Loop 70 Coin Laundry, West Business Loop and Garth

Loop 70 Coin Laundry, West Business Loop and Garth

Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
2014

What is it about a laundromat at night that captivates and inspires so many photographers?  Brightly lit laundromats appear frequently in the photographs of nocturnal photographers, along with diners, gas stations, and anything adorned with neon.  When I first moved to Columbia laundromats were plentiful…we had a laundromat next to Shakespeare’s on Elm Street, there was a laundromat next to International Café on Hitt Street, Paris Road had a neighborhood laundromat just blocks from downtown, and Eastgate IGA on East Broadway was situated next door to Eastgate Laundry, so that while you filled your shopping cart in the narrow lanes of one Eastgate, your socks tumbled warmly in a dryer in the other.  This photograph was taken in October 2014, near the intersection of North Garth and the Business Loop.  Loop 70 Coin Laundry was located in the Loop 70 Plaza at an address that looks like North Garth but calls itself Business Loop.  This Plaza once featured an O’Reilly Auto Parts, a beauty supply store, Hong Kong Restaurant, a barber shop and a Dollar General store, all of which were destroyed in a fire in 2012.  Several businesses linger on in the former plaza, and until 2014 or 2015, this laundromat was one of those.