February 24, 2007 / Carroll Gardens–Cobble Hill / Perspective / Brooklyn South

Happy ending at ‘Bleach House’

By Ariella Cohen

The Brooklyn Paper

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That faceless mugger known as “the free market” kiboshed another cozy Court Street storefront this week.

This time, it was a familiar Sunday afternoon destination known to all as “Bleach House,” which closed and is awaiting whatever the secretive, but predictable, market has to offer (another bank, anyone?).

“The owner of the building thinks he can get double the rent with a fancier-looking place,” said Kevin Powers, who owns the wash-and-dry institution, which is officially called Court Laundry.

And that, as they say, is that.

The once-upon-a-time social club on the corner of Third Place had evolved from a good spot to wash socks to an ideal location for a small bank branch, a kids clothing store, or maybe a boutique that sells roomy handbags and leggings to all the new yoga moms.

It’s rare to get worked up over the demise of a Laundromat, especially one with “not enough dryers for the weekend rush,” as Powers readily admitted this week.

Even Powers, a retired cabinet-maker, isn’t all that unhappy about throwing in the (clean) towel and spending more time in his Red Hook woodworking studio. Soon enough, he knows, his storefront will be occupied by someone else paying more money and his palace of wash will be faint memory baby-powder sweet with the scent of fabric softener. That is reality (and realty).

Yet there are those who feel a little emotional about the whole thing. There is Andrew Bloomenthal, who carts his cottony whites to the Bleach House weekly, always choosing Powers’s place over nearby shops for the perpetual stoop sale that occupied its front window.

“I never saw an actual transaction,” Bloomenthal said, looking up from his mountain of tube socks to gaze at a rack of forsaken leather jackets hanging like price-tagged curtains in front of the plate-glass storefront.

At the newly renovated Monteleone’s & Cammareri Bakery down the block, the demise of Bleach House was occasion for a little back-patting.

“They didn’t stay on top of the game,” bakery owner Lenny Cristino warned, motioning to his bigger-then-ever cake counter.

The blogger 423 Smith rued the loss of the favorite wash spot and incited widespread fear with word that McDonalds was eying the location, a rumor that the building’s owner Joey Rotondo dispelled this week, telling me over the phone that he didn’t want to see any kind of food establishment in the space.

“I just want to get the guy who is there now out,” Rotondo said.

His gain is our loss. The mirrored-glass “Bleach House Coin Laundry” sign was always a reminder not only of that growing mound of dirty clothes in your corner, but of everything cozy about Carroll Gardens.

Like the purple suede blazer on sale in the front window, the glossy display with its stylized letters, gingham-red background and nostalgic illustration of a little house with yellow siding is straight out a bygone era. A local art history professor even called it a “delightful treasure of the marketplace” and trilled about the loss of “the American vernacular.”

I prayed for someone to snatch the masterpiece before it ended up in the Dumpster around the corner, or in the window of some other town’s Urban Outfitters.

Then Rotondo, who grew up in the apartment above the laundry and remembers the sign going up in 1981, said the magic words: “You want it, it’s yours.”

It’s mine! My battle has been won — even if the war is lost. After all, I’m still lousy with laundry.

The Kitchen Sink

Pretty soon you won’t have to leave Cobble Hill to get to know Park Slope. Another Fifth Avenue establishment, Miriam, opened an outpost on Court Street this week, following Area Yoga, Bird, Park Slope Fitness and the Tea Lounge across the Gowanus. Miriam replaced the Hill Diner, which, according to Miriam manager Barry Friedberg was doing bang-up breakfast and lunch biz, but suffered from a lack of dinner traffic. “We’ll change that,” he told The Stoop. …

Wanna know what makes your baby cry? Find out from infant expert Megan Faure, who will share the “sensory secret” behind junior’s tears, poops, and giggles on March 5 at Families First clinic on Baltic Street. Call (718) 237-1862 for info. …

Red Hook bourbon queen “LeNell” Smothers is looking for a good booze-hound to help manage her eponymous Van Brunt Street “likker” emporium. Don’t bother applying if you can’t boast a “hefty amount of wine and booze knowledge,” as Smothers said an email that circulated so widely that it ended up on one of the city’s most-popular freelance writers list-servs (although given most writers’ booze habits, LeNell is probably seeking her next employee in the right place).

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper