That also works well in San Francisco.

Nice restaurants were also a good place to go because they had good customer service habits. Any bar or places that serves alcohol has to have a bathroom.

In NYC iirc, 20 seats or more and built before 1970 or so also required it. I looked this up once after getting sick of being told there was no bathroom at places that seemed likely to be lying.

As a tourist, I didn’t know this. Will try this next time. I was wondering if I should pay tips or not in that case.

This works in pretty much any American city.

If anything, you have to be careful with this in New York specifically, because some of the little boutique hotels have tiny lobbies that don't have a bathroom. Make sure to go for a big brand-name hotel.

The outer boroughs are trickier, but I've found that McDonald's and KFC generally have open bathrooms. And gas stations with attached convenience stores, which do exist in Queens.

How recently did you check? There was a debacle in the past year or two and I think the policy changed.

At a corporate level there was an open bathroom policy instituted a few years back [0]. I’m not aware of that changing but I’m also not surprised that a local outlet might not comply with that policy.

0: https://people.com/food/starbucks-bathroom-policy-change-arr...

I’ve only seen this in areas with a bit of a homeless issue. Even then just ask the barista for the code.

You can always say you’re waiting for a phone order. But I can’t say I’ve ever been asked.

I went to a bar to use the bathroom and ordered an orange juice. The orange juice made me want to pee again in the NY train and had a nightmare on the way home. You can guess what happened lol

Yes they did. Even Macdonald also closed them. I was asked to pee around the counter by a staff at a street shop.