A SIDEWAYS GLANCE : TELL THE COMPETITORS THERE'S NO CRYING IN THE CAR WASH BUSINESS.Byline: Tom Hoffarth If there's one thing Lenny Dykstra Lenny Dykstra's Car Wash and Auto Repair - as opposed to an auto wash and car repair - busted open over the weekend in Simi Valley Simi Valley (sē`mē, sĭm`ē), city (1990 pop. 100,217), Ventura co., SW Calif. in an oil, fruit, and farm region; laid out 1887, inc. 1969. with an autograph-studded celebration. It's one of several squeegee shrines around Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, that the former New York Mets
The Philadelphia Phillies are a professional baseball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. All-Star center fielder has erected with his baseball fortunes and chewing tobacco chewing tobacco, n See smokeless tobacco. chewing tobacco Smokeless tobacco, see there endorsement cash. Around the corner from Lenny's place on Los Angeles Street Los Angeles Street is a historic avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Traffic on the street travels northbound only, from the I-10 Freeway in the south of downtown, through the Fashion District, and on through Little Tokyo, where it ends after passing between LAPD , the workers at The First Street Car Wash tried to keep busy by buffing away the new competitors. But here's where Dykstra has an edge. First Street can only do about 50 cars an hour - maybe 60 tops, confided one Dykstra employee. ``Because of the size of our place, we can do 80 an hour,'' he said. ``Easy.'' How does the wishing-to-remain anonymous man with the new Lenny Dykstra Car Wash polo shirt (selling for $15.95 in the gift shop, next to the vanillaroma air fresheners) know all this? He was one of the guys lured over from First Street to work for Mr. Nails. So was his boss. ``They're not real happy with us over there,'' he said with a smile. First Street hasn't given up its home turf so fast. It advertises a $6.95 regular wash special - on Tuesday and Wednesday. Lenny's quick-wash (known as a ``single'') runs $7.95. For a buck more, a ``double'' gets you sealer sealer, n a substance used to fill the space around silver or gutta-percha points in a pulp canal. Most contain some combination of zinc, barium, and bismuth salts and eugenol, Canadian balsam, and eucalyptol. wax, air freshener (we'll take regal pine, thanks) and polish conditioner. Stretch it to a ``triple'' for $11.95 and there's a triple-shine wax, under-carriage wash and tire dressing. Then there's the ``home run'' wash for $16.95. Lenny will throw in (with whatever arm he has left) all of the above, plus exterior dressing, clear-coat wax and wheel service, plus a free individual pizza or gourmet coffee from his snack stand over in the dry-off area. A complete car detail, by the way, starts at $119.95, so that's just a ballpark figure. Meanwhile, with any auto repair, Lenny gives a free wash and wax. First Street, next to the Just Tires store, doesn't even do auto repair. But that's just good, sound, fundamental business, right? Or, as the Dykstra motto reads: ``We're In A League of Our Own.'' |
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