Dirty Laundry: How 2021's Best New Bar Has Survived and Thrived in Central Park

"When we first opened, we were only allowed to have seventeen people in here," recalls Sean Hathaway-Casey, who co-owns Dirty Laundry at 2955 Ulster Street in Central Park with his partner, Aubrey Rager. That was on January 8, 2021, still in year one of the pandemic, when almost no other bars opened in metro Denver at all.

The two are both native Midwesterners who relocated to Denver. Rager worked for years doing graphic design, mainly for schools and nonprofits, so her business almost dried up entirely in 2020. Hathaway-Casey is a longtime restaurant vet who was a general manager at a popular Italian spot in Denver when the pandemic hit. When they saw that the Ulster space was for lease, "we made moves to get out of working for other people," Hathaway-Casey says.

Dirty Laundry is "a neighborhood bar for this neighborhood," he explains. It's a Midwest-inspired joint at heart, with bright and fun ’80s and ’90s-style decor. While you can get a $5 High Life Pony and a shot of rye paired with a basket of popcorn or Puppy Chow, you can also find thoughtfully crafted cocktails and a lineup of rare beers. The name is partly a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that the location is next to a dry cleaner, but also, says Hathaway-Casey, "it makes sense. You can come here and air your dirty laundry...we all have dirty laundry. None of us are angels. We're all sinners; it's okay."

Without restrictions, the bar can hold about 100 people at a time, between inside seating and the patio. But for its first six months, Dirty Laundry continued to navigate limited capacity and other pandemic-era rules, such as having to close at 10 p.m. With booze to go and snacks like Wisconsin cheese curds, the place made it through that first winter and nabbed Westword's 2021 pick for Best New Bar in the process.
But even when Dirty Laundry was able to open at full capacity in the summer of 2021, other challenges arose. "You're dealing with people who have COVID fatigue, or they don't know what the rules are, or they have a fear of it," Hathaway-Casey remembers. "We were trying to manage people's health ideology while just trying to stay afloat."

Then in the fall, the owners had to deal with the mask-or-vax dilemma, when bars and restaurants had to choose whether to require masks for all patrons or vaccine cards for entry. Since masking was not very effective in a bar setting, Rager says Dirty Laundry opted for proof of vaccination. "That was mostly well received, but we definitely had pushback," she admits. "We were just trying to follow the guidelines so we could stay open and keep everyone as healthy as possible. It was definitely an interesting first year to navigate as business owners."

After managing a restaurant through most of 2020, including writing the initial COVID protocols for that business, Hathaway-Casey knew there would be plenty of hurdles to opening a bar in 2021, but he also had realistic expectations for how to make it work. "We understood what the overhead was, and we understood that, at the bare minimum, this is a place open five days a week, five hours a day, and it's just the two of us working here. That's easily achievable," he says.

Today Dirty Laundry has grown beyond its bare-bones beginnings. Employees were brought on and the hours extended; the bar is now the only spot in Central Park for late-night drinks (it's open until midnight Sunday through Wednesday and 1 a.m. Thursday through Saturday), which attracts many of the neighborhood's younger residents, as well as those in the service industry who work at nearby developments like Stanley Marketplace and Eastbridge Town Center. Hathaway-Casey and Rager are continually adding to the decor when they can afford new touches, and the bar's inventory has grown.
"We probably have 300 whiskeys at this point," Rager says. There are also 100 beers and seltzers that rotate all the time, as well as over twenty cocktails.

Hathaway-Casey creates the recipe for those cocktails, and over half of them are milk-clarified, a process in which the fat in milk is used to pull out impurities from the cocktail. Although it's been around for centuries, the technique has had a recent resurgence. "It's heavily filtered," he notes. "Basically, all that's left in that process is whatever part of the milk is water."

So you're not getting a creamy, dairy-like beverage. "A milk wash adds smoothness, but to me, the most important thing it does is adds the dilution without shaking," Hathaway-Casey explains. "When I make a milk wash, all the dilution is in how much milk I want to put in there." At Dirty Laundry, he uses dairy milk as well as alternatives such as oat, soy and almond milk, depending on the cocktail.

"All of our cocktails have a culinary focus," Rager adds. "They all spend days being infused with teas, spices, flowers, fresh fruit, herbs. Everything has other flavor components that you can't get if all you do is pour out of bottles and shake and pour it on ice."

"The majority of people, when they drink, are like, 'I like a tequila cocktail, I like a vodka drink,' but I don't approach it that way," Hathaway-Casey says. "Everything is like, what is the flavor I'm thinking about, how do I attract that flavor, and how do I want the end result to be? ... Then we use a certain spirit to carry that vehicle." The result is a cocktail selection that isn't filled with the usual suspects, and although some of the ingredients may be unfamiliar, he encourages people to trust the process and drink them as is.

"We put our heart and soul into creating some really amazing stuff," Rager says. "Don't be ingredient-focused; you're not only going to taste one thing." While the bar can certainly make a guest a basic vodka soda, she adds, "we try to encourage people to try something they can't get anywhere else."

The clarification process also makes the cocktails shelf-stable. Dirty Laundry is equipped with a canning machine, and it offers the option of taking home more than half of its libations. Rager is currently working on new label designs for each canned drink. "That [program] is something we would love to ramp up," Hathaway-Casey notes.
The food program has also evolved. Now it's filled with a mix of bar snacks and a few heartier items, all of which are designed to be served quickly and easily. Options include buffalo chicken dip, Chicago dogs, pretzels with cheese dip and mustard, and a heaping plate of nachos ideal for sharing with a group. "We're not trying to be a restaurant, but we definitely have a large offering for a bar this size," Hathaway-Casey says. "And we serve all that food to close. We keep our kitchen open until last call."

As summer wraps up, Dirty Laundry's owners are already planning for fall and winter. The bar stays open on holidays, including Christmas and New Year's Day, a move inspired by the places Hathaway-Casey spent time in while living in Wisconsin. "I thought that bar culture in Wisconsin was very important to the community, in the sense that you had to be a place that's open all the time," he explains.

Last year, Dirty Laundry hosted a pancake breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. "That was super fun," Rager recalls. "We're gonna do that every year. We're open on holidays. Not everyone celebrates all those holidays, and some people want to escape their family," she adds.

They're starting to think about opening a second concept, too. "We'd like to expand eventually," Hathaway-Casey says. "It'll probably be a much more scaled-down, tight concept."

"A smaller, more intimate space would be fun," Rager agrees.

But for now, the two are continuing to build a community in Central Park, over craft cocktails and cheese curds served with a side of what Hathaway-Casey describes as a "chill Midwestern" attitude.

Dirty Laundry is located at 2955 Ulster Street and is open 4 p.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday, 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. to midnight Sunday. For more information, visit dirtylaundrydenver.com.