Senator Larry Craig "Wide Stance" Men's Restroom at Minneapolis — St. Paul Airport

Mug shot of U.S. Senator Larry Craig.

On June 11, 2007, U.S. Senator Larry Craig of Idaho was arrested for lewd conduct in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis — St. Paul International Airport (MSP).

According to the police report, there had been a pattern of complaints about sexual activity in this specific men's restroom. Surprisingly, it is not off in an obscure corner of the airport. It is just off the central concourse in the very busiest area of the entire airport.

The stalls occupied by the police officer and Craig.

U.S. Senator Larry Craig's men's room stall at MSP.

A police officer sat in a bathroom stall while a detective waited outside in the concourse area. After waiting about 13 minutes, the police officer observed Craig lingering outside his stall and frequently peeking through the crack of the stall door. Craig then entered the stall to the officer's left. The police officer recorded the following observations in his report of the incident:

At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. [...] The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area. Craig then proceeded to swipe his left hand under the stall divider several times, with the palm of his hand facing upward.

The police escorted Craig from the restroom to the airport police station and interviewed him. After Craig flashed a business card identifying him as a U.S. Senator, to no avail, he was asked first about the foot signaling. Sergeant Dave Karsnia's arrest report says, "Craig stated ... He has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine." Sgt. Karsnia asked: "Did you do anything with your feet?", and Craig replied: "Positioned them, I don't know. I don't know at the time. I'm a fairly wide guy."

They then asked Craig about the hand signals, and he said that he had reached down to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor. The police officer reported that "there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper."

The following several months contained a long, sordid, and confusing sequence of angry denials, Craig's guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct (Aug 1), press conferences and more denials, a promise to resign (Sep 1), an attempt to withdraw the guilty plea (Sep 10), a statement that he would not resign after all (Sep 26), and a long series of men reporting that Craig had either solicited them for sex or had actually engaged in sex acts with them.

Entry to the restroom in the main concourse, just to the left of the BlackBerry store.

Entry to the restroom in the main concourse, just to the left of the BlackBerry store.

The American Civil Liberties Union then helpfully chimed with the legal argument that those engaging in sexual encounters in closed stalls in otherwise public restrooms "have a reasonable expectation of privacy", citing a previous case in the Minnesota State Supreme Court and therefore contradicting the state's claim that Craig was inviting the undercover police officer to have sex "in public".

I'm sure that Craig found their legal argument very helpful.

In October 2007 Craig announced that he was going back on his promise to resign and would serve out the remainder of his Senate term in order to "continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee — something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate."

In February 2008 the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee said that Craig's behavior was unacceptable even by Senate standards, saying that his "improper conduct" reflected "discreditably" on the United States Senate, and concluding that he had in fact committed the acts for which he had pleaded guilty, and that his attempts to withdraw his guilty plea were intended to evade the repercussions of his actions.

Finally, on January 3, 2009, Craig left office after not seeking re-election in 2008.

Three years after the arrest, I finally got the opportunity to photograph this notorious toilet when I managed to route some travel through MSP. I was a late arrival on the photographic scene according to a story in the Idaho Statesman, quoting airport workers a few months after his arrest as saying "People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door ... man, it's been crazy", and "There've been a lot of people coming to see it, I've been asked several times to take photographs of people in front of the bathroom."

For more information see:

• "Tourists flock to Minneapolis airport men's room", Idaho Statesman, Sep 17 2007.
• Wikipedia's article with numerous references and links to original sources.

Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. [....] Poor sanitation, bad hygiene, and unsafe water — usually unsafe because it has fecal particles in it — cause one in ten of the world's illnesses. [....] Diarrhea — nearly 90 percent of which is caused by fecally contaminated food or water — kills a child every fifteen seconds. The number of children who have died from diarrhea in the last decade [1998-2008] exceeds the total number of people killed by armed conflict since the Second World War.

In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.

The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.

Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.

Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.

Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.

If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):

• Travel suggestions
• To Bob's main site