Joshua and Dewi Redpath, the owners of Bali Laundry, a new laundromat on Frederick Street, were at home with their newborn on Labor Day evening when they got a call from one of their regular customers. Some of their machines weren’t working, the customer reported.
When Joshua went to see what the problem was the next morning, he discovered a much bigger — and much dustier — mess than he expected.
“It was these big rugs and tarps, and they were all covered in dust,” he told Gazetteer SF. Most of the laundry was left overnight in the washing machines, but even sections of the floor were covered in thick layers of fine, grey dirt that looked like cement dust.
“At first I thought it was construction material, like maybe they’d laid out tarps at a construction site,” he said. “But we later learned that it was people coming back from Burning Man.”
According to security camera footage provided to the Redpaths by their landlord, a “big group” of “six-plus” Burners in a large box truck — “like, bigger than a U-Haul. More like what you see deliver stuff when people move houses,” Joshua said — parked outside the laundromat on Monday night. They loaded their clothes, tarps, blankets, and room-sized area rugs, all caked in dirt apparently from a week on the Playa where dust storms and mud were rampant, into Bali’s brand-new machines. In total, the customers used about seven washers and eight or ten dryers, Joshua estimated.
Burning Man takes place in Black Rock Desert, a sprawling dry lake bed in northwestern Nevada, where the dirt is composed of fine silt, clay, and alkaline dust. When wet, the clay particles expand, creating mud so thick that it’s nearly impossible for people or vehicles to traverse. Walking through the sludge with bare feet can even cause a chemical burn known as “Playa foot.”
Unsurprisingly, one cycle in Bali Laundry’s washing machines could not properly clean textiles caked in such a serious compound. “You need to power wash that stuff,” Joshua said.
Cleaning up after the Burners took several hours, Joshua said. “We basically had to deep-clean the whole laundromat after they were done,” his wife and co-owner Dewi wrote in a video she made documenting the experience, which she posted on TikTok and Instagram Wednesday night. In less than a day the video racked up more than 28,000 likes and 700 comments across the two platforms, enough to even get some press.
The episode also cost the Redpaths “a few hundred dollars” to hire a technician to take apart and clean the two most affected dryers. “Not a negligible price” for the business, Joshua said.
Bali Laundry, which opened last month, is the Redpaths’ first foray into the laundry business — and into Burning Man-related laundry. However, Joshua said the technician who came to fix their machines told him it’s a common occurrence in the city.
“We’ve noticed the area [around the machines] has been a bit dustier,” said Brian Lagman, the co-owner and operator of The Laundry Hub SF in the Excelsior. “We haven’t had any issues where we needed a technician to fix anything, thankfully, but I know a few other laundromat owners who’ve experienced something similar.”
Lagman had also seen Dewi’s video, where the comments ranged from general Burning Man hate, to suggestions for Playa-specific cleaning supplies (vinegar, for one), to incredulity that someone who can afford Burning Man tickets, which cost between $550 to $3,000 this year, would not be able to afford their own washer-dryer.
According to Lagman, Burner customers are “a mixed bag.” Some will “throw it all in” with no second thought, while others “will take the time to be respectful and remove all that stuff before putting it in the machine.”
“All my repeat customers, they’re not going to go in there and throw something that’s hazardous to the machine, because they’re gonna have to use it next week,” he said.
As for the post-Playa perpetrators, Lagman speculated they were the more careless kind of customer. “I honestly know they just wanted to find a laundromat, wash it, dry it, then leave,” he said. “They’re not going to come back.”
Luckily for the Redpaths, the Burners — who Joshua said looked to be in their thirties — had to return to Bali Laundry to pick up their many rugs and tarps. When they did, Dewi explained the damage they’d caused, and they offered to pay for the technician, Joshua said.
“It’s a learning experience. It’s annoying, but at the very least it seems like they agreed to pay the price for the tech,” said Joshua. “We’ll send them an invoice and prepare for it next year.”
