organization Habitat Map, you can find out the answer. The map breaks down the city into color-coded "sewagesheds," allowing New Yorkers can figure out if their toilets contribute to the stench that has long plagued sections of Brooklyn near the Owls Head Wastewater Treatment Plant, or if heavy rains cause their flushes to become a part of the 586 million gallons of raw sewage poured into Newtown Creek annually, or the 1.43 billion gallons dumped into the waters off of Astoria every year. It's also the perfect complement to this map of New York City public toilets. more ›

A 22-year-old man was shot and killed in a dispute over "bathroom rights" in a Bedford-Stuyvesant rooming house, according to the Daily News. Daquan Boyce called his mother late Saturday night and complained that another tenant in the building near the corner of DeKalb Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard wouldn't allow him to use the bathroom. At around 3:30 am today, a brawl broke out amongst several men in the residence and Boyce — the father of an infant and a four-year-old — was shot four times, with several rounds hitting his stomach. He died at Kings County Hospital' police are trying to determine whether or not Boyce, who has a criminal record for drug and weapons possession, was selling drugs from the building. more ›

Hundreds of New Yorkers fought on Thursday to become Times Square "restroom ambassadors" — a highly coveted gig that pays $10,000 for just six weeks of employment. The toilet paper manufacturer Charmin is looking for five hosts and hostesses who will direct an estimated 500,000 loo-users to the temporary public bathrooms between Nov. 23 and New Year's Eve, when Times Square itself becomes a massive public bathroom. The ambassadors are expected to be "outgoing and enthusiastic" and detail their experiences on Twitter and Facebook. more ›

A few years ago, Charmin decided to take some empty retail space in Times Square and turn it into a destination for people to enjoy some of its toilet paper during the holidays. Now, Charmin is looking for this holiday season's workers, asking, "Do you enjoy going to the bathroom enough to earn $10,000?" more ›

Those space-age automated public toilets—or A.P.T.s, as they're known in the business—are all the rage in the two locations where they've been installed. Cemusa, the Spanish company that won a contract in 2005 to install 20 of them citywide, says that the self-cleaning A.T.P. in Madison Square Park was used 2,736 times in a recent 30-day period, while the one in Corona was used 1,920 times. So why have only two been installed since the prototype was unveiled back in 2006? A spokesman for the DOT tells the Times, "Some communities don’t want A.P.T.’s." You'll recall that some Park Slope residents had objected to a proposed toilet at Grand Army Plaza, and a Councilwoman representing the Upper East Side also declined. more ›

Brooklyn will have to cross its legs and wait for the arrival of the first automated pay toilet; following up on an initial report on Brownstoner, the Daily News has confirmed that the Landmarks Preservation Commission has postponed a vote on the matter. There was considerable excitement last month when plans for a toilet in Grand Army Plaza were revealed, particularly because there are few bathrooms in the immediate vicinity, and the public is often reduced to using the less than sanitary porta-potties in Prospect park. The local community board approved the proposal, but it seems the commission is concerned the toilet's aesthetics will clash with the surrounding landmarked structures, such as the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch. They've requested renderings showing how the toilet will look in the wider context of Grand Army Plaza, and won't vote until they're satisfied with what they see. Two of the self-cleaning pay toilets are already doing brisk business in Manhattan (with occasionally embarrassing results); they cost 25 cents for 15 minutes on the throne. more ›

Oh, the fun reporters have with bathrooms. Today the Brooklyn Paper, in an article headlined "Flush with Success," has the scoop on what will likely be Kings County's very first public pay toilet, to be located in Grand Army "Plotz-a." There are currently two such self-cleaning toilets in town, located in Corona Plaza, Queens and in Manhattan at Madison Square Park. Costing 25 cents for 15 minutes alone with the throne, they're managed by Cemusa, the same company that previously brought you Bowery Street. The DOT has been sloooowly moving to install twenty of the rest rooms in all five boroughs, and the Grand Army Plaza facility is expected to be approved by the local Community Board next week. But some locals like Park Slope resident Joan Tobias voiced trepidation about the sanitary conditions: "As long as they keep it clean, I’m not against it. I’d be willing to pay even a one dollar fee, as long as it’s clean. If it’s kept clean, I’m OK with it." In other words, she really hopes Cemusa cleans better than they spell. more ›

The AMTMoA (that's the Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art, for you philistines) is holding their first-ever call for submissions! Before you go trying to steal the royal throne at the Louvre, read on. The museum (which is online-only) holds "the world’s largest collection of images of art museum toilets taken at various art museums around the world," and they're currently seeking to build up their collection. "The site currently houses exclusive images ranging from the prestigious marble lavatory at the Metropolitan Museum of New York" to art toilets spanning the world. Interested parties can find more information about submitting an image here. And hey, Guggenheim (pictured), step up your game, alright. What a disgrace. more ›

New York can be an unforgiving town for those desperately in need of a bathroom – a problem these space age electronic pay toilets were supposed to rectify. But Subway Blogger recently witnessed a big fail at the Madison Square Park toilet, during which a poor woman who urgently needed to use the toilet was first stymied by an older man who “maybe couldn’t find the button to get out of there.” And when he finally emerged, she was further delayed by the toilet’s lengthy self-cleaning cycle. It was then that our blogger witnessed an adult “literally crapping her shorts… I had to pull out my camera, because I was going to have to tell this story, and no one was going to believe me.” Three cheers for blogs! more ›

If this is what a Jet Blue "buddy pass" is, we totally pass. An Inwood resident is suing the Queens-based airline or $2 million, claiming a pilot made him sit on the plan's toilet for three hours during a flight from San Diego to New York earlier this year. more ›