In Seattle there's a laundromat/bar hybrid. Wash your clothes and get wasted simultaneously! I have no idea whether it's just one location or a chain -- perhaps a native can comment -- but I remember musing on the incandescent brilliance of the concept.

This bar is actually across the street, not part of the sme establishment, although I have encountered suds and...um, suds combos, myself.

Although one time I was at the aformentioned bar and when I told an older guy in coveralls that I was doing laundry, he said, incredulously, "Your old lady makes you do laundry?" I told him that the mrs. springs for beer money as a motivation, he nodded sagely in appreciation of my craftiness.

But I thought that the song was the more important part of the post since it speaks to something so deep within us, but I could be wrong.

Today I did laundry too. I had a conversation with an extremely agile old lady who liked pointing at things with her foot.

The barmaid at this joint is one of those women who you can tell used to be extremely hot, and even in her middle age wears low-cut clingy tops. That's kida hot in it's own way come to think of it. She also calls me 'bubbe,' when I order a drink which is nice.

killdevil: If you're thinking of the Sit & Spin, it's gone under.

jon: Thanks for posting that. Have you heard the version Warren Zevon did? It's on The Wind, the album he made while he was dying. At the end, he's hollering "let me in!" I still can't listen to that album all the way through without getting seriously bummed out.

do you really have to ask, bmarkey? ;>

All goofery aside, that still has to be the best rock and roll song about death ever written. for all the (desreved) folderol surrounding Dylan's more surrealistic escapades, he could write plainspoken songs like this one and 'Forver Young' as well as anyone on the planet, which shows he absorbed the real lesson from all thos folk songs he listened to.

Is the hound of heaven sniffing around jukeboxes these days?

Hre's another song whose import didn't hit me until I got a little older and saw and experienced a few things.

A person can work up a mean, mean thirst, after a hard day of nothing much at all...

She also calls me 'bubbe,' when I order a drink which is nice.

According to this page, "bubbe" is Yiddish for "grandmother." (!!)

I know (I am more or less marred to a Jewish woman you know), but it's also become a generic term of a affection like 'honey' or 'sweetheart', especially in Jewish-intensive areas like the East Coast.

Sorry, bubbe! I wasn't trying to school you!

it's ok, girlchik.

Great stuff, haven't heard this live version.

Dig it, jon. I salute thee, and the books of history walking around us in the form of old people.

thank you chew. That's exactly why I love drinking with old guys. I'd much rather hear their stories about Vietnam or the depression or whatver than some 20-yera-olds story about how no onw 'undertsnads' them.

That song can be found on one of the most underrated albums ever.

I wish I could float through life with this as my soundtrack.

jonmc, here is a different version of that song. Fairly irreverent, I guess, but it has always seemed to capture the spirit of the song in some way (well, to me anyway, but I don't expect too many to agree). It is certainly one of those songs that I always knew was great, but never really know why until I had lived enough and seen enough death to understand.

I hear you jon. There's a character here that walks around town in liederhosen and white knee highs. He's a curator for the history museum, and has a long white ponytail and beard. Smokes and talks to himself incessantly, and always has 3 drinks in front of him at whatever bar he plants at. I sat next to him once - he told me my teeth look like chiclets, and I laughed at his checkbook, which looked like calligraphy in the entry log. I told him, "I'd hate to be behind you at the grocery store!" we laughed. He sipped his scotch, then his beer, then his coffee, and I downed my guinnesses. Pretty weird to see him in Raleigh NC, he seems terribly out of place, but god this generic cookie cutter city needs people like him desperately.