Not everybody eats halibut crudo, yet we still have dining critics. More and more folks abstain from alcohol, yet we still have beer critics. Large swaths of the population don't give a shit about live music, yet we still have music critics.
All the Earth's people, on the other hand, shit. And piss.
That's where Twin Cities Toilet Paper Reviews comes in. The veritable Pauline Kael of the porcelain cauldron, this enterprising TP appraiser has been applying her critical faculties to metro restaurants, coffee shops, breweries, big-box stores, small businesses, and parks since 2020. The current iteration of the project, which centers on Bluesky, didn't launch until last fall, but there's a deep private archive of photos, recaps, and letter grades from which to draw.
"Basically anytime I've used a restroom, I've taken a photo of the toilet paper," says the woman behind the account, who we'll refer to as TCTPR given the private nature of the review process. "If you ever looked through my phone—which, why would you or anybody—it's a disturbingly large number of photos of my hand holding toilet paper."
For TCTPR, public toilet paper use is a goofy, hyper-personal, rarely discussed universal experience.
"I wasn't necessarily looking for a super-unique thing to do," she says. "I've just never seen anybody else do something like this."
St. Paul's Barrel Theory Beer Co. has so far achieved the highest grade, an A- for its luxurious bath tissue. "I was like, they should get an award for this," TCTPR remembers. While she claims she's able to correctly ID the make/model of most rolls, and Charmin Ultra Soft is her choice at home, brands aren't factored into reviews—the criteria is "vibes-based." The Minnesota State Fair currently holds the lowest mark, an F- for its harrowing TP. There's a reason they don't call it the Great MN Wipe-Together, it seems.
Here's TCTPR's full State Fair pan...
The MN State Fair is perfect in nearly every way, but falls incredibly short in two specific ways. You absolutely cannot peddle deep fried dairy products and then stock the bathrooms with toilet paper from wish dot com. We deserve so much more than this. A hand holding the end of a roll of toilet paper. The edge is torn unevenly and badly frayed. The holder’s thumb sits atop literally the thinnest piece of something that I don’t think should legally be allowed to be called toilet paper. The holder’s fingers can be seen so clearly through the wispy white “paper” that it might as well not even be there. The wall behind the toilet paper is adorned with random scribbles from a pen. Those marks are to graffiti what this material is to toilet paper. The bathroom’s once white floor is dirty and worn, reflecting the decades of fair-goers who have been subjected to such unacceptable—and frankly, offensive—wiping conditions.
Promotion of the account has been a mixed bag. Over on the St. Paul subreddit, TCTPR is heralded as a bathroom-bound Seymour Hersh. "This is the hard-hitting journalism I like to see," one user raves of the D-grade review issued to Wildflyer Coffee. (Our reviewer, a St. Paul-based digital marketer, beams with pride over this hometown love.) The Twin Cities and Minneapolis subreddits? Tougher nuts to crack. "They seem to actively hate knowing about the quality of toilet paper at local establishments," TCTPR notes, adding that IBS and Crohn's sufferers have been very supportive of her work. Reliably dumb as rocks, men, in particular, have struggled to digest one crucial aspect of the project.
"I can tell when a man or a woman is responding to me; most men assume I'm going around from bathroom to bathroom in the Twin Cities and literally taking a shit," she says with a laugh. "I'm a woman, I have to use toilet paper every time I go to the bathroom!"
The overall perception of a location doesn't elicit clues about the quality of its toilet paper, TCTPR observes. "There's no correlation whatsoever," she says, emphatically. Northern Coffeeworks in south Minneapolis, for example, is a delightful neighborhood cafe/roaster, though that didn't spare it from a C- TP grade, and its "dark and freezing" bathroom didn't help matters. Meanwhile, you might expect Big Rivers Regional Trail Pavilion in Mendota Heights to provide typical park-grade accommodations; after all, Theodore Wirth Park "hurt me physically," TCTPR recalls. But you'd be wrong. Big Rivers scored a B, the third-highest mark on record. A self-imposed code of ethics is baked into the review process: Each review must correspond with a purchase. "I'm not just using them for content," she says.
TCTPR harbors big ambitions for her toilet paper appraisals. A placeholder website was just launched, and a newsletter is in the works. She's considering making certificates—think badges like the health grades posted outside coastal restaurants—and mailing them unsolicited to reviewed establishments.
"It's just not something businesses think about," the reviewer says of TP selection. "But if this account gets big enough, maybe they'll realize their customers deserve better than sandpaper."
