Photo by Alan Zilberman.
By DCist Contributor Alan Zilberman
The proliferation of tiny bars in Shaw is out of control. On 7th Street in particular, it seems like you start quite the pretentious bar crawl, veering from sherry to oyster shooters to top-shelf bourbon. The Detroit/Chicago-themed sports bar Ivy and Coney is the antithesis of the aforementioned Derek Brown establishments: it celebrates the best dives from those cities, it has a limited beer selection, and the hot dogs are cheap. They even have malort—a Chicago-based liquor that’s universally regarded as disgusting—on the menu. To my delight, the bathroom reflects the bar’s dive aesthetic. In a hilariously crude way, Ivy and Coney embraces its regulars.
+6 for funny bathroom graffiti: First, a confession: my sense of humor can be really infantile. Few people see the scatological depths of what I find funny, except for maybe Matt, our beloved DCist editor. What delights me about the Ivy and Coney bathroom is how its vandals embrace infantile dick jokes. There are dick drawings on the wall, and there are stickers meant to look like dicks. Someone wrote, “Pee here,” and drew an arrow pointing to an electrical outlet. Coupled with a couple serious/not-serious arguments on the wall, this bathroom offers plenty of time to ogle while you’re relieving yourself.
-4 for a pink toilet: I’m digging in my heels on this: Public toilets should only be white. When I went to the bathroom, I only had to pee, but I don’t want to imagine the sickly color that would ensue if I sat on the toilet. It’d be like—I dunno, a forgotten raspberry-chocolate brownie left in the sun too long. It does not help that the lid is white (note: my mother pointed out to me after the Russia House column that the toilet color inconsistency is a problem. She’s 100 percent correct, of course, but it felt to dishonest to further ding the points after the piece went live).
+2 for semi-obscure SNL references: While Right Proper is passive-aggressive about its mix-gender bathroom, Ivy and Coney circumvents that problem in a chuckle-worthy way. There are two single-serving toilets—an appropriate ratio given how small the bar is—and on the door they have pictures of Pat, the once-popular SNL character played by Julia Sweeney. It’s an indirect way to say that, yes, both men and women can use these facilities. I’d give this reference more points, except Kangaroo Boxing Club in Columbia Heights does the exact same thing.
-1 for toilet paper facing the wrong way: It’s just science: the toilet paper roll should be over-the-top, not under the bottom. The bathroom here violates that principle, and thoughtful bar staff should correct the error whenever they see it. As noted earlier, I only had to pee in the bathroom, otherwise I would have done it myself. I’m not going to turn the roll around if I’m not shitting, alright? Because that’s seems, um, a little weird, doesn’t it?
+2 for solid hand-drying options: There is a manual paper towel dispenser here, with a supply that’s more than adequate. This should be the standard among dive bars; I don’t expect a Dyson Air Blade next to crude drawings of genital, and neither should you.
Overall score: +5. If the creative graffiti continues, I might have to jack up the score a point or two. I’m definitely curious to see how the silly conversations grow and/or decline. depending on your perspective.