Brown Bear Car Wash

Clean. Attended on Saturdays. Good pressure. Good vacuum time.
I am one of those people. You know, the kind that insists on washing their car every week. It is white! That’s my excuse. As a result, I’m not only a DIY type when it comes to the process, but I’m also selective about the quality of the car wash I go to. I love this place. I make a point to stop by every weekend for a quick wash and vac. The bays are always clean and a nice lady is here on Saturdays servicing everything and emptying trash. I won’t be going to any other self serv car wash any time soon.

It works just fine for
lines.and pretty good time in a vacuum machine. its never a bad idea to clean a car lol

Suitable but prefer the one on aurora ave. It’s worth the extra mileage to drive down the street.

Vacuum machine (number 2) had no problem taking my quarters but then did not work to vacuum OR give the money back. Only had a couple bucks as this was all I would need if it was working, and so failed to get car cleaned up. I tried to call the «help» number and left a message, disappointing to not even talk to a person. I wonder how many more people will be putting money in that vacuum machine today? A sunny Sunday? I bet a lot…
Update: I did make the call and let them know about the busted vacuum and they sent me a refund that arrived in what seemed like just a few days. I was really happy with that part of the experience, however I am still kind of irritated that I didn’t get to clean my car like I wanted to when I had a brief moment of kid free time because of the vacuum malfunction. Changed my review from one star to three since they were so nice about the refund.
Dependability is a much higher priority to me than a few quarters… if it were about the money I would have gone to five. If I could have used one of my plastic forms of cash (credit/​bank card) it would be higher too. Needing to have paper money to do this is a drag, and is also why I didn’t just go to another machine when this one wasn’t working.

This Brown Bear has been at 15^th and 125^th for years. Fact: my mom would bring her Checker (think old school NYC yellow cabs that Robert DeNiro drove in Taxi Driver, but in dark blue) when I was 5, and we would sit in the car and watch her suds up the exterior. We stopped being allowed to watch when my brother put a penny in the cigarette lighter and made the interior dashboard wiring smoke. Sad panda day.
Anyway! A cheaper alternative to cleaning your car than gas station vacuums, and more likely to actually get your car clean than a drive through. The vacuums run for about 5 minutes for a buck, and if you’re efficient you can usually get most of the scraped on grime vacuumed out of your car. Unfortunately, once you put in a dollar, you cant supplement the vacuuming like you can the wash part, so if you miss a spot, maybe you may want to borrow a shop vac and hit it later. The self wash part is usually pretty good as removing most grime– the high pressure wash part gets rid of mud chunks well.

So my truck was pretty dirty, it hadn’t had a real great scrub down for a while and I figured I could use up a few of my extra coins from my coin jar and use their high pressure water, soap and liquid wax.
I didn’t realized I would get the work out of my life coming here, whew! Drop in the quarters and the timer starts the count down, when you get to about 2 minutes left a beeper sounds off to warn you of your impending doom/​shut off of water/​soap/​wax whichever stage you are at… ugh…
I plug the meter, start the wet-​down, then move onto the scrub down and it seemed like seconds had passed and that damn beeper starts sounding! I pop in more quarters and start running around and scrubbing my truck like a madman… BEEP BEEP BEEP! WTF? Run over plug in more quarters… run around like a chicken with its head cut off straying the liquid soap… BEEP BEEP BEEP… OMG…THE BEEPER! PLEASE STOP THE BEEPER… OKAY OKAY, HERE HAVE MORE QUARTERS!!! Repeat until done…4 stages worth, wet down, scrub down, wash down, and wax…
I finish up, sweating like just having finished a workout with Jane Fonda on roids and the truck is «clean»…as I get in my truck to leave, I see several areas I have missed, but sadly I’m out of quarters… I head home to take a shower and Unilocal where the automatic car wash is…
Minus stars for access, traffic-​wise it’sa pain to get in and out of there and well, the timer seems to run fast, but maybe that’s just me?

Self serve only and website doesn’t state it clearly.