Commode Commotion

Toilets are always a favorite protest symbol, most recently employed by David Labbe, disputing a zoning decision by officials in Augusta, Maine, preventing the sale of his house to Dunkin’ Donuts (for, he said, three times what he paid), and he’s begun lining his property with discarded toilets. Augusta-native Labbe says he’s given up on his city and his neighbors (who fear traffic problems if a Dunkin’ Donuts opens). On the same day, coincidentally, toilets made news in Los Angeles, where YoYo Li was about to open the city’s first toilet-themed restaurant, patterned after several in Taiwan, where diners squat at tables and eat off commode-shaped serving vessels.