Levi-Strauss introduced binary opposition into literary criticism and social science—a dependency of opposites on each other for existence—up/down, fast/slow, bull/bear. At 101, he died recently no longer feeling a part of a world he once knew, much like the sentiment of many loan officers. A few years ago, three million homes were not going into foreclosure.
Coin laundry and the diner are icons of American culture. While the diner is a more hands-on business to run, a coin laundry is relatively easy money and traditionally down-turn-proof. Even in poor economic times, people still have dirty clothes. Home foreclosures separate people from their appliances, and/or people cannot afford to run or repair their own machines. A quarter at a time, coin laundries amount to about a $5 billion industry in this country.
The laundromat of today, however, is not the ideal business to come clean through this Recession. Urban emigration is creating blight on coin laundries, along with cooperation among friends and relatives to share appliances, as well as people simply wearing clothes longer between washings. As with businesses like Lehman Brothers, coin laundry has come under the spell of Levi-Strauss: the opposite of rich is poor, and the earnings are all washed up.
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