There is no washer or dryer where I live now. Until a few weeks ago, I had spent my entire life living in buildings with both a washer and dryer, sometimes coin-operated, sometimes not. Completely unacustomed to my new circumstances, I have been letting an enormous pile of laundry build in my laundry basket, until realizing last night that I would run out of socks and underwear this week if I did not do something about it this weekend.

Apparently, the rest of my roommates have been coordinating trips to houses of friends and relatives with laundry facilities at their places, but none were planning a trip this weekend that I could tag along on. I had to find a laundromat. Because of their favorable arrangements, none of my roommates had any nearby laundromats to recommend, and Kean pointed out that perhaps it isn't wise to entrust your entire wardrobe to a facility in this neighborhood unless you plan on guarding it the whole time.

I started looking up laundromats in Oakland, and I remembed "A Laundromat" on Piedmont Ave. I've been poking fun of the name every time I pass by it ("Frankly, there's really nothing that sets us apart from any other laundromat, hence the indefinite article"), so I decided to go see if it lived up to its name.... and, by golly, it did. There were washers, dryers, detergent dispensers and change machines. Nothing was out of the ordinary; everything worked like it was supposed to, and people who weren't operating washers or dryers quietly read magazines at the tables while waiting for their clothes' cycles to finish. There wasn't a single remarkable happenstance during my whole time there.

I'm really glad to see that some business owners are scrupulous enough to give their shop an honest name. Yes, I'm looking at you, Shirt King of Oakland. You may fool some people with your name, but I'm well aware that shirts don't have a royal family in this city. For shame.

Here's a delightful cultural artifact from before the National Socialists ruined a perfectly good symbol of good luck: