Popular Laundromat's Sudden Disappearance Leaves Locals Awash With Puzzlement

The sudden demolition of the long-serving laundromat on Fillmore near Lombard, that was once a famous "pick-up palace," has caught San Francisco Marina District residents off-guard and more than a few are unhappy about it.

"One day it was there, and then one day it wasn't," lamented Abigail Moscowitz, a 12-year Marina resident. "Not only are there too few laundromats around the neighborhood. This is the only one that actually had parking -- that was a great feature."

Parking is always a great feature in the Marina, as it is in most of the rest of San Francisco.

"This is the way of The City," observed Dr. Steven Brattesani, whose Fillmore Street dental practice is located right across the street from the site of the former popular laundromat. "Change is the way of the world, and that's certainly part of life in San Francisco," said
Brattesani, who has aspired to political office in the past. "I would have liked to have seen new housing be constructed, but I understand the property will be divided into two retail businesses -- most likely a bank, and a new coffee shop." Although that sounds like carrying coals to Newcastle around here, Steve was not joking."

A construction worker on the site, who watched the asphalt that was once part of the laundromat's parking lot, was joking when he said, "I think it's going to be a McDonald's."

The building that once housed all those coin-operated washing machines actually has taken its place in San Francisco cultural history. Over thirty years ago, the laundromat was called, believe it or not, the Come Clean Center, and it played a role as a backdrop in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a best-seller that began in serialized version -- as did the novels of Charles Dickens -- in the San Francisco Chronicle. In his stories, Maupin described the Come Clean Center as
the hottest pick-up locale in The City, along with the Marina Safeway.

As life often imitates art, the suds-'n-studs emporium suddenly became a real mecca for assignations -- all part of the sexually-charged seventies that characterized Baghdad-by-the-Bay.

Over the years, the washing machines, and the dryers were turned down to an increasingly tepid temperature, as was the atmosphere of the culture. The Come Clean Center name was changed to a more benign, and robotic-sounding LaundroLand, and the place took on a new persona, that of an ordinary laundromat that happen to have parking.

"I don't know where I'm going to go now to do my laundry," said a somber Abigail. "The parking was the big thing."

Steve Brattesani observed that this might be a good opportunity for an enterprising business person who might want to pick up the slack, and fill the needs of the locals. But the sorts of needs that were satisfied all those decades ago at the Come Clean Center will be not
likely be part of the landscape. As the song goes, "Once upon a time never comes again." Or comes clean again.