I would not be pleased to have my last holdout, the 40-cents-a-pound laundry, give way to another place for overpriced food, drink or shoes (that can't be repaired).
But foreigners and their products play at most a minor role in Happy Valley's main shopping streets, chockablock with by-the-pound laundries, dank little electrical shops, herbal stores that stock fuzzy antlers and other aphrodisiac aids, and the Hello Kitty shop, crammed floor-to-ceiling with gear emblazoned with the cloying Japanese feline.
"The Grid," a book by Phillip F. Schewe, says it takes about a pound of coal to produce one kilowatt hour, enough energy to run a large air-conditioner for an hour, wash 200 pounds of laundry or mill 300 pounds of grain (but probably not in a New York City apartment).
As I write I hear the laughter of girls on the roof who are taking in their laundry and hammers pounding downstairs — some men are renovating an old movie theater.
There is also the "implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose," which means that if you bought something that you were told would serve your needs — like a washing machine that is supposed to handle 15 pounds of laundry but, as you later find out, won't wash more than 10 pounds — you can request a refund or replacement, Mr. Giorgianni said.
Not to mention doing 17,000 pounds of laundry a day.
And before they know it, he had managed to sell them 20 pounds of laundry detergent".
Still, a couple of hundred hand towels are a small part of the 1,500 pounds of laundry the Giants do every day.
About 80 union workers wash the dirty sheets, towels and uniforms for most of New York City's hospitals, folding more than 10 million pounds of laundry a year.
The seven-quart machine, which is operated by cranking a handle, sits on the edge of a sink and washes up to five pounds of laundry in about two minutes.
