Mow's at Laundry for Hair / Portable Relief for River Rafting Trips

Back Buzz - 16 April 2023

One day in a distant past life (meaning before the Pandemic), I spotted the sign for this place next door to Tamper Seller's Wheel and was intrigued. Was it a laundrette offering haircuts and espresso? Or was it a hair salon offering laundry service and espresso? Or was it simply an espresso cafe where one could try their hand at having their hair washed in a front-load and then tumble-dried while skillfully balancing a cappuccino in one hand?

Back when I lived in Seattle, something like that would have been possible, because not only could you get a cappuccino at some hair salons, but the sadly defunct Sit & Spin was an actual laundromat combined with a cafe that sold coffee and drinks. Because it also featured live music in the evening, twice I remember going there to see Laundry, who were one of my favourite Seattle bands, and also the wonderfully eclectic Moris Tepper, who used to play with Captain Beefheart. Sadly I never experienced actually doing a load of laundry while having a pint and watching a live band; but in this life one simply can't fit in every single fleeting desire. (In London years ago I did see a blues band in a pub while my laundry was involved in a spin-dry directly next door, but that's just not the same.)

Anyway, one afternoon at work I talked my friend John into walking down here for a super quick coffee, just to check it out. From our fleeting visit I remember that the coffee was pretty good, but then the Great Big Pandemic spread across the world, and Life as we know it shut down, including all the cafes.

Happily Mow's survived through the dystopic years, so just recently I thought I'd stop in again one morning before work, for not only a coffee but also a sandwich. My cortado was served in a glass with a lovely blooming plant of a rosette on top, and my Grilled Cheese with cheddar, gouda, spring onion, cayenne, and black pepper on fresh baked white sourdough bread, with a little pea shoot salad, was very nicely nicely done. I really wasn't expecting the coffee to taste so nice, smooth, and dreamy. In fact, this is the best tasting coffee I've had since I finished off the Kona coffee that was sent as a birthday gift in January from Hawaii. And halfway down my cortado, that plant rosette was still flourishing. It reminded me of the rainbow at the end of the road when I left for work that morning.

Like a micropub the cafe is very small, with three booth tables on one wall and three other booth seats. The tables are all supplied with stacks of books featuring subjects like coffee, the history and unique sites of Sheffield, and how to improve your Italian while enjoying your coffee. On my table there was also a copy of Exposed Magazine as well as a Marxist newspaper, all watched over by a large, healthy potted plant, which perhaps inspired the rosette's survival strength. As I sat and enjoyed my lunch and coffee, I noticed the view out the side window of the patio at Tamper Seller's Wheel, where I once had lunch with a friend, and where my quiet but rapturous reaction when I ate my gorgeous Eggs Royale prompted my dining companion to have a panic attack.

In the back of the cafe, there is a door that leads into what I was first hoping might be a laundrette where one can get their hair cut while watching the Spin Cycle. But alas, it's simply a hair salon.

Before I left, I asked the barista about the coffee. He smiled and said it's the cafe's own special El Salvador Honduran blend. So I guess I won't be able to buy any beans. I'll just have to come back to Mow's for my gorgeous coffee fix.

Speaking of unique experiences like drying one's hair in a clothes dryer reminds me of an email conversation from a couple of years ago with my Bay Area friend when he and his girlfriend went on a river rafting trip through the Grand Canyon:

Perhaps the most difficult part about our trip, especially for women, was going to the bathroom. For pee, we were advised that "dilution is the solution to pollution" and told to pee right into the stream. In addition to stops for lunch and a few mid-day walks we took a couple pee breaks morning and afternoon. One or more of the guides would quickly row to an open spot on the shore, then, among the four passengers, men and women would head in opposite directions to pee in plain sight (not worrying much if one of our other boats was heading by). I found it a liberating experience to let fly into the river, standing on a rock or right on the sand or pebbles, and watch--even if the water seemed still at the edge--as a bit of foam spread out, circled in an eddy, then gradually moved out toward the current. I could almost hear the Byrds singing "Ballad of Easy Rider"; I felt at one with the Universe.

In the evening one of the first things the staff would do was to mark, with reflectors, a path through the bushes to a clearing with a view (out of sight from where we ate & pitched tents) and install the yellow pee bucket and metallic container--the "groover"--for solid waste (with sealable container, because all the waste from the trip had to be transported out). Thanks to a powder that we sprinkled after use, there was not much odor. But even with a beautiful view it felt a little weird to poop that way.

For overnight use they also provided one-gallon pee buckets for each of us. I used these on some occasions, like the night when our tent was pitched on a solid sandstone ledge, when peeing off the edge risked falling into the current just above a rapid; or when our tent-sized patch of sand was surrounded by a minefield of river rocks. But the night time temperatures were mild and the fine sand pleasant to walk on barefoot, so I usually preferred to walk down and pee into the river, with the river and the canyon to myself in the bright light of a moon that grew full, then waned for the duration of our trip.

The waste materials occupied one of two rafts that were dedicated to cargo rather than paying guests. Aboard that raft, staff members Lee and Jason alternated at the oars. They almost seemed proud of being pilots of the poop boat. I got a photo of them among piles (appropriately) of basalt in the part of the canyon we encountered near the end where lava flowed some half million years ago. I was actually wondering about this aspect of your trip. Did you have any privacy for Number 2, or was that as open as Number 1? I would fear having to piss into the river in front of other people, simply because of my dysfunctional dyspepsia and IBS, as whenever I squat to pee (as a female does), I can never be absolutely certain that, er, the outcome will be that simple.

Porting the poop out on special Pooprafts makes me think of the International Space Station and what they have to do with their poop. I'm hoping, in the interest of both pollution and the danger of contributing to all the space junk in orbit around Mr Earth, that they are required to process and collect all the solid waste to ship back home on a shuttle. I'm trying to remember that particular detail from our space Shuttle Endeavour visit a few years ago. The sit-down groover did offer privacy. There was a path, marked by reflectors, away from the camping area and through bushes to the secluded spot. By tradition, the user finds a key at the first reflector which, in our case, was a tupperware container with a couple rolls of toilet paper. If the key isn't there, you wait. When you're done, you return the key and use the hand washing station, with a foot pump that pumps river water from the bottom bucket to a spigot above the top bucket which serves as a basin.

I sympathize with your concern about doing both at the same time. We were warned repeatedly not to release liquid into the poop bucket. There was a separate pee bucket at the toilet, if you needed it, but it's hard for a lot of us to do one at a time.

At the Endeavor exhibit I remember seeing a model of the waste collection apparatus for male and female astronauts, but I don't remember reading what they do with the waste. Apparently they burn it up on re-entry. That's pretty sanitary.

That reminds me that William Shatner is scheduled to go into space on Jeff Bezos next launch. I wonder if they have toilet facilities on the blue origin craft. That would give Captain Kirk a chance " to boldly go where no man has gone before."