Leader of the Laundromat

How well I remember my first trip to the laundromat.

My friend Bernadette's family washing machine was broken, so her mother asked us to take a couple of loads over to Pat's Laundromat, conveniently located across Eureka Street from the Lees' house.

We started up the first load, and then realized that we hadn't put the detergent in. Undaunted, we opened the washing machine - a front loader, of course - so we could throw in the Tide. Which we did manage to accomplish, more or less, but not before nearly flooding Pat's Laundromat.

I probably had little use for laundromats again until I got an apartment when I was in college, and had to do my wash in the laundromat on Queensberry Street.

From there on out, until we bought our condo in 1991, I was a laundromat user. Often, we'd schlepp our laundry in, start it up, then head to a neighborhood restaurant. I'd pop out mid-meal to get the dryers going, and by the time we were finished, so was the laundry.

I actually kind of enjoy the laundromat experience. a) I like doing laundry to begin with. b) There is something intensely satisfying about getting 4-5 loads done simultaneously.

When we got our condo, there was a teeny little room with a laundry hookup in it. There was also a communal (and free) washer and dryer in the basement.

It didn't take me more than 3 seconds to decide that the teeny room would be my office, and the communal set up would be my laundry area.

There are only 6 condos in the building, and one has its own laundry, so it generally works out pretty well in terms of availability.

Of course, everyone in the building is not as observant and thoughtful as I am about making sure that once through the spin cycle, a load doesn't just languish there. Or as conscientious about cleaning the dryer filter. Or as knowledgeable about overloading. (There's a couple of young MIT grads in our building. You'd think they'd be able to figure out that if you take up every available bit of cubic space in the dryer with sopping wet towels, there's no air circulating, so those sopping wet towels won't dry.) Or as knowledgeable about underloading: we used to have an OCD guy living in the building who would use the washing machine at 4 o'clock in the morning to run a full load containing one pair of socks or a single dish towel.

As a result, I do a lot of laundry-tending and note leaving. (Good thing I like doing laundry.)

In some sense, all of this makes me supremely qualified to own and operate a laundromat, which was the topic of an article in yesterday's Journal.

The article focused on coin-op laundries because it was "thought to be impervious to recessions such as self-storage facilities and car washes," and - thus - was attractive to ousted wage slaves who, when they got pink slipped, vowed 'never again.'

A laundromat makes an attractive business for a number of reasons. First, pretty much everyone, by the time they're in their early twenties, has at least some experience with the core function, and some direct knowledge of the environment itself.

Plus,it's thought to be pretty much recession proof. Clothing has a way of getting dirty, linens get grubby, and very few people resort to washing their sheets in the tub, using a scrub board.

Apparently this recession is somewhat challenging the notion of recession proof, as some will be doing their laundry at mom's (probably after they've moved back in with her), and, in immigrant communities, a lot of the clientele has left the country, at least pro tem. (In the Journal article, the clientele gone missing in one neighborhood are referred to as 'vanishing Hispanics,' which kind of sounds like a magic act.)

Still, there are upsides. As the WSJ points out, while start up costs aren't trivial in terms of buying an operation, there's no inventory to worry about (beyond making sure that the vending machines have those handy little packets of detergent and dry bleach for those who come without their own). And, best of all, there's no problem with receivables - it's all purely pay as you go.

But before you head to the google to see about buying a laundromat for yourself, please note that, while interest in becoming laundromat moguls is high, the credit squeeze is making financing harder to come by.

If you do find your way in, you should know that:

About 70% of laundry owners in America are single-shop operators, and 20% operate only two, limited economies of scale having discouraged the rise of dominant national chains.

This is until Walmart finds some way to expand into the biz, I suppose.

The coin laundry represents a $5 billion-a-year industry of about 35,000 stores. "You can operate one of the best laundries in the country by yourself and for yourself," says Mr. Wallace.

I like that thought.

My laundromat would have book-swap shelves, for all the books I have read that no one else wants; for all the books I haven't read that no one else wants; and for the books I began, but just couldn't get that far into.

It would have decent, non-fluorescent, reading lamps, and plastic (they're practical) chairs in colors other than tangerine and aqua, colors that were apparently established as the laundromat chair tones sometime during the 1950's or early 1960's.

Although I would rather have my laundromat be a reading room, I would probably have wi-fi. (I would be careful to monitor things to make sure that consultants didn't hang out all day just to cadge wi-fi without ever throwing a load in. I would also enforce the 'no throwing an occasional quarter in an empty dryer' rule to keep said consultants from appearing to be doing laundry. Mean spirited, I know, but....)

I would run gratis 'how to do laundry' sessions for laundry neophytes, demonstrating the proper use of bleach and proven folding techniques.

I would have a snack vending machine, but would not encourage having any potable liquids on prem, since I wouldn't want to feel obligated to have a toilet.

My laundromat would have a juke-box, but no piped in muzak. And I would get to pick the selections.

One of which would, of course, be "Leader of the Laundromat," a mid-1960's hit by The Detergents, that parodied the mega-hit Shangri-la's hit "Leader of the Pack," which would also be available. (Vroom, vroom.)