Red-light special

As you may imagine, traveling with 160 pounds of dog is a logistical challenge in any configuration. Lodging establishments tend to have animal restrictions. They often restrict us by quantity or mass – as if purse pups are any quieter or less destructive.

So, for our recent semi-long-term travel booking, the boys and I turned to Barebnb.

Barebnb, for the uninitiated, is the more honest and transparent copycat of a well-known home share platform. True to its name, it ensures the bare minimum. It also stands by the guarantee implied in those final three letters of the brand: you get a bed, for “b,” and for “n” you get not much else.

Not even, it turns out, what’s included in the listing. Perhaps I am a petty b, which accounts for that final “b” at the end of the brand name – but our accommodations lacked both so-called “kitchen essentials” AND a first-aid kit. All of this is no big deal until breakfast goes sideways. The only silver lining, I suppose, was that no one could put any salt in the wound.

Still, this condo allowed dogs, plural, with not much restrictions and not much fees. In hindsight, these may have been red flags. We needed a place to sleep besides the car, however, so we paid the nonrefundable booking fee through Barebnb and moved in.

All told, the condo complex provided a charming experience of community and culture. We got not much chance to be charmed, however. Our time was largely consumed by evading the many free-roaming dogs drawn in by the lack of fees and restrictions, particularly those under the guardianship of underqualified toddlers, and dodging the many underutilized dog-poop-disposal stations.

My trip afield, in fact, was dominated by making certain my dogs kept me comfortable. The actual purpose for our travel fell by the wayside. I don’t even recall the purpose for our travel, beyond doing our civil best to earn a positive guest review on Barebnb.

We soon gave up even on that.

Late one weekend morning, in a rare moment free of neighbor dogs and their pint-sized handlers, my dogs and I sat on the front stoop of our ground-level unit. We sipped coffee and admired the parking lot. A car pulled into the numbered spot next to ours. This was business-as-usual. Frequent cars pulled into the numbered spot next to ours. They never came back. This, I was fine with. Most of them were terrible parkers.

This particular driver – let’s call him “John” because you’ll see why – sat there for some minutes. The dogs and I were aware of him, but none of us barked. Him sitting there was the most charming aspect of the condo complex we’d yet seen. At some length, a woman from the unit adjacent to ours went and chatted with John through the car window. John drove off; she came back up the short walk to our building and complimented the cuteness of my dogs. I immediately suspected her to be of the highest discernment and character.

“My friend is such a wuss,” she said. “He was like, ‘I’m not coming out of the car with this dude and his big dogs staring at me. Nuh uh.’”

We three were appropriately flattered. She kvetched about our mutual Barebnb host and the extortion-level rates we paid. Something on my face or my dogs’ faces prompted her to lean in like a co-conspirator; whatever she saw on our faces, we were honestly just pleased that one single neighbor was not stooping on our stoop without picking it up. We weren’t asking for what came next. 

“John wasn’t my friend,” she confided. “I’m an escort. You all are scaring off my customers.”

This, at 11 a.m. on a Sunday, took us aback. The listing certainly had not indicated THIS as a neighborhood amenity! The threat, though quiet, was clear – we, intimidating though we may be, needed to stay out of her way – or else.

Or else? Or else risk the wrath of the next John, or the next – one with better threat assessment capabilities? Worse, what if the Barebnb host was in on this ring? Were we, the rare legitimate guests, the front for a much shadier business model?

Look, I don’t care that this woman makes her living as an on-site escort. If the industry were safe and regulated, I might have considered the gig in order to pay for our Barebnb stay. But I cared that we had just been confronted, on our own rented stoop, about interfering with illicit activity – in broad daylight – on the Christian god’s holy day, for whatever that was worth.

My priorities became: 1) get us the everloving heck out of there; 2) get refunded for our unused dates, because if ever circumstances were extenuating, these were.

Getting out, while stressful, was doable. We regrouped before one John or another got wind of our whereabouts.

The refund, though, proved impossible.

Our hosts cared as much about the unlicensed practice in their rented unit as they did about our kitchen’s lack of cooking oil. It looked increasingly like the foot traffic was buttering their bread. So I jumped on with Barebnb Support, thinking they’d like to, you know, support me.

Hours of phone calls, hysterics and closed support tickets later, Support’s response came down to: “We talked to the host. They don’t want to refund you. And since prostitution is not covered in our BareCoverage policy, you’re also getting boned.”

So – I may be out some moolah. The dogs have not ruled out more drastic measures; regardless, I finally got the joy of writing a scathing review, and then the joy of editing it down to Barebnb’s character limit. The limit of their character is, admittedly, quite small. I’m left to conclude that whatever the challenges of traveling with dogs, they cannot compare to the challenges of human beings. Next time, we’ll pitch a pup tent. Far, far away. Five stars. 

– Zach Hively