Two years ago when I was getting ready to move from Texas, I anticipated that the most difficult thing would be not the cold NYC winters; the brusque interactions with strangers; the small, mice-infested apartments; or leaving family and friends behind. No, the greatest tribulation would be forgoing an in-apartment washer and dryer.
Thinking back to those days, I realize how far down the slippery slope of laundering I have slidden. In my first apartment in Washington Heights, the washing machines were an easy elevator ride down from the seventh floor to the second. Although I had to walk by the smelly trash cans to get there, shared the space with mice, and hit my head numerous times on low-lying ducts and pipes, at least I could wash and dry my clothes in the building, thus avoiding the often chilly and damp weather outside.
In moving to Morningside Heights, however, I knew I would not have laundry facilities in my smallish, 12-unit building. But at least Bubbles is nearby. Within a minute or two, I can walk from my apartment to this pleasant laundromat with its black-and-white checkered tiles and its window seats opening on the steady stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk. This is where I spent a couple hours on a recent post-call morning.
And it’s really not that bad. Maybe next time I move, I’d be willing to walk a few blocks to wash my clothes.
Here’s a shot that includes the tiles and the window seat. An archaic device hangs on the wall in the background. It appears to have a coin slot, a keypad, and a hard plastic attachment with a flexible metal tether.
A view out the window. My camera phone had trouble capturing the blue of the sky when I took the subway picture.
1 Comment
June 2, 2008 at 253
ha-ha…an archaic device..
I did hear recently about a child who didn’t know what a “dial tone” was since she’d never used one of these archaic devices.