Every time I go back to New York City, it seems like a less and less welcoming place — by which I mean that it's becoming painfully difficult to find a bathroom clean enough to go number two. Remember that Seinfeld episode where George takes Jerry and Kramer into a random office building because it's got "the best bathroom in the city?" Well, you can't do that anymore.

Nowadays, every freaking building's got its own police unit, complete with automatic weapons and German shephards, which, oddly enough, make me feel much less secure. Everybody's got a photo ID badge clipped to their lapel, just in case they forget what they look like; there's elaborate front-desk sign-in procedures, security cameras, a guy with his high-school equivalency and a generic cheap suit and tie watching over you, and I just want to not crap my pants! Even libraries, the last refuge of civilization in this world (well, not the children's section... or the Internet filters... or the fact that there's 2500 holds out on The Da Vinci Code... or the incessant librarian yakking...), have closed off their bathrooms, leaving the irritable-boweled among us to settle with the ad hoc microbiology labs in the back of the Strand.

Well, at least you can get some reading done while you're in the bathrooms there. And no, you're not allowed to take books in.

See, the trick is to find bathrooms that are public, but that are also off in some obscure corner of the city where no one knows about them. Hotels — ritzy hotels — are usually a good bet, especially since they tend to employ a team of underpaid immigrants to keep the bathrooms clean. The Marriot Marquis in Times Square is my favorite in the area as long as my bladder can survive the eight story jet-elevator ride to the bathrooms (sometimes it can't), but for pure pointless luxury and white-trash watching, you can't beat the bathrooms at the Plaza. They have a guy whose whole job it is to hand you a paper towel after you're done washing your hands, because getting your own paper towel would take a lot of effort. Then you have to tip him. (I wonder how much I'd have to tip him to get him to wipe my ass for me.) He also stares derisively at you if you choose not to wash your hands, just to let you know that you're a disgusting human being. Actually, come to think of it, he probably stares derisively at just about everyone in the bathroom.

But can you really blame him?