Rex Launderette

Posted on by modernmoocher

318 Slade Lane Levenshulme Manchester M19 2BY

Following a brief interregnum we’re back in the soapy study world of the local launderette.

One of many Rex operations – including those which I visited in Hull and Hull.

I am of course nationally and internationally renowned as Rex Launderette – author of the multi-ward winning eight laundrettes.

Should you care to search this wishy-washy blog there are also countless other laundry related posts.

Anyway, I jumped the 197, alighting at the junction of Albert Road and Slade Lane.

I popped into my local Rex and chatted with owner Steve, who had operated the business for some years, in addition he and his dad had run the late lamented Kingsway branch.

I hung around a while chatting and snapping – here’s the snaps.

Tony’s Barbers – Manchester

Posted on by modernmoocher

913 Stockport Rd Levenshulme Manchester M19 3PG 

I passed by almost every day, cycling back and to, to work.

One day I stopped, popped in, asked to chat and snap – Tony obliged.

Cypriot George in the city centre had already give me salon time.

These photographs were taken in March 2104 – Tony’s still there, cutting hair.

Since 1971, presiding over his empire of mainly masculine ephemera, rival football clubs fight it out for space on the crowded walls. Motorcycles race around the dado rail, stood stock still, gathering another dusting of dust. A slow accretion of memories and memorabilia, tracing a lengthy short back and sides life, of short back and sides, as stylists’ style snaps come in and out of style and back again.

Let’s take a look.

Thanks again Tony a privilege to spend some time in your world.

Suds Laundrette – Levenshulme

Posted on by modernmoocher

We have entered a new age – the age of the A6 based computer generated A4 Blu-Tack attached laminated print out.

An informal typography for the age of informality – long gone the etched plastic, hand rendered fascia days of yore.

This is now one of many launderama dramas – my sole intent to record the state of the nation’s dirty washing.

There is even to be a book published this March.

So one more for the road – load up the Loadstar with washers and slugs, let’s all get dry, one way or another.

The Wash Tub Levenshulme – Manchester

Posted on by modernmoocher

When is a washtub not a washtub – self evidently when it doesn’t wash.

This is the land of the decommissioned washer – cash box removed, unrepurposed, demure and decorative yet sadly redundant.

This is a dry only facility its surfaces inert, frozen in time, its sign declaiming pointless imperatives to nobody in particular.

Worn lino, prosaic mosaic, strip lighting, wood-grained Formica, black wooden benches backed up against the warmth of the warm drier – time becomes elastic, limitless.

Enter at your own peril, Persil in hand prepare to be disappointed.