ROCKLAND — There’s something very playful about going out to eat and excusing yourself to visit the bathroom, and finding candles softly flickering along the sink, special music playing overhead, special soaps in a bowl or a bevy of whimsical artwork on the wall. We discovered two such unique water closets in Rockland, and learned the story behind them. 

Elvis has just left the bathroom

One of the coolest bathrooms in Rockland can be found in a popular Rockland café that commemorates the King of rock 'n' roll. Given the circumstances of his death in 1977 where Elvis Presley was rumored to have died in a bathroom, this is slightly ironic. But, at least there are no photos of fried peanut butter and jelly in Cafe Miranda's "Elvis Bathroom."

Owner Kerry Alterio never intended to dedicate the bathroom to Elvis memorabilia. It just sort of happened.

"It was the first year we were open in 1993," he explained. "This person was at our front counter looking at all the bric-a-brac. I'd collected–all of these kitchy salt and pepper shakers, because I was too cheap to buy commercial ones. And this guy says, 'Hey man, I've got this tacky looking Elvis I got at a yard sale today, you want it?' And I said, 'Yeah, put it in the bathroom.' And that's how it all started. People have been donating memorabilia to the bathroom ever since."

The Elvis portrait that's behind the commode in the bathroom has its own story. If you look closely, there's an inscription on it that reads: "Remember Bob Clemens."

Alterio explains: "There were two people, one named Bob Clemens and a pal who shall go unnamed, but is a regular at this restaurant," said Alterio. "And they were, how should we say this, in government service. Whenever either of them got stationed across the globe, one would send the other this huge velvet Elvis painting, probably on your tax dollar, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe as a prank. Then, the guy named Bob Clemens passed away. His pal sent the painting to me and told me, 'I can't think of a better place to give this to than to you.'"

Alterio never gets tired of Elvis The Pelvis staring back at him every time he walks in.

"One it's a bathroom. Two, it's a conversation piece. See how that works?"

Chalkboard walls and iffy comments make for interesting reading

Ashley Seelig and Josh Cardosa, owners of FOG Bar and Café in Rockland, knew that when they built and designed their restaurant, the decor was going to be forward thinking, but they didn't want it to be perceived as being too pretentious.

"I'm personally not comfortable when things are a little too perfect," said Seelig.

She'd seen 'tons of stuff' scrawled on the bathroom walls of Rock City Café and decided, if people were going to do it anyway, might as well provide them with giant chalk board walls instead.

"I like that our bathrooms are very much about people having a good time."

Behind the typical comments and scrawled names and dates, they've seen quite a few interesting messages over the last couple of years.

"We've had a bunch of people who've gotten engaged at FOG and they've been fairly private about it, so the only way we knew about it is when they wrote it on our bathroom walls," said Seelig. "We're constantly getting feedback on the town of Rockland from the comments on the walls, from the art walks to the Blues Fest."

But true to the nature of bathroom wall missives, it's not all roses and unicorns.

"There are often suggestive things written about the bartenders along with quite a few numbers left; it's definitely been one way of communicating," she laughed. "We've had some profanity in there, which we've had to go in and take out. Every so often, we see some offensive things after people have complained and we have to scrub them out. Some people have told us they won't come to FOG because of the bathroom. But most of the time they really like it."

"And really, I think this is just an interesting way for people coming to Rockland to interact."

Contact Kay Stephens at news@penbaypilot.com