Worst. Laundromat. Ever.

It's been over a year and a half since I had to go to the laundromat. The laundromat I used to go to pretty much forced me to come back time and again because of their charge cards. You could only add money to the cards in dollars, but the washers always charged $1.75 (the dryers were free if you washed there). I kept trying to figure out how much I had to add to the card each time and end up with a zero balance. Yet every time I had just enough on the card, I'd forget detergent and I'd have to charge more to the card to buy some of theirs, and it would always screw up my equation.

Why didn't I just quit when I got down to a quarter? Because of the principal of it, dammit! I wasn't gonna let them beat me...granted, I had some stange issues back then.

Finally, one night, I had it all figured out. I was walking out of that place with a zero balance, come hell or high water. but when I had my clothes loaded and put in my card, they had raised the prices by a dime. Those bastards changed the rules of the game. This made my quest a bit more difficult. For the next month, I'd leave with a balance of a nickel or fifteen cents. It was perfect timing that I, at long last, got my balance down to zero on my last load before moving into the duplex with my own washer and dryer. I won, and I was never to return to that place.

Tonight was my first laundry night at my new place. Keeping my word, I wasn't about to crawl back to that old place. Tonight I tried one just down the street from my apartment. I had high hopes when I saw that it was coin operated. My hopes were somewhat dashed when I went to the first washer and opened the lid. It smelled like someone was cooking Indian food in the agitator. The two double-loaders next to it smelled okay, so I was on my way.

The next problem was the bill changer, which, in the words of the attendant, "it has a real problem with those new-fangled twenty dollar bills." I was curious if he meant the new design of the twenty dollar bill or the CONCEPT of a twenty dollar bill. Naturally, they didn't have change for a twenty, so I went next door to the mexican video store to get change. The cashier mumbled something about no change without purchase, so I bought a dulce de leche candy bar and went back to the laundromat.

Next problem: no air conditioning with ten dryers running and a couple patrons who apparently thought that lunch meat and sour milk make a decent deodorant substitute. While my clothes were washing, I went outside, had a couple smokes and talked on the phone for a while.

Drying was another matter. Every one of the dryers had the words "No Good" carved into them. Not scribbled with a magic marker, but ETCHED into them with a screwdriver or a pocket knife. I gave them the benefit of a doubt and started to load my laundry. I started to load four washers, but one of them was obviously the one that dryed the Indian food, so I split all of my clothes between the remaining three.

The two outside dryers had roughly the same timers on them, and the middle one ran about twice as long, yet only dried about half as much. I pondered that over the next hour, because that's how long it took to get my clothes almost completely dry. I figured I could lay them out at home for a couple hours and they'll be ready to put up.

The last part of this tale can be summed up in the following way: Coin operated laundry next door to a bar in a part of town with a high bum population. There was about ten feet between the door to myt car, and in that space I got hit up for spare change three times. I gave them all the same line that I spent all of my change inside, which was a total lie, but only one of the bums called me on my bullshit. He called me a fucking liar and demanded some of my spare change. When I called him a fucking drunk and told him no, he called me an asshole and went into the bar. I've never had someone try and make me feel bad and then prove my point in one fell swoop.

So, in summary, the search is on for another laundromat. Any suggestions, guys?