There are only three remaining coin laundromats on the North Shore, all of them are in North Vancouver and two of them are in the same 1700 block of Lonsdale Avenue.
“It’s a dying breed,” says Roger Wong, the owner of Rainbow Bright Coin Laundry at 1729 Lonsdale. Open seven days a week 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wong has owned the business with his wife, Carol, since 1999.
Rainbow Bright has some fun signage on the walls, a TV to pass the time and magazines for customers to read while their wash goes through the cycles.
Crystal Clean Laundromat only a few doors south at 1715 Lonsdale offers some specialty cleaning like sneakers and shoes on top of the regular wash and dry options.
Mountain Valley Laundromat at 1268A Lynn Valley Road has been under new ownership since last October and is getting a facelift with renovations as well as repairing all the washers and dryers.
Nowadays people go to laundromats for many different reasons.
“It’s more affordable than dry cleaning,” says Cathrine Chartier, who brought in a wool carpet after an incident with a friend’s dog.
Utilitarian by design, coin laundromats are throwbacks to another era. Essential components of many peoples’ lives, they still employ thousands of people worldwide and generate billions of dollars of revenue each year.
See photos below by Cindy Goodman.
