Wednesdav. August 18. 1976
University Daily Kansan
5
Pack up your troubles in a laundry bag
By GREG BASHAW
Staff Writer
Laundromats. The word conjures up images of overflowing lint traps, chubby women with curlers spanking braying kids, and more than a little toil and suffering.
A Karasan task force, armed with a duffel box of solied jockey shorts, recently invested in a video camera to document dormants only to find, behind the linoleum-facored facade of these institutions, some dormant.
Take the Bungalow Easy Wash at 1900 Barker. Here the sweeping blades of overhead fans, an antiquated candy machine and cracked mirror all combine to form an overblow nostalgic atmosphere like a Hollywood period-oilige gone mad.
The Bungalo's cast stars sundry gray worked-clothed and older women with children who work silently above the loud hum of the drivers, the fans and the kids.
Much of the mat's noise is to be found on the walls in the form of signs, admonitions to careless launderers. In one crayon noted owner Robert V. Browning warns, Parents, kindly remind children from bumping machines, hitting other patrons."
The Bungalo's large washers cost 35 cents to operate and its dyes a dryer, standard fare for the city's humidies. You can pay for the washers. Or if you less frequently change your unmentioned appliances the Bungalo has smaller-sized machines for a quarter, the cheapest
Laundromat fanatics know two essential and often interrelated features of any mat are its reading supply and its toilet. The Bungalo fairs well here, with two rackes full of magazines and a clean room stocked with towels. A mat is also absent at less thoughtful establishments.
A more modern laundromat, the Independent Co-op At-9n and Mississippi, seems to have been built to give testimony to the truth as well as to set sooty sweaters straight.
The laundry's green walls, high white ceiling beaming fluorescent light and beige and chartreuse washers create an kitchen that feels like a place from Roscoe Hall look like Mom's warm kitchen.
The mat's reading supply, which is highlighted by yellow paint, is an american icon.
It should be said here that this mat is one of KU's students' favorite washing grounds, perhaps because of the view of 8th Street it overlooks. It would be hard to believe the fact that Joe and his doughnuts are only a few hundred steps down the block. Still, if you frequent the Independent you should be prepared for 38-cent washers with fairly decent buckets and a john with barred windows.
The Highlander Center Laundry, 700 Locust, drives somewhere in the twilight zone between the two cultures exemplified, by the Bungalow and the Independent.
Though this laundry shares an old, wooden building with a quaint ice cream shop, its conditions during our investigation were enough to drive even the most well-adjusted modern man to an existential crisis. Three washers that clothes purred, although no one was around to claim the garments or dispense the tickets necessary to start the machines, despite the Highlander of all the claims, the attendant present at all times. You couldn't even buy an ice cream because no one knew what machine it was. Mr. machines' paddles were little solace.
Stepping off the street into the King O'Mat at 6th and Maine is like walking into San Francisco. The streets of Southern California, with a patterned tile floor, a bright yellow decor, machines arranged (get this) diagonally for design, are much more restful from such histasters as the Carpenter's.
All around the hum of electricity does its duty and customers seem to work almost constantly. But with a functional motion. And there's no reading provided, though most of those laboring over wash had brought books of their own. Something on the order of Vomugel, one
Well, it's not exactly like California. There are separate toilets for men and women, something rare for a mat. And unlike the American West you don't pay extra for the great glimmering pseudo-Washers are 35 cents and dryers a dime.
Jack's Goal Post
19th & Mass.
Pitchers $1.25
ALL WEEK
with KU ID
with KU ID
(Come in and have
a beer with Marvin)
OPEN: 6 p.m. to 12 p.m.
Foosball (Hard & Soft)
Pinball & Pool
Going from the King O'Mat to Snedeker Coin-Op at 49 E0 123 is like traveling from Hollywood to your Aunt Martha's in New York. The king is a Snowdress, it's a secure but a red top stable.
There's little chance for free-form laundry improvisation in a mat with a baby crib, a well-mounted Lawrence religious directory and vases of fresh flowers on the counter tops. You'll pay for Snudgeer's less expensive but more durable ones a crack. But here are also four large washers that seem big enough to be a bargain at 75 cents a load.
If Snedeger's is home, Marshall's Co-Op at 104 Pennsylvania is downright oppressive, or else caters to a specialized clientele. The laundry, which advertises itself as a clean clothes shop, is guarded by a dry and many-poured attendant who said he did not wish to be identified and twice told this reporter he was lottering when setting foot in the mast. Perhaps the man had moral objections to the use of my pin-striped palamas in his machines.
they also offer a dry-cleaning service. But if you do your wash there please tell the attendant that I didn't want to use his lint-scrubders anyway.
In fairness, Marshall's prices are as cheap as those anywhere else in town, and
The Independent Coin-Op at 19th and Louisiana has a sanitary, disinfected smell like that of a hospital. But no sterile setting this: besides extensive cake machine choices, you can leaf through copies of Mid West Gospel News, weigh yourself for a penny and tap along to the country hank music that continuously thumps the walls. You can wear your shoes or clean your clothes, or for that matter your own cat, in a cop-operated machine.
The Easy Wash Laundrette, at 1215 W.
sense of decyce, seemed an unworthy vestry to carry on a weekly ritual washing, was the name Norge Laundry and Cleaning Village, 2344 Iowa. Its very name smells macrophonically of well-ordered suburban chairs do not work, its washers gobble 45 cents with each load, its jellybean machines take pennies but give no beans.
But perhaps these observations have been colored or distorted and this reporter has been unfair and (God forgive) a bit. bashy in passing judgment. Besides, where you do your dirty work matters little, so please attend the laundromat of your choice.
6, threes to be just that; a quiet, comfortable and clean place to launder linen. There was only one forlorn young man in the mat both times it was investigated and he discreetly folded his sheets and trudged back to his mobile home across the street.
The Easy Wash has the only candy machine with a GUESS WHAT mofet (moget it, you'll have to blow your own 15 cents) and the only soda machine with a Welch's Grape Juice button. And if you prefer fermented grapes, a iqor store is within two blocks of location located in the same building. Oh yes, theEasy are 35 and drivers a dime
Perhaps the only mat that violated my
LIQUORS
WINES COLD KEG BEER LIQUORS COMPLETE LINE CHILLED DOMESTIC & IMPORTED WINES
Rissman Retail Liquor
(formerly Swadley)
Call: 843-1301 Open 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. 1302 West 6th - East of Dillons on 6th
1835 Mass. St.
Phone 843-3588
- Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. Am. D.Q. Corp.
(C) Copyright 1975 Am. D.Q. Corp.
Offer good Aug.21 and 22