Life, laundry and a much-loved Speed Queen: this is where the world comes clean

Laundromats are everywhere in cinema. They’re busy places, packed with powerful spinning machines, overflowing with potential for drama and metaphor. My local laundromat on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, is even named after a famous movie, My Beautiful Laundrette. I’ve spent a lot of time in that place. During winter I’m there once a week, drying my family’s washing.

I’ve had some good times at My Beautiful Laundrette – reading books and playing cards with my kid. I’ve had bad times, too. I’ve been hit in the head with dryer doors by careless amateurs. I’ve seen some nasty drunken fights out front. I have shrunk my favourite jumper.

For the most part, though, it’s a calm place and I appreciate the charming interior touches. There are a couple of vintage photographs of Fitzroy on the walls. There’s a decommissioned washing machine stationed in the front corner with a silver plaque that reads “R.I.P Speed Queen 1979-2018”.

Unbelievably, I had never seen the movie until a week ago. The Stephen Fears and Hanif Kureishi production, starring Gordon Warnecke and Daniel Day-Lewis, came out in 1985. It’s about a young British-Pakistani man who takes over his uncle’s rundown laundrette, with the help of his former schoolmate, now lover, Johnny. Set in Thatcher-era South London, the story celebrates the unlikely alliances that form under immense social and financial pressure. Johnny is a white, working-class squatter and former skinhead. Meanwhile, Omar’s extended family prospers amid Thatcher’s brutal free-market ethos, but they face racism and violence.

The corner window of My Beautiful Laundrette on Brunswick Street, opposite the Atherton Gardens housing estate, is an interesting place to contemplate brutal market economics. Atherton Gardens is another local haunt for my family. My son plays basketball and soccer there all the time with his own schoolmates.

Four high-rise public-housing towers at Atherton Gardens are among the 44 buildings slated for demolition due to significant disrepair, as part of Homes Victoria’s Big Housing Build Scheme. Experts believe it would be cheaper to fix the existing buildings than build new ones, but many of them – including those in Fitzroy – are in prime inner-city locations. The replacement buildings will be a mix of private rental and social housing. A United Nations report has criticised the project, and the forced resident relocations on human-rights grounds.

Demolitions have already begun on some of the buildings, but there has been pushback. Many residents – including a vocal group of my neighbours at Atherton Gardens – don’t want to move. There’s a class action from public housing tenants in North Melbourne and Flemington awaiting a decision from the High Court. These residents don’t want to be separated from their neighbours or from the local schools, doctors, businesses and services they’ve built long-lasting relationships with.

Enduring neighbourhood relationships are a theme in My Beautiful Laundrette. The film ends on a cheerful note, with Omar and Johnny playfully splashing each other at the sink in the backroom of their thriving business. It’s a scene of cautious optimism – two young people forging a wonky forward path using their energy and ingenuity. Perhaps they’re washing away the stains of ugly ideology too.

But, as the movie shows, it took them years to get there. They needed to make mistakes, face the truth and rediscover their delight in each other. This couldn’t have happened without their shared history. Their gritty South London neighbourhood is complicated. It’s a place of violence, exploitation and ruthless competition, but it’s also a place of romance and surprising collaborations.

At the film’s namesake laundrette on Brunswick Street, I’ve forged some unlikely alliances over time myself. There was a four-year-old girl I saw there with her dad every Sunday for months. One day, next to the retired Speed Queen, she offered me half of a wet Dorito. It was both revolting and sweet, like Daniel Day-Lewis’ two-toned Laundrette hairstyle.

I have tried other laundromats and they’re just not for me. I don’t like the bougie ones with baristas and pastry offerings. And I don’t like unfamiliar or unreliable machines. (For me, it’s the Dexter Stack Dryer Express or nothing.) It is common, among regulars, to let others know if you still have paid minutes left in your machine when you leave. I’d lose those benefits if I took my washing elsewhere.

My Beautiful Laundrette has been operating on Brunswick Street for almost 50 years. Like Atherton Gardens – whose concrete modernist towers are a defining feature of the Fitzroy skyline – it’s a local landmark, full of neighbours, history, bad memories, good memories. Lucky for me, if I ever move to another laundromat, it’ll be by choice.

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