Nothing is safe in Uptown Athens on any given night.
Nothing is sacred on Court Street after dark, business owners promise.
Not a toilet, not a window, not a neon sign — some just have to accept that when drinking is involved, one might have to bid goodnight to a business’ precious relics.
That reputation is why multiple Court Street bars were wary this year when remodeling their bathrooms: Why pour thousands of dollars into something that will only be destroyed? Both Red Brick Sports Pub and The C.I. trudged on with repairs this summer, anyway.
“We needed to make the repairs a long time ago,” Don Pepper, owner of The C.I. on 32 N. Court St. said. “The reason we never did it in the past is because when you make a major change like that, you have to handicap things and the price of everything skyrockets when you start doing that ... but now they’re handicap accessible.”
Pepper said the repairs cost more than $100,000, taking a little more than five months to complete. But it was worth it, he said, after years of replacing toilets month after month.
“The new bathrooms were long overdue,” Jacob Moore, a sophomore studying finance, said.
The damage has already begun, just a week into Fall Semester.
Two days after the new bathrooms opened to bar-goers, Pepper said people started writing on the walls, with about 20 separate examples of graffiti dotting their woodwork by this week. They even installed a plaster wall in the commodes, hoping students would take to those, but they were too slippery to write on.
If someone signs their name, Pepper said he’ll call the Athens Police Department. For now, people are usually intelligent enough to avoid that. He’s yet to catch anyone breaking a toilet.
“Sometimes, someone would kick a bathroom stall off of the wall. Mostly, bathrooms get damaged by graffiti,” APD Chief Tom Pyle said. “That’s ongoing. That’s a very tough crime to solve, because it’s a crime of opportunity with very few witnesses and very little forensic evidence to trace back.”
According to APD’s 2013 annual report, 279 calls for vandalism were made last year, while 209 incident reports were written for criminal damage or vandalism. Only 36 arrests were made.
Jackson Mende, assistant general manager at Jimmy John’s, 16 S. Court St., said the number of vandalism crimes committed per year is likely much higher. Jimmy John’s tries to refrain from calling the police, he said, because it’s bad for business and the vandals are too difficult to catch.
Even so, he had to repair two sinks this summer, has seen one light broken, and had a hose stolen that he previously used to wash away drunken bathroom mistakes. Each year, his store spends thousands on repairs.
“Employees were in here cleaning until about 6 a.m. this morning,” Mende said Sunday. “People have food fights, they dump stuff on the floors. People spray vomit everywhere. We have to clean the bathrooms 6-7 times a day.”
Mende added that bartenders will often stop in to use the Jimmy John’s bathroom once the bars become too crowded, and that he’s seen bartenders from Red Brick come most often.
Lisa Smith, a senior studying nursing and a bartender at Red Brick, 14 N. Court St., said that trend might diminish slightly this year, following the bar’s extensive bathroom renovations. She wasn’t sure on how much they cost.
“I’ve already seen people drawing on them,” Smith said.
The Crystal, 34 N. Court St., saw arguably the most property damage this summer when a car crashed into it’s front, with the driver offering the bar $7,000 for repairs. But bartender Amy Allen said that pinball machines, signs, a window and an ATM machine also saw some abuse this summer.
“We replaced the pinball machine,” Allen said. “But someone even stole a Megatouch machine and a neon sign. That’s pretty hard to carry out. And then there was that kid punching a window out last year.”
Allen said that The Crystal is also slated for a major bathroom renovation during this year’s Winter Break, not to be outdone by other bars on Court Street.
Pepper said that nefarious behavior is difficult to curb, given that they can’t have employees stationed in the bathrooms. But some of the takeaways have been worthwhile.
“Everybody likes to take beer bottles and fire them into the commodes,” Pepper said. “You take your beer bottle and drop it into the toilet. That’s why we became the world’s foremost expert in replacing a toilet in a half an hour.”
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