I've been coming here for years. I've met the owner, Drew, and he's a really, really cool dude. They sometimes host music events and I can hear some weird noise band while I get my sheets done. The bar's fairly cheap and the booze is pretty solid. Everything on the south side of the building is 2-3 stars. I recommend it and enjoy it, especially the staff and owner who always rock.
But the laundromat side of things? Well, it's gone a bit downhill. There's a constant funk in the building that smells like every machine has leaked and fermented for a couple months. About half of all the coin machines are out of order and one of the coin machines is straight up broken. This is a year or two after they replaced a bunch of the broken dryers. Now, of the working ones, there's only a 60% chance you'll singe anything in a load you put in there.There are occasional ceiling leaks and cracked and dusty floor tiles everywhere you step. The bathrooms are absolutely worse and if you feel the need to use them, you're better off going to Ledo's or Space Bar next door.
Today I showed up, parked my car next to a spot that was reserved with a dead rat. I don't blame the staff for not picking it up, there is only one person on staff at all times and they are essentially utilized to babysit the bar. This means that they don't have the ability to really spend time cleaning the place or doing maintenance that other laundromats will do. For instance, if you go to Clintonville Coin Laundry down the street, the attendant there will be constantly performing tasks like fulfilling laundry orders for people who dropped off or just tidying up, wiping down, cleaning machines etc.
Not so at Dirty Dungarees. Their valuables are behind a bar that's too easy to access for the average drunk. So they have to sit there and let the rest of the business, the part that arguably sees more customers, slip into disrepair.
Anyway, I show up, ask the attendant about the rat in the parking lot and offer to pick it up if they provide gloves and a trash bag. I was provided with 1 clean glove, 1 dirty glove and a normal trash liner and completed the task so nobody had to look at the poor creature. Meanwhile, the bartender had to stay behind the bar to tend to patrons. If I were getting paid to do more work, I'd gladly have helped to clean up the place too, but no I was actually giving them my money today. What did I get out of it?
My laundry came out smelling worse than when it went in and, surprisingly, slightly hairier. Yes, it gained hair from the washing machines. Now, I've mentioned their dryers and rather than risk fusing my work clothes together into a carbonized lump, I decided to take my wet clothes down to Clintonville Coin Laundry, a laundromat that usually makes me spend more per machine and swap between dollar coins and quarters halfway through, just to get my laundry to not smell dirty. I actually had to wash the hoodie I had brought to Dirty Dungarees as well because it had picked up the ambient funk of the building. After washing my hands a few more times, I felt like I was able to finish the chore without transferring the smell to my fresh clothes while folding them.
So let's sum it up. This is a bar I like within walking distance of my house with an owner I love and staff who are fun and as helpful as they can be. But this is also a place that is so derelict that they can't even run their vending machines full time because they'll make screeching sounds and you'll have to take you clothes somewhere else in order to clean them. This place needs to admit that it's 2 businesses in one and hire another attendant to care for the laundry side of the business while someone tends bar. And if they can't do that, I don't know what they can do to get me back. I've lost a lot of perfectly good clothes to this place. I've tried loving it so much. But Damn.
Get your shit together, guys. read more