Member-only story
Writer, Are You Spying on People?
The art of people watching will help you build characters.
I always kind of loved going to the laundromat in Reno.
Not because I actually liked packing all of my crap into a suitcase, converting most of my cash-in-hand to quarters, and dragging it all around town, God no. But because the most interesting people would always show up, and never the same ones. I could go on a circuit of the different laundromats in the Reno/Sparks area, and depending on where I was in town, I could find the most interesting people.
Toward the south end of town, I got a lot of angry yuppie moms chattering away on their cell phones. Near downtown, around where all of the casinos were, there was a nice mix of tourists and performers. In the North, there were lots of freaked-out, mildly bored or slightly stoned college students. In Sparks, there was a bit more grunge. There, I got chased out of a laundromat with wet clothes by an owner for starting my wash too close to close; I’m about 90% sure that she was tweaked out of her mind.
(I did not go back to Sparks after that.)
There were a whole lot of characters in town. And character, is key.
Now that I’m in small-town Pennsylvania, there’s a little bit less on offer at the laundromat, but no…
