Laundromat on Paris

The laundromat.   Have you noticed that Columbia doesn't seem to have as many of these as it used to?  The laundromat, for photographers, is as much a symbol and a visual magnet as it is a cliche.  I photographed this laundromat on Paris Avenue back in about 1999 or 2000, before it closed.  I never printed the image, never even scanned it, until last week.  I think I resisted ever looking closely at it because so many night photographers like to photograph laundromats, especially the all-night laundromats.  Why?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps because they are open all night, with lights on, doors open, generally empty and beckoning in a somnambulistic, Murakami-esque, kind of way.  Seems like there used to be one next door to Shakespeare's Pizza (the Lost Sock?), another next to the ex-location of the International Cafe on Hitt Street, one on Rogers Street across from Wilson's Meat, the Eastgate Laundry next to Eastgate IGA, and then this one on Paris.  Now the closest laundromat to downtown Columbia is out on Conley Road.  I know all of this because for a month or two I was without a washer, and had to make the trek out to east Columbia just to wash my clothes.  So why did they all disappear?  And will there ever be another one with as much vintage character as this one had?  Probably not.  If this laundromat were still here, I'm pretty sure I'd stop in, on a warm, summer night like tonight, just to briefly inhabit the atmosphere.