The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.

7.21.2007:

7:43 PM

Because I'm here (in New York) for a while, and because I only brought five pairs of pants, and because I have been walking everywhere, today gets to be LAUNDRY DAY!

Now, because I'm slightly lazy, I thought i'd check with the hotel to see if they do laundry. What luck - they DO! However, they charge $7.00 per t-shirt, $14.00 per pair of pants, and a whopping $5.00 per single pair of unmentionables.

So that means today is not only LAUNDRY DAY, it's LAUNDRY DAY AT THE LAUNDROMAT!

Yay.

So, I ask the helper guy at my hotel (at 42nd street and 2nd avenue) where the closest laundromat is. It took him nearly four minutes of discussion with coworkers to determine that he didn't know. However, Carmine the Bellhop might. So I should go ask Carmine.

"Oh, probably 48th and 3rd," Carmine tells me. That's not very far - 6 north blocks (about, oh, 100 - 150 feet per block, depending) and one west block (farther, about 3-4 north-south blocks in distance). Maybe a quarter mile of walking, if that.

I get to the 48th and 3rd place (152 e. 48th, if you want to play along on google maps). It's not a laundromat - it's a "fine garment tailor". And it looked like it too - this guy's thread cost more than the pants and shirt I was wearing.

Clearly, this was not the place to get my unmentionables tidy.

"Hey fellas," I said to the kind looking bellmen of whatever hotel was next to the tailor, "Where is the closest laundromat?"

"Uh..." said one of them.

"Um..." said the other.

I knew this wasn't going to go well for me.

They sent me to 44th and 5th, which is a Best Buy. And while they do sell washers there, none of them were operational. A nice security check guy said that, while he knows there are some around, the only one he knows of for sure was up at 55th and 9th.

That's a bit of a hike if you're not sightseeing and you're carrying around about 20 lbs of laundry.

But not being from here and being desperate for clean pants, I walked it. I contemplated getting a cab, but some retarded pirncipaled thing in me made me hoof it there... Something about figuring things out and not spending money when a walk could do me good anyhow.

I'll spare the narritave - there was no laundromat.

So I said "fuck it" and grabbed a cab back to my hotel. I figured I'd just pony up the dough at the hotel for pants washing and scrub my other clothes in the sink with a little liquid Gain.

I shared my plight with the cabbie, who said "Oh, you lookin for laundry. I take you to."

We ended up at 50th and 1st, at a full- service laundry place. The woman was extremely sweet as she explained how, this being the weekend, it'd be at least Tuesday morning before she could get me some clean drawers.

"Is there a coin laundry somewhere - anywhere - within 20 blocks of here???" I asked.

"Oh, sure," the little chinese woman told me (I'm not speculating on her race or generalising here - she had a picture of Chairman Mao hanging on the wall behind her).

"Uh..." I said after several awkward seconds of waiting for her to volunteer the information. "Where is it?"

"Three block north," she said. "My sister place."

Which is where I am now, typing this out on my phone.

Yay for pointless posts on a Treo.

* * *

(Permalink)