Sudsin' Duds Hanging out at the coin-op STORY AND PHOTOS BY JULIA CARR Expressionless faces shift back and forth like robots, hardly taking notice of me. I'm sitting in a chamber — machines whir, coins echo from metal boxes, florescent lights glare off the cold tile floor. Not one person relates to the other, yet each performs a task shared by all of humanity. Bill Moyers once said, "Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous." At Emerald Laundromat, 165 E. 17th Ave., returning customers agree on three marvelous things: The place stays clean, the location is good and the owners are friendly. Owners Peyton Lieuallen, a retired school superintendent, and his wife, Gwen Griffith, an estate-planning attorney, bought the 'mat in August 2004. Before then, ownership changed hands several times over about 13 years and some people recite sour memories of earlier years. Betsy Payne of Eugene has washed her family's laundry for seven years at Emerald. Before the recent owners, she said it was typical for people to hang out, drink beer, smoke and watch loud television. These days, Lieuallen arrives every day to oust stragglers and keep the place clean and tidy. Laundromats are one of the few public places where people gather out of necessity. From UO law students to the homeless community, the laundromat knows no discrimination. At Emerald, the free WiFi hookups allow college students a place to focus on studies. Televisions provide entertainment for sports fans who won't miss a game. And open bathrooms provide customers and street folks a place to pee. One seemingly homeless man clattered through the door weighted down with several large packs, one a plastic yard bag full of cans. He set everything down and hit the john. Upon leaving, I stopped the man and asked why he used this 'mat. Words fell from his mouth like change from a slot machine, quick and deliberate yet bewildered and undecipherable. "What did you say to him?" asked Steven, a middle-aged, balding man who sat nearby reviewing investment papers and claimed to be a "semi-retired financial analyst." Steven works part time delivering "nuclear medicine" to various parts of the state. The medicine, he explained, is injected in patients as a tracking device to monitor things in the blood flow. Steven said he comes to Emerald Laundromat every week, even though he's got a washer and dryer at home with his wife and 16-year-old daughter. "Why do you use the mat if you have a washer at home?" I asked. "That's a very good question," he said and repeated while trailing into distant thought. "A very good question. I guess because everyone else uses it at home. It's a dark basement and the machines are stuck in the corner. I have to go downstairs. I'd just prefer coming in here." By far the brightest star on the streets at night, Emerald Laundromat's fluorescent lights blast out large plate glass windows showcasing laundry dwellers across 17th Avenue behind Safeway. People come for the convenience factor and often hop over to Safeway for groceries. One Tuesday evening, two college students argued over the washers. "Do I put detergent in 1, 2 or 3?" asked Pavel Mitaru, a sophomore in human physiology at UO. "Why don't you read the directions?" said his friend Julie Mastasiuk. "Are you kidding me?" he mocked. "Do I want hot, warm or cold?" "Just do warm," she replied. Mitaru, a newbie at Emerald Laundromat, arrived with three friends and all their dirty laundry in a 1989 Chevy Mark III conversion van. Mastasiuk said even though her apartments provide laundry facilities, "they're in the middle of nowhere. I have to go down all these stairs where it's dark. I don't like it down there." There's no telling whom you'll meet at the mat. A nationally acclaimed illustrator (who declined to give her name) and her husband, known as "Sunset Lou," have laundered at Emerald for more than seven years. The couple once performed in a jug band at the Seattle Folk Festival, she on washboard and he on a National steel guitar. Now, with readily available stock illustrations cutting off her income, she considers Eugene a "bedroom town" and sells most of her artwork on the Internet and at California galleries. She used to publish in Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, Esquire, Forbes, The New York Times and "all the big ones." But since deadlines make illustrators crazy and the Internet provides a backlog of stock images, galleries are experiencing a rebirth. "Don't you know about the art movement?" she asked while folding her skivvies. In such common places it's best to mind your own business. Which is why Andrea Bradshaw only laughs and whispers under an orchestra of spin cycles about a man drinking beer at the other end of the 'mat. "I see him in here all the time drinking beer," she said. "It entertains me." A two-year Emerald devotee, Bradshaw avoids the competing laundry up the street after a bad experience with "pretentious frat boys." Upon folding her last Hello Kitty towel, she hooked a satisfied grin to a pair of red and black stained pigtails, whipped out a pack of Parliaments and said, "I'm gonna go light this shit on fire." In her wake, a couple cranked up the television to hear "Say Anything" on one of the two sets. In an environment of mixed personalities, conflicts arise from the dueling TVs. When exercising a mundane task, televisions take the brunt of human boredom and drive customers crazy. Sunset Lou's wife complained of TV turmoil. "The TV is a nuisance," she said. "Sometimes a kid will come in and play cartoons real loud." "I hate laundromats," said Linda Williams, a commuter from rural Lorane. "I hate those two TVs."   Clockwise from top left are Peyton Lieuallan, Christie Hill and a snoozing out of town visitor, Lieuallan and Gwen Griffith, and Andrea Bradshaw.   Looking for Mates In 1589, William Lee invented the first knitting machine undercutting hand knitters six to one. This foreshadowed centuries of disembodied labor, devaluing textiles and leaving socks vulnerable to human carelessness. Today, these distant relatives to stockings crowd dresser drawers, clog wastewater disposals and are left lying around aimlessly without purpose. Co-owner of Emerald Laundromat and attorney Gwen Griffith, strategized a "Single Sock Loveline" to harness the abandonment. "I'd been reading the Weekly, reading the personals which are so fun and I thought, 'you know, these socks are looking for mates, just like in the personals,'" said Griffith. Socks "stick to the tops of washers like peanut butter to the roof of a mouth," said her husband, Peyton Lieuallen. Each week, Lieuallen finds an average of five socks per day lost without their partners.
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