Photo by thisisbossi

Sunday’s weather was perfect for milling about a sunlit alley and spacious garage, browsing for slightly used restaurant equipment. But only a few people showed up in Blagden Alley for the auction at Back Alley Waffles, the restaurant that closed last month and whose former employees say they worked for weeks without getting paid.

Craig Nelsen, an artist who opened the waffle shop earlier this year as an extension of his workshop and gallery, closed up in July after blaming Groupon—with which he’d done a coupon deal—for taking too big of a cut and for not distributing its payments more quickly. Last week, DCist reported that several of Nelsen did not pay several of his employees at the now-shuttered waffle shop, and some who went without paychecks are now pursuing legal action against their former boss.

On a warm, sunny afternoon Sunday, Nelsen threw open the converted warehouse where he lives, selling off his kitchen equipment and much more, including many items from his apartment upstairs from the garage that housed the waffle bar. But with so little foot traffic, the auction felt more like a casual yard sale.

Dave Cecelski, who said he browses a lot of bankruptcy auctions and estate sales for discounted wares, nabbed a slightly used double waffle iron for $25, a steep discount from the $99 retail price he said he found online. “So I did good,” he said as he put the waffle iron in the back seat of his Audi. He was also the only bidder on the item.

Cecelski was also hoping to bid on a KitchenAid stand mixer, which can go for as much as $400 in stores. But because not every item in Nelsen’s defunct kitchen became the subject of a bidding war, he and others hoping for a good deal on a normally pricey appliance were caught off-guard when another visitor, Bobby Lehman, handed the auctioneer $50 and biked off with the mixer.

It wasn’t even the object that Lehman came looking for after reading about Back Alley Waffles on DCist. “A friend of mine sent me a link told me to go get a blender,” he said. “We were hoping for a Vitamix blender for the house.”

Nelsen sold a few other waffle irons, but the real big-ticket items were in his apartment upstairs, where he was looking to unload a pool table, a refrigerator and an LG-manufactured washer-dryer pair with a racecar-red paint job.

Nelsen said he was trying to raise “obviously enough to cover the back wages of my employees.” The auction was planned last Friday, so word did not spread too much. As a few passersby considered kitchen equipment and Nelsen’s artwork—including his tile mosaics and his hand-crafted signage for Back Alley Waffles—some of his former employees hovered, trying to keep track of the transactions Nelsen was conducting. But there wasn’t much business going on, and he might have to schedule another fire sale.

“Everything’s for sale,” Nelsen said. “We didn’t raise much money so we’ll have to try again.”

He offered two former employees the cash that had been collected at the bottom of a mason jar. It wasn’t much.

“I wish their trip here had been more fruitful, but maybe next time,” he said. “I’m glad to part with it if it’ll help me fulfill my obligations to people who relied on me. That’s the point of this whole thing.”

And though it was also revealed that in addition to not paying his employees Nelsen did not possess any of the necessary licensing to operate a restaurant, he was still upset with his involvement with Groupon, a company whose practices he called “nefarious.” He said he doesn’t believe he was treated unfairly, just that he got in business with an unreliable partner.

“If I go to a county fair and the barker at the special prizes gets me to give him $5 to toss rings, he didn’t really treat me unfairly,” Nelsen said. “I made a mistake by engaging with a payday loan outfit. I relied on someone else’s word, and it sunk us.”

He said he’s also felt hurt by some of the public reactions Back Alley Waffles’ story has been receiving, and that perhaps he isn’t getting enough credit for gambling on a waffle shop in the belly of his studio.

“It was a shot in the dark with little chance of success,” Nelsen said. “There was a time in this country in which people used the word ‘pluck’ and they gave credit for that. When someone failed, it was pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. ‘Atta boy.’ I was completely shocked by the schadenfreude and the venom.”

Still, the point of the day was to raise the money necessary to satisfy the nearly $2,400 Nelsen owes his former employees. And it was going slowly. Cecelski, the veteran auction shopper, grumbled that it was one of the least efficient auctions he’s been to. Sometimes, he said, he’s found real treasures at these events. He said he bought an art-deco bar from a restaurant auction a few years ago for $300 and was preparing to unload it for $2,000. He wasn’t so lucky at Back Alley Waffles.

But the double waffle iron wasn’t Cecelski’s only snag from Nelsen’s sale. He also picked up a garbage can for a song, but upon inspecting it, decided to leave it in the alley.

“Garbage can’s gonna stay right where it’s at,” he said. “It was something I thought was good, but it ain’t. Cost of a cocktail.”