Rating the Sebastopol Laundromats with Nosey Parker

[Nosey Parker]

Rate the Laundromat
with Nosey Parker

I have a lot of laundry to do. Every week I haul 3 big baskets, stuffed to muffin-top overfill with washing. It's a big deal that requires more than 2 hours of my time, a ton of soap, and about 25 bucks in quarters. Rain or shine. I’ve tried them all and I think it's time to play “Rate the Laundromat.”

I have made the rounds of the coin laundries in and around Sebastopol, trying to find just the right one, at just the right time of day, with just the right creature comforts to make my weekly chore just a little easier. Nobody's perfect. Nobody gets a 10—this is laundry we're talking about--to get a 10, your establishment should at least fold for me.

Nosey's Rating Criteria:
Cleanliness/maintenance: Has anyone cleaned a table or swabbed a floor lately?
Lighting: Can I read the letters on my Einstein Universal Tour tee shirt?
Working washers & dryers: preferably without grunge and funk
Noise: I gave up high decibels when Jerry Garcia died.
Entertainment: mags, newspapers, TV, radio, other people
Ambiance: A combination of art, sound and light that does not assault the senses.
Smells: Don't get me started...
Attendance: Who's minding the Store?
Location: Proximity to food, shops, parking, home, other humans.
Amenities: A bathroom is extra; a SINK implies the owner is human serving other humans.
Security: see Location, Lighting, and Ambiance, add Attendance or at least attention
Vibe: No blip on the Creep-o-meter.

I live a few miles West of town, so my natural first thought was—multi-task! Go downtown, pop the wash in to wash, run a few errands, make a few phone calls, pop back in time to put the wash in to dry, grab an espresso, window shop, back to the laundromat and fold, fold, fold 'til the cows come home.

My first stop was the laundry next door to the towns best frozen yogurt place, just off Main, but I'm not naming names. So excited to see one of each size washer—though why bother with the tiny ones--dedicated to biodegradable soaps. Cool. I'm in.

Small as laundries go, most of the machines worked well—3 papa bears, 2 mama bears, a few teen-agers, and a raft of baby bear-sized washers, 13 or 14 dryers. I learned quickly not to use the very biggest washers (doesn't wring out well enough) or the biggest dryers (not always the hottest ones). And, like the three bears story, mama-sized washers turned out the best-wrung, ready-to-dry sheets.

We got along fairly well, the laundry and I, until small occasional annoyances became predictable, irksome suckers on my otherwise sunny disposition.

One year and a 10 pounds of yogurt later the honeymoon had ended.

Dirty, sticky folding tables (no SINK), unidentified drying objects left behind, the choking aura of fresh marijuana during picking/snipping season, the unpredictability of free, working machines and nearby parking, and if I hear that door slam one more time...

Not to mention the new and fangled method of payment: plastic card. Dollars are slurped into a machine that records the pre-purchased amount. Push a button; receive a plastic card with magnetic strip to operate the machines. I never seem to use up all the money on the card, and I have to keep adding money to finish drying the laundry, but I can't buy in the same increments that I spend. Hmm.

Enough! In a moment of supreme generosity and huffy protest against The Man, I left behind 2 cards, each with .15 on them, for the next intrepid launderer. There are two or three more in the house somewhere...

A certain highly placed source in the laundry industry confided to Nosey Parker that a big selling point for those card machines is that the laundry owner collects thousands of bucks in the nickels and dimes never redeemed from those cards.

First date: 7.5 (might have been 8 or higher but for the learning curve on the card machine)
After rapid decline in basic maintenance with inverse incline in frustration: 3.5
A laundry serving downtown should look and act a bit uptown if you ask me, with a slam-free door.

Next Laundromat: one flanked by a pretty-good grocery, an okay pizza place and a video store, with a top-notch hardware store in very close proximity

[Shandi]

You are a very good writer, and I'm thinking you must be a published one? I hope that since you've tried them all, you'll eventually reveal the one that finally stands above the rest.....curious minds want to know!

Rate the Laundromat
with Nosey Parker
...

[rossmen]

i've tried them all too. high tide rules. not only the best deal, with the best and most machines, the coolest most diverse crowd, the best coffee next door, other good shopping, a bathroom and big laundry sink, clean (except for one table), no tv bs, and frequent expert layed back attendance.

Rate the Laundromat
with Nosey Parker
...

[Nosey Parker]

Nosey Parker, here, with more revealing factoids on the subject of laundry. If you read the first installment in this woman’s history with the local laundry scene, you may remember that no laundromat gets a 10, ever, not until the pick it up dirty and drop it off clean and fluffy without extra charge! I know…dream on, Nosey.

The next stop on this little laundromat tour is a little coin laundry a little out of the center of town. This one is flanked by a pretty-good grocery, an okay pizza place and a video store, with a top-notch hardware store in very close proximity (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), It’s a quiet, little laundry with adequate machinery and tables. Very Quiet. No slamming door. Clean enough. Florescent overhead lights. Spare as a Rothko, with a slight cramped feeling.

The count: 3 Triple-, 5 Mega-, 4 Maxi-washers, 16 top-loaders; 16 dryers, at the standard 7 minutes for 25 cents; a SINK; 4 carts with racks; 15.5 square feet of folding table space spread over 3 locations; 2 molded plastic chairs, 1 small bench; 1 soap machine, 1 plastic bag dispenser; 1 jammed full bulletin board; 2 change machines; 3 faded bad art prints, 1 fake fichus, 1 fire extinguisher; no bathroom.

Bad music sometimes, but not too loud. Never saw another creature in that place; never saw an attendant. RoboLaundry? Note to self: come back at night for a creep-o-meter reading.

First blush: 6.5
After realizing the lock-step solid banks of washers casting darkness into the corners reminded me of the Berlin Wall: 5.5

Next!

Tune in to Rate the Laundromat 3 for a true top-loaded drama, un-folding soon! Find out why is Nosey so agitated about laundry?

[Sara S]

Ho, ho! I don't need laundromats anymore, but you're good! And funny!

Nosey Parker, here, with more revealing factoids on the subject of laundry. ...

[Nosey Parker]

Rate the Laundromat 3
By Nosey Parker

Next 2 stops on the Rate the Laundromat tour de Sebastopol involve a rather agitating aspect of a woman’s delicate washing life…

I am all for gluten-free but like the occasional high-flying bagel, cream cheese, tomato and red onion “just like back east” (okay, not really like back east bagels mit schmear). This dietary glitch leads me to a rather imposing laundry surrounded by several food-oid offerings. And a bagel shop. And a post office (big location hint).

Alas, my delicate whites turned an un-lovely greige from the build up of commercial soap products in the top-loaders. You don't want to know what “slithey toves gyre and gimble in the wabes” of those machines, my dears. Suffice it to say, modern, read enlightened soap makers are now using very clever food-sourced degradable surfactants to remove the soil from our clothes, while the commercial brands use clay, an old school surfactant that deposits silt onto machine parts and personally delivers the phosphates into our water ways. My lighter vegetable surfactants released years of crud from under the agitators.

The count: Lotsa big and small machines, lotsa table space, lotsa kids running amok. So smoked after seeing how much lingerie I would have to replace, I bolted without noticing much else. So upset, not even proximity to bagels and stamps would soothe.

1 visit's worth: 2 (might have been a 5 or 6 but for the ick factor...can't even think about it, too terrifying...)

Next!

A certain laundry sandwiched between a certain last resort “food” store and a really decent cafe and nearby better-than-okay pizza place, a little ways west of town, across the street from my favorite Physical Therapy/Pilates studio (blushingly obvious hint).

Unfortunate Ditto. Replacement delicate whites go fawn while upwardly mobile decibels have me Edvard Munch-ing my way through pizza to soothe my screaming nerves. Ick factor hackles up despite proximity to home base. Creep-o-meter off the charts after dark.

Next!

Will Nosey ever find that ‘just right’ coin laundry, “with just the right creature comforts to make my weekly chore just a little easier?” Will the fates allow? Find out in the final chapter (4) of Rate the Laundromat. Coming soon to this bulletin board.

[Thad]

Laundry by the plaza with Lucky's and Cvs has a number posted for any issues and is prompt to respond, humorously aware of this threads rating of local laundry's also has a bathroom, utility sink, a television and decent machines.

Rate the Laundromat 3
By Nosey Parker...