View from the Third Street Bridge

Laundro-Zen: True Clean

If laundry is the task most mundane, then the laundromat is the temple of tedium. That’s if you’re waiting on your wash, though, not necessarily when you’re just passing through. It was late October and there was a subdued chill in the air. In the midst of my wanderings the need for rest (oh, my aching bones) and a powerful thirst converged in a serendipitous spot. So I took a seat (third from the left) in front of True Clean and all was right. Yes, there in the bodega-laundromat corridor of Fourth Avenue my immediate needs were sated easily. Moreover, the view, or I should say the whole environment, had an extremely calming effect on me. Really, I could have sat there for hours. It was dense with traffic, but the hurly-burly was more than offset by the view across the street, dominated by the scrappy charm of the church/used appliance store on one corner and the stately Catholic school/church on the other corner. And all was complemented by the human element—lots of people walking by, mostly normal types coming home from work or school. To this day, whenever I’m in the area I grab a drink and make a beeline for my spot at True Clean. So, one “temple of tedium” has become for me another outlet of repose, a place to enjoy some refreshment and gaze upon one of Brooklyn’s unwittingly perfect landscapes.

Derelict Government Installation

Wired 2nd Ave.

Back of the Factory

Fourth Avenue Carnival

A glut of carwashes along Fourth Avenue led some of the more Barnumesque entrepreneurs to pull out the stops—like the dancing inflatable thin man (known in the trade as an “airblown”). The dancing airblown signifies nothing except “look here.” What they really need is a character, like “Charlie Clean” or “Johnny Shine,” with the requisite “back story”: he came to Brooklyn from Detroit, to ensure that one and all who passed through his domain would have the cleanest car in the neighborhood. “A clean car makes for a clean conscience”—that could be a sign inside, the first thing you see when you walk into the waiting room. It’s a moral imperative: Filth implies impurity/sin . . . Airblown come-ons dot the skyline—once they were the skyline, the tallest structures for miles, but now that the high rises are going up . . .

Ornamental Frenzy

Gilbert’s Apartment

Foundation