A Big Manly Stand-Up Piss

A Big Manly Stand-Up Piss
Mark Morford

It's every former frat boys' decorating dream: a nice, macho men's urinal in the house, for the guys to use on poker night.
(Associated Press)

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A year ago, Ben Jones asked his wife if he could have a urinal.

"No way. Absolutely not," Gina Jones told her husband.

The 40-year-old San Antonio-area magazine publisher kept after her. The
fixture would be perfect in the first-floor bathroom of their new house, he said, near the door to the deck.

Mr. Jones then went with his wife to a plumbing-supply store where they were shown an American Standard catalog. The showroom manager ointed out the $91 Maybrook model and noted that it would help keep the
bathroom floor dry, particularly when the Joneses entertain.

"OK," Ms. Jones, an attorney, finally told her husband, after all the cajoling, "but you're going to clean it."

The device was unveiled at a party over the Memorial Day weekend. Mr. Jones recalls the reaction from his high-fiving buddies: "You got a urinal. Awesome! How'd you talk your wife into that?"

After their long confinement to public restrooms, urinals are creeping into American homes. A big reason: big houses, with spacious new bathrooms.

Roughly 325,000 urinals are manufactured every year in the U.S., and almost all of them still go into offices, stadiums and other commercial spaces. Nobody tracks residential installations, but officials at two big makers of toilets, American Standard Cos. and Kohler Co., say they're hearing about more of them. Atlanta plumber Tom Ward says that in his first 19 years in the business he didn't install a single home urinal. In the past seven years, he has installed 10. Designers say they are incorporating more urinals into bathroom plans. They are particularly appreciated in homes with young boys.

Home urinals are popping up on TV. Ozzy Osborne has one in his California home. New York Jets running back Curtis Martin showed his off on MTV's "Cribs." He recommends urinals to all men, so their wives won't bug them about putting down the seat.

Also, they are a point of pride. "She is a 1983 Eljer with a chrome-on-brass 1968 Haws freeze-resistant flush valve ... which has been in service since 1991 when I recycled her," wrote Mike Shepherd, who submitted that caption along with a urinal photo to www.urinal.net , a site launched by two Silicon Valley software developers. Mr. Shepherd lives in Aguila, Ariz., a tiny desert community with three home urinals he knows of.

U.S. urinal makers have long recognized that their models lacked a certain domesticity. In 1888, J.L. Mott Iron Works in New York addressed the issue by offering a porcelain-lined device that could be folded up into the wall like a Murphy bed. "It has been our desire for many years," the company wrote in its catalog, "to get a urinal ... that would be adapted for private use in all rooms set aside for gentlemen's use, such as billiard and smoking rooms, private offices, etc."

But it was the commercial walk-ups that continued to dominate the industry. And they were rarely welcomed in mixed company. In 1917, the New York Society of Independent Artists famously rejected Marcel Duchamp's piece called "Fountain." Mr. Duchamp had taken a standard urinal basin, rotated it onto its back and in so doing posed the question: What is art? The piece was lost, but four years ago a reproduction sold for $1.76 million at a Sotheby's auction.

American Standard keeps an eye on attitudes about urinals. Gary Uhl, the company's head of bath and kitchen design in its Americas division, says many women consider the bathroom a sanctuary. "A urinal is just so overtly male they don't want to invite it in," he says. Mr. Uhl himself quit asking his wife for one six years ago, he says: "We have a good relationship in my house, and I work to keep it that way."

Such disagreements can sometimes be overcome by distance -- building separate male and female wings within the master bath, for example. More broadly, homeowners increasingly want fixtures and features that can become conversation pieces, says Janice Costa, editor of Kitchen & Bath Design News, a monthly magazine. "The urinal, in some ways, follows the bidet. You're starting to see more come into the home."

Refinancings also play a role. Families often spend the money to finish out their basements, outfitting them with pool tables, huge TVs, bars, and, increasingly, urinals, says Glen Andrews, head of the Atlanta office of Ferguson Enterprises, a nationwide building-products company based in Newport News, Va.

B.A. Farrell, owner of the Total Concept, a home-design business in Raleigh, N.C., says that women often can't get past the first two syllables of the word. So Mr. Farrell has begun telling clients to call the device "a rose." From there, he's free to explain how the fixtures save water and allow plush carpeting to come into bathrooms.

"If they'd just change the name and market them better," he says, "they
couldn't make them fast enough."

Urinals are a great project for the serious handyman. Outside Elk Rapids, Mich., John Shepherd (no relation to Mike Shepherd) wanted something unique for his basement -- near the 10-seat home theater he built last year. The 52-year-old Web designer and pizza-parlor cook ordered a urinal from a plumbing supply house for $210. Behind a wall, he rigged up a 15-gallon water-pressure tank. (Water pressure can sometimes be an issue at existing-home installations.)

He installed an electric solenoid valve, wiring that into a used Bendix switchbox he had long ago purchased for $6.95 at a military surplus store. He then bolted the box above and to the right of the urinal. Users who want a quick flush push a button. Those who want a continuous flush flick up on a toggle. Two weeks ago, Mr. Shepherd installed another urinal upstairs. "They're really handy," he says.

In Columbia, Md., John Maitland says his urinal is popular with the members of "A.M. Wednesday," a weekly gathering of 25 to 30 guys who come to his basement, sip coffee brewed in a 100-cup urn, and talk for two hours. Most are World War II veterans. And the gatherings serve as something of a support group. Artificial hips, cancer and quadruple bypasses are among the subjects touched on. Mr. Maitland, 75, always shows new members the urinal, which he bought at a plumbing supply house and installed himself.

Some men go all out. Flip Chalfant, a professional photographer in Atlanta, had a home urinal installed when he and his wife built an addition to their house three years ago. The floor-length fixture has its own alcove, with an arched, tiled ceiling that nicely picks up other architectural accents of the home. "It's a little over the top," Mr. Chalfant admits.