Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 3/15/05

After years and years (OK, I guess just years) of reading Apartment 3-G, I can now finally say that I’ve seen something in its panels recognizable as being a potential part of the New York I’ve visited. This combination laundromat-restaurant is exactly the kind of twee, high-concept wackiness I expect from those people up there. Down here in Baltimore, we just like leave the house and pay someone to cook for us, but apparently in New York, you need to have a theme to pack ’em in. Of course, in real life this joint would probably just be called “Laundromat” or something similarly minimalist for extra confusion — “Laughs & Laundry” strikes me as, you know, trying too hard. Kids today! With their laundry bars and their oxygen bars and their cereal bars and their flim-flam and their hoo-hah and their pants hanging down so you can see their underwear! It makes me sick.

The stab at modernity is sort of undermined by the young woman in the background of panel one, who appears to be on spring break from Vassar, circa 1962. Or is she a retro-hipster, fresh from Williamsburg? Only Frank Bolle and Lisa Trusiani know for sure!