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“We want the bathrooms to be good, but not too good,” says Ezra Ace Caraeff of the bathrooms at his six bars. Leave it too grungy and you invite vandalism; make it too swanky and you invite vice. When Caraeff opened Paydirt in 2015 and was casting about for ways to encourage good bathroom citizenship, he decided to summon Dolly Parton. And to do that, he had to call his dad. Ed Caraeff was a prolific music photographer who shot covers for multiple Parton albums, including 1977’s Heartbreaker, an enlarged photo from whose shoot greets Paydirt patrons who need to pee. (Caraeff’s other subjects included Jimi Hendrix, Steely Dan and the Bee Gees; he specialized in the kind of hazy, soft-focus look at which Parton excelled.) Unlike other restrooms at the Zipper building, Paydirt’s bathroom has never once been tagged, he says; people simply respect Parton too much. “This country doesn’t agree on anything, but I think we can all agree on Dolly,” Caraeff says. “Under her watchful eye people kind of behave a little bit better.”
2724 NE Pacific St.
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