Inside a women's restroom on the southwest concourse of Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Scott Jenkins, the stadium's general manager, reaches down and, without hesitating, places his right hand on the floor. Uric acid, he says -- you know, the corrosive compound in our urine that often gets spilled by the gallon inside stadium bathrooms just like this one -- can eat through regular epoxy-based paint in practically no time at all. Which is why, before the $1.6 billion MBS opened in 2017, Jenkins made sure every one of his bathroom floors was coated in the shiny, space-age, dual-system polymer under his fingertips right now. It's called MMA, or methyl methacrylate, and, judging by Jenkins' reaction, this is the first time anyone's ever bothered to ask about it. "Oh, I'm geeking out right now," he laughs. "I love potty talk."
When it comes to the home of Super Bowl LIII and the taboo, bizarre but often revealing world of stadium bathrooms, well, there's quite a lot to discuss.
In Atlanta, most visitors want to know more about the flower-petal retractable roof, the 360-degree, 1,100-foot halo video screen or the 1,260 beer taps. Nobody ever discusses the building's 30 percent increase over the Georgia Dome in female toilets (22 percent for the men), the swan-neck, stainless steel hands-free faucets that actually match the building's architecture or the drum-sized JBL ceiling speakers that give the toilets better sound than most of the nightclubs in Buckhead. It's a shame, really, since the ugly (and, yes, slightly gross) truth of the matter is that the stadium bathrooms will probably end up having a much greater impact on the overall fan experience at the Super Bowl, an event often plagued by ridiculously long lines at the loo.
"You add a restaurant or a walkway feature to the stadium, some people will use it, but everyone is going to use the restroom," Jenkins says. "So the functionality, the quantity, the aesthetics of your bathrooms is critical. It seems unremarkable to most people, but, trust me, you invite 70,000 people to your house and you get the bathrooms wrong -- you've got a huge problem."
Just ask the folks in Minneapolis. At the Super Bowl, where crowds produce -- wait for it -- about 8,000 gallons of urine and where more wastewater (nearly a million gallons) is used than what flows over Niagara Falls every second, the bathrooms are often a crowded, disgusting, leaky time bomb. Horrific conditions and outrageous lines at the bathroom have become as much a part of Super Bowl Sunday as lame commercials and Bill Belichick hoodies. "The restroom experience will make or break a fan's experience, especially at the Super Bowl," says Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois and a board member of the American Restroom Association. "And, more often than not, my guess is it makes it more unpleasant."
Sure enough: During Super Bowl LII, even at the brand new billion-dollar U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, a building equipped with 979 toilets, while most female fans breezed in and out of the bathrooms, lines for the men's rooms snaked all the way across the concourse. The long waits meant male fans who spent upward of 30 minutes in line and paid $5,000 for a ticket -- the going rate on the street -- were essentially forced to pay $1,000 to pee. After decades of subtle but powerful gender discrimination in this part of stadiums, building codes now require teams to provide at least a 2-to-1 female-to-male toilet ratio. Which means, if sociologists are right, and public restrooms do, in fact, reflect our cultural values, then the contrast in bathroom lines at last year's Super Bowl might have also signaled a seismic shift in the evolving demographics, and power dynamics, of sports fandom.
And you thought stadium bathrooms were just a place to get rid of all that beer. Think again.
by David Fleming, ESPN | Read more:
Image: Edmund D. Fountain
When it comes to the home of Super Bowl LIII and the taboo, bizarre but often revealing world of stadium bathrooms, well, there's quite a lot to discuss.In Atlanta, most visitors want to know more about the flower-petal retractable roof, the 360-degree, 1,100-foot halo video screen or the 1,260 beer taps. Nobody ever discusses the building's 30 percent increase over the Georgia Dome in female toilets (22 percent for the men), the swan-neck, stainless steel hands-free faucets that actually match the building's architecture or the drum-sized JBL ceiling speakers that give the toilets better sound than most of the nightclubs in Buckhead. It's a shame, really, since the ugly (and, yes, slightly gross) truth of the matter is that the stadium bathrooms will probably end up having a much greater impact on the overall fan experience at the Super Bowl, an event often plagued by ridiculously long lines at the loo.
"You add a restaurant or a walkway feature to the stadium, some people will use it, but everyone is going to use the restroom," Jenkins says. "So the functionality, the quantity, the aesthetics of your bathrooms is critical. It seems unremarkable to most people, but, trust me, you invite 70,000 people to your house and you get the bathrooms wrong -- you've got a huge problem."
Just ask the folks in Minneapolis. At the Super Bowl, where crowds produce -- wait for it -- about 8,000 gallons of urine and where more wastewater (nearly a million gallons) is used than what flows over Niagara Falls every second, the bathrooms are often a crowded, disgusting, leaky time bomb. Horrific conditions and outrageous lines at the bathroom have become as much a part of Super Bowl Sunday as lame commercials and Bill Belichick hoodies. "The restroom experience will make or break a fan's experience, especially at the Super Bowl," says Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois and a board member of the American Restroom Association. "And, more often than not, my guess is it makes it more unpleasant."
Sure enough: During Super Bowl LII, even at the brand new billion-dollar U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, a building equipped with 979 toilets, while most female fans breezed in and out of the bathrooms, lines for the men's rooms snaked all the way across the concourse. The long waits meant male fans who spent upward of 30 minutes in line and paid $5,000 for a ticket -- the going rate on the street -- were essentially forced to pay $1,000 to pee. After decades of subtle but powerful gender discrimination in this part of stadiums, building codes now require teams to provide at least a 2-to-1 female-to-male toilet ratio. Which means, if sociologists are right, and public restrooms do, in fact, reflect our cultural values, then the contrast in bathroom lines at last year's Super Bowl might have also signaled a seismic shift in the evolving demographics, and power dynamics, of sports fandom.
And you thought stadium bathrooms were just a place to get rid of all that beer. Think again.
by David Fleming, ESPN | Read more:
Image: Edmund D. Fountain
