The uninspiring photos of consumer products continue…
I made my quarterly visit to the laundromat on Sunday. I’d never before hit the place so early (11:30) on a Sunday morning. What an odd cast of characters…
Most prominent was this vapid-looking fag who seemed to have just stepped out of the pages of Circuit Noise or some similar inanity. A classic 90’s clone he was, with his Adidas sweat pants and Kangol cap. I was fascinated by him in a disaster movie kind of way.
To begin with, I couldn’t quite understand how such a party boy could be functional at such an early hour on Sunday. Of course it finally dawned on me that he was probably still experiencing Saturday night at the time. His “designer scruffy” companion definitely looked a little disheveled, sort of like a street person who had nothing but skin care products in his shopping cart and did all his dumpster-diving outside The Gap.
But the thing that really fascinated me was his collection of laundry. How could one person own so damned many tiny little white knit tank tops? Each one he folded obsessively, as if they were later to be shrink-wrapped. It was mind-boggling.
Of course he may have been wondering about all those black T-shirts in my pile too…
There were others: the usual collection of street people, the disarmingly cute Russian guy, the evil bitch who dispenses change with a scowl (if at all), and a large number of Latinos, which is fairly unusual since the Tenderloin is primarily a Southeast Asian and skate rat neighborhood.
I like my laundromat. It’s huge. The machines are in good shape and there are dozens of dryers. And — this is a biggie when you only do laundry every three months — it has a parking lot. I was a little alarmed that I wasn’t very alarmed by very drugged woman who was sobbing loudly in said parking lot. At least she didn’t try to bum a cigarette…