Laundry Bar — Restaurant in Melbourne

Do not book your events here.

As someone who has played in bands for almost 20 years, and having booked many shows myself over the past 10, I have dealt with my fair share of bar managers. Never have I been met with so much hostility from a manager when I have tried to enter a venue to load in gear.

When I arrived the front door was locked. Someone left the venue so I went to walk through the door to meet with the rest of my band who had been loading in our equipment while I found a park. An aggressive woman with brown hair blocked the doorway and began to interrogate me as to why I was trying to enter the venue. I calmly told her that I was in one of the bands who was playing that night and she began to berate me while I stood there and answered the questions she was aggressively asking me. She eventually mumbled under her breath and closed the door in my face. Just prior to this, our friend who had helped us load in was met with the same treatment, the lady yelled at her in the venue and told her to leave, and continued to yell after her as she walked all the way down the stairs to exit the venue. We were both left there stunned and disgusted at the treatment we’d received. If the venue wanted to limit the number of people in the venue before doors open, a simple polite explanation would have been sufficient.

Not sure what to do, I called one of my band mates to come down and eventually let me in. 20 minutes after getting inside a man I hadn’t seen before came up to me with the woman I had spoken to earlier and the woman pointed at me and said “this is the guy”. It turns out the couple were the managers and the woman had gone to her husband to complain about how rude I had been to her. I was taken aback, and asked how I had been rude. Still full of anger, she said I had angrily told her that “I was in the band” repeatedly (I said this once only to explain why I was trying to come through the door, and not with anger). She continued to tell me off and not wanting to cause conflict I apologised, even though I had done nothing wrong. She said that sorry wasn’t good enough and that in the 10 years of running the venue she had never had anyone be that rude to her (her husband then tried to settler her, telling her that I had apologised). She was telling absolute lies and I found it very insulting that she would go to complain to her husband about something that never happened. We were then all told off for not arriving earlier to the venue for sound check, however we were instructed by the organisers that only the headline band was to get a soundcheck (we were one of the three support bands), and we had got there as early as we could having come straight from work.

It has been a very long time since someone has been that rude to me and I am still dumbstruck as to how she could put the blame on me for this incident. I spoke to several people who played in bands that night who said they had similar run-ins with the same woman. It was a Thursday night and the venue wasn't overly busy so her rudeness is even more unexplainable.

If the previous replies to negative reviews here are anything to go by, I know I won't get an apology from the venue's management. I'm sure I’ll be met with a condescending passive aggressive reply telling me that I am completely in the wrong (as well as some new lies no doubt) and that the whole incident was my fault etc etc. But hopefully by leaving this review it will caution others from having anything to do with this place. There are dozens of better venues that actually appreciate the hard work that local bands put in and know that without these musicians their venue would cease to exist. If you’d like to avoid getting served a bunch of aggression from a person on a power trip, best to...

Went to see Freddie gibs perform under the pretence of it being an after party between 10pm-1am. He didn’t appear until 1am, performed two songs and left. Contacted laundry to say how disappointing it was for the price paid & how it was quite misleading, was called a Karen by management and was told “that is what an afterparty is”….(the standards must be low if that’s an afterparty) The event was unprofessional and management could care less because they’re the unprofessional ones who will let an artist dip like that after performing two songs & not care, with their response it speak volumes of who runs the club and why there’s so many negative experiences/reviews of this place. Their gaslighting passive aggressive responses to negative google reviews also speaks volumes but is a good read to see just how low this management stoops to. Also not the first time this has happened, a friend paid for a booth for her birthday, m37 was meant to appear and never showed. Seems to be a consistent issue. This place is extremely lacklustre, the vibe is dry, drink prices are all over the place depending on the bartender and how dead inside they are & it’s managed by the rudest most entitled power trip owners who can’t even string a professional response together when confronted with some constructive criticism. 10/10 would avoid, but hey that’s just coming from little old me, Karen.

Update to their gaslighting response: The event was advertised from 10pm-1am not 1am-3am. He did not hang around until 3am otherwise other patrons that night would also not be making google reviews with the same complaint. Quote Micheal Lucas’ google review “Come to see Freddie Gibbs but he got scared off by Ben Mei pressing play on his playlist” in regard to the same issue about Freddie Gibbs lack of performance. And yet again your response to constructive criticism falls far short of...

Very rude management team would not recommend this bar. I hope they become more professional in handling their customers online. They are currently very unprofessional in their replies and should consider hiring a mature person to handle their social content. Good luck to anyone who wants to deal with them in the future or try to respectfully ask for photos to be taken down. Instead of addressing the issue they escalated it by posting it everywhere causing much distress to my friend. I am happy to remove this review if I see a professional reply to having this issue addressed in the future. This behaviour is unacceptable and best be addressed I hope they see that respect goes both ways. Their account of the situation down below does not reflect the situation and has been falsified. My friend has asked the photographer to not take her photo. The place may have not known that but when asked for the individual photo to be taken down it should be respected instead of mentioning the venue’s photo policy and telling her she should have known about the rules. She is human not an object for them to take photos of and post it up everywhere to torment her after the exchange of messages. They then found her social media accounts and tagged her without permission. It is quite upsetting. They should be embarrassed. Seems like they will not apologise based off the replies to the negative reviews. It really reflects their personality to take extra steps to make her experience worse. She only talked to one person online to ask for her photos to be taken down I do not know why it has become a big deal to them. The person handling these complaints needs to grow up and be...