43 Showers

Sheraton, Parsippany NJ
[Submitted by Leah]

“First you do the water, then flip up to the shower with that weird lever.

The shower was good, but the bed is amazing!”

More comments and annotations at Flickr.

Alexander House, West Sussex, UK
[Submitted by Jeff]

“I usually took a bath in the evening in the gigantic well-shaped bathtub, and a quick shower in the morning. This is similar to my other UK entry in that the top controls the flow and the bottom controls the temperature. This worked out well generally, in that I only had to set the bottom one once. However, there were three ways in which it was not as good as the other one at the Zetter. 1) It was not as responsive, so the first time you were constantly adjusting and not sure when it had taken the adjustment. 2) It didn’t have the actual temperature notation (like “43 degrees” as the top). 3) It had a button on the second one that I never figured out. I kept fiddling with it and it never seemed to do anything.”

The Muse, New York City
[submitted by Leah]

“The room was recently renovated and the shower handle is still very hard to turn, I was worried I was using it wrong. But you just turn it to the left to move it from cold to hot. Great shower at the Muse in New York City. ”

also on Flickr.

EO Inn, Orlando, FL

I was in a smaller room with a less lavish bathroom this time, as the shower handle might indicate. Because there was no bath in the shower setup, there was no need for a push/pull — this was purely a single-axis control and it worked fine.

Omni, CNN Center, Atlanta, GA
[submitted by Leah]

See Flickr for full annotations.

The Zetter, London UK
[submitted by: Jeff at Sophistry.org]

“Here’s the shower control in my hotel in London. It’s actually quite cool—the inner ring adjusts the temperature, the outer one adjusts the water flow. So you can set the temperature aright during your first shower and it’ll stay the same the next time you use it.”

Chicago City Centre Hotel and Sports Club

Old school, serviceable, uninspired. It appeared to have only one axis — left to right. If there was finer flow control, it wasn’t immediately obvious.

Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel, Philadelphia, PA

I had my doubts on this one. When I first sized it up, I didn’t see any Hot/Cold indicators, and figured I’d have some trouble in the morning. But it all worked out fine, and as it turned out there are subtle H’s and C’s in there that are clearer when you are standing in the shower in the ready position.

Programming note: I have yet to figure out the best way to move the 43Showers archive over here (can you change dates in Tumblr?), but will be working on that shortly. I also have some user submissions to add. If you’d like to send me your shower handle reports (to dave at 43showers dot com), I might use them on the air. If I do, I’ll credit you and send you a copy of our theme song.

Westin Pasadena

This one ended up needing to be modded. The first night I tried to use it, the best I could get out of it was tepid water. I called downstairs and they told me there had been a boiler outage that had now been resolved. The next night, it was still busted so I called the front desk again, and they sent a maintenance guy in. He had to tighten the screw in the middle of the handle, and that took care of everything. All in all, a pretty decent shower handle once it was optimized.

Hotel Le Cirque, New Orleans, LA

Just adequate. From the photo it looks clearly marked, but in the stall when the temp is selected, it can be hard to tell which way to turn it. I scalded myself once when in mid-shower I forgot what was where.

But the room’s reasonable price, the view of Lee Circle, and the proximity to Circle Bar made up for the shower’s apparent shortcomings. Even if I didn’t make it to Circle Bar this trip.