I’ve been to some filthy bathrooms in my life. Dirty hippie port-a-potties at IT were a new low, back in 2003, matched only by the putrid stink wafting from the woods behind our tent. The truck stop at Costa Rica warrants mention, as does the single rest area on North Dakota route 2. And who could really talk about nasty bathrooms without mentioning the 2-inch deep sewage swamp at Gathering of the Vibes, where the ratio of people to toilets was approximately 300:1?

Given all this, it never fails to amaze me that the bathrooms at the Kendall Square Cinema are such a constant source of horror. Like, you go to a 3-day music festival, and you KNOW that things will get nasty. You stop at a gas station in a foreign country, and you PREPARE for the worst. You don’t adjourn to the ladies’ room at a quasi-art house movie theater in the heart of Cambridge’s tech district and EXPECT to see a huge log of shit just lying on the floor, three inches from the bowl.

And this is not a one-off scenario.

I’ve been to Kendall Sq. probably hundreds of times over the years and never – not ONCE – has it not been horrible in some way. Half of the toilets don’t work, there’s rarely soap in the dispensers, and actually finding a stall with TP is like a miracle dream, (unless one counts the TP that permanently lines the floor and walls). Un-flushed tampons, half-flushed poop … I once visited the restroom mid-film and was treated to an upchuck cacophony, and as I was rinsing my hands a middle-aged woman emerged from the stall with a wink and a smile.

I mean, I’ve seen a lot of great movies there, and I don’t want to trash the place total-sum. But like, wow, we were there tonight to see Slumdog Millionaire and it just struck me how incredibly, reliably, improbably disgusting their bathrooms always are. And I was like, why have i not written about this before?