Archive for January, 2010

Help Yourself Restaurant and Laundromat.

Someone Has to Do It

Last Saturday during the weekend of the second lowest ever recorded temperature in Key West (42), we had laundry to do.

Our little apartment has no washer and dryer, so we have to make a run to the laundromat every week or so. We used to go to the Hilltop Laundromat which is just a couple blocks away, but the rising ratio of busted to working washing machines and dryers forced us to try a new place, and by virtue of being the next closest laundromat to us, Help Yourself Foods was the place! Hey, food and laundry! What a combination! The only way that situation could any get better is if there were a place that had a bar attached to the Laundromat. Hmmm.. I think I may be onto something…

Anyways, saturday morning Christina and I sat shivering in the living room, bundled up in whatever we could find, each waiting for the other to give the signal that we were ready to go out into the 50 degree tundra to the open air building that housed the Laundromat next to Help Yourself Foods. After a bit of grumbling and a stiff shot of Jameson’s, we headed out.

Yeah, it was cold. Like all the other structures in Key West, this one was built to keep you cool, not warm. We stood near the running dryers trying to soak up any ambient heat we could. At least 90 percent of the washers and dryers were in working order.. always a good thing. A much better ratio than our old laundromat. The clientele, however different from the steno bums in the last place, still manage to excite amusement; it seems we had traded wharf rats for hippies!

Help Yourself Foods serves grazing foods (read grasses and nuts), organic veggie wraps, salads, and smoothies and the ubiquitous granola-cruncher staple Chai Latte. (Menu Here) And like any good hippy-organic-food-restaurant/laundromat should, they had a singing, guitar-playing love child on a stool out front, perhaps to help somnabulize the patrons into denial over the cold weather. You couldn’t see her.. she was bundled up in so many puffy jackets and scarves she could hardly hold her guitar, let alone a tune in that cold weather. I truly felt sorry for her, but then realized she was probably a vegan, and deserved it. Hehehe.

Ok, I’m not going to vegan-bash here. Some of my best friends are health-food nuts. I just haven’t broadened my horizons to spending that much time and money on eating food that inherently tastes bad. Hey, if it doesn’t have steak in it, I aint eatin’ it! If we weren’t meant to eat animals, they wouldn’t be made out of meat! But enough about that. I did have one of their smoothies, the ‘Happy monkey’ with bananas and peanut butter … it was damned tasty, and I can’t lie.. the menu has a lot of interesting stuff on it. I’m going to have to try some more of it next time.

I don’t know if they always have live entertainment, or if it’s just a weekend thing, or just a cold weather thing for that matter.. there wasn’t anyone singing the first time we went, but that was during the week. I think we’ll go back a few more times before trying another place. The washers and dryers work well, but quite honestly the people freak me out a little bit. I guess I’d rather hang with wharf-rats than health-food nuts.

All in all two thumbs up.. working laundry machines and good (for you) food… but I reserve the right to keep looking for the perfect laundry situation.. I know.. a pipe dream to be sure, but hey, that’s what got us to Key West in the first place!

Oh, and if you were wondering, that photo there of the sandals and the one above it are from our first trip there.. two weeks earlier when it was warm! The head in the dryer photo is me trying to re-cycle left over dryer heat last weekend.. see I’m green!

Graze on!
Mike

Oh, My Tropical Paradise.. Where Have You Gone?

When we sold and gave away most of our junk to move to Key West, I remember distinctly looking at a pile of long pants and wool socks, thinking to myself that I’d never need those again. We were moving to the tropics after all, and the average low temperature in Key West even in January is only 65 degrees. I was ready for the life of shorts and flip flops!

Of course, we were only moving from Orlando, but even Orlando freezes.. Key West has never seen frost; the lowest temperature ever recorded being 41 degrees, and that was way back in 1981. The only other time it had ever reached that low was back in 1886! I was safe from freezing. Or so I thought..

This last week down here we’ve seen the second lowest recorded temperature in Key West ever.. 42 degrees. Now I’m not one to complain, I mean it is KEY WEST after all, but like most of the old homes down here, ours was built to keep you cool in the summer.. scant provisions were made to keep you WARM. Few homes have central air, let alone central heat, and most homes have window AC units.. which typically have no heat cycle.

So over the weekend we broke down and hit up a few stores looking for a space heater.. of course, so did everyone else in Key West.. suffice it to say we came away empty handed. Now, I’d watched a lot of MacGyver back in the day, so I knew all I needed was a little duct tape, a lighter, and a small furry cat, and I could build a space heater, so I sat down with an irish coffee and put my mind to work. The more irish coffee I drank, the more I liked the cat idea, but Christina was against it, so I settled for the next best thing.. I turned on the oven and left the door open. Not as spectacular and cool as a flaming cat, but it did the trick.

Of course I wouldn’t recommend trying this at night while sleeping, but left on for 10 minute increments every half hour or so, it worked quite well in taking at least the coldest chill from the air. AND you can bake at the same time!

I look forward to some more warm weather, I’ve had enough of these ‘mainland’ temperatures!