The laundromat was the living room of the neighborhood. Twenty washing machines and ten dryers and a row of plastic chairs bolted to the floor and a television bolted to the wall and a change machine that ate your dollar and gave you three quarters and the missing quarter was the rent.

The laundromat smelled like bleach and fabric softener and the combination of those two smells was the smell of Saturday morning on the Lower East Side. The smell meant somebody was cleaning something. The smell meant the week was being washed out of the clothes and the clothes were going to start the next week fresh and the freshness lasted until Tuesday and by Wednesday the clothes smelled like the city again and the city smelled like the city.

You sat in the plastic chair and you watched your clothes spin. The spin was hypnotic. The clothes went around and around and the soapy water was visible through the round window and the round window was the only television on the Lower East Side that showed the same program every time. The program was your clothes going in circles. The clothes did not know they were being watched. The clothes did not care. The clothes went around because the machine went around and the machine went around because you put a dollar and seventy-five cents into a slot and the slot did not judge your clothes the way the dry cleaner judged your clothes. The slot took the money and the machine did the work and the work was the same for a millionaire's shirt and a street musician's jeans.

I played guitar in the laundromat on Avenue C because the laundromat had an audience that could not leave. The audience was captive. The audience had put their clothes in the machine and the machine took thirty-two minutes and in those thirty-two minutes the audience had no choice but to sit in the plastic chair and listen to whatever happened in the laundromat and what happened in the laundromat on Avenue C was me playing guitar. The laundromat was the best gig I ever had because the audience stayed for the entire set. Not because the set was good. Because the spin cycle was thirty-two minutes.