Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Strip:

Will a $40,000 chandelier help Las Vegas earn the honor of best bathroom?

Best Nightlife Bathrooms

Leila Navidi

The ladies’ restroom at Vanity Nightclub.

Las Vegas Restrooms

The main entrance to Vanity nightclub inside the Hard Rock Hotel's HRH Tower Thursday, February 25, 2010. Launch slideshow »

Vanity's Restroom

At about 2,000 square feet, Vanity's restroom is more of a lounge than a loo. "We had an idea to do a bathroom that wasn't just a bathroom," says Cory McCormack, managing partner of the Nightlife Group at the Hard Rock. Adds Charles Doell of Mr. Important Designs, "I wanted to do something that is very much about glamour and also a space that women could use."

Las Vegas is again in the running for the best restroom in the United States, a title the city has never won despite having some of the fanciest pit stops in the West.

Vanity nightclub at the Hard Rock is hoping to finally bring home the title. The 2,000-square-foot women's restroom has 11 stalls and six sinks, individually lighted vanity mirrors, red velvet cushioned seats, gold-plated faucets and a $40,000 chandelier made from 70 hand-blown glass globes.

The men's restroom is pretty fancy, too — it's a $1.2 million room with flat screen televisions over the urinals and faux reptile-skin walls — but it's only the women's room that's up for the award.

The winner will be decided by online voting that runs through Oct. 26. The contest, in its 11th year, is organized by Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp., an industrial restroom designer.

And while the Cosmopolitan's restrooms have sleek art on their walls and Mandalay Bay's toilets have views of the Strip, none have won the title of best public restroom in the country.

Las Vegas has had two nominees: the men's room at Main Street Station, which features urinals that hang on a piece of the Berlin Wall, and the bathrooms at Zeffirino Ristorante at the Venetian, which feature mosaic tile and marble floors.

Past winners have included the bathrooms in the Shoji Tabuchi Theatre in Branson, Mo.; the Regional Airport in Fort Smith, Ark.; and Jungle Jim's International Market in Fairfield, Ohio.

This year's competition includes the Liberty Market in Gilbert, Ariz.; the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, Calif.; Gitane Restaurant in San Francisco; Mie N Yu in Washington, D.C.; the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel in Chicago; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Da Marino Ristorante Italiano in New York; Buc-ee's in New Braunfels, Texas; and Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia.

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