Dry Cleaning

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

The San Gabriel Valley entrepreneurs who brought Panda Express Chinese food to malls and airports throughout the country are now betting that Americans will want the same standardization in something a little less tasty — dry cleaning. Co-Chief Executives Andrew and Peggy Cherng, who built a fast-food empire of quick-serve Asian cooking, now want to bring the same chain-venue principle to clothes. The Cherngs' new Rosemead-based company, Panda Dry Cleaning, plans to open as many as 200 standardized shops nationwide in the next five years in conjunction with consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble.

The San Gabriel Valley entrepreneurs who brought Panda Express Chinese food to malls and airports throughout the country are now betting that Americans will want the same standardization in something a little less tasty — dry cleaning. Co-Chief Executives Andrew and Peggy Cherng, who built a fast-food empire of quick-serve Asian cooking, now want to bring the same chain-venue principle to clothes. The Cherngs' new Rosemead-based company, Panda Dry Cleaning, plans to open as many as 200 standardized shops nationwide in the next five years in conjunction with consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble.

The gig: Ron Boyd, 53, is chief of the Los Angeles Port Police, the 200-member force assigned to the nation's busiest seaport. That includes 43 miles of waterfront, about 7,300 acres of water channels, terminals, docks and rail yards, cargo ships, cruise ships and tankers, as well as a few thousand recreational boaters. In addition to that high-profile job, Boyd is president of the International Assn. of Airport and Seaport Police. Unintended results: Boyd was studying to be a radio or television broadcaster at Los Angeles City College when he took a job as a security guard at Universal Studios.

A fire that spread through a dry cleaning business in San Fernando on Monday night caused $255,000 in damage, the Los Angeles Fire Department said today. The fire was reported at 9:50 p.m. Monday at Day and Night Cleaners in the 1200 block of Mott Street, officials said. Los Angeles firefighters, who provide fire service to the city of San Fernando, put out the fire in 20 minutes. Cause of the blaze in the one-story building is still under investigation.

As a third-generation dry cleaner in Los Angeles for more than 17 years, I take strong offense (at) Rose-Marie Turk's article "A Clean Conscience" (March 1). As a member of the Greater Los Angeles Dry Cleaners Assn., where we discussed this article at length at a recent meeting, I speak for hundreds of dry cleaners in the Los Angeles area. Although once justified to an extent, people's fears (about) the effects of "perchloroethylene touching their skin, polluting the air and contaminating ground water" are now based on myths, misunderstandings and misconceptions regarding the dry-cleaning process.

The thickets of human desire are staples of the movie experience, but "Dry Cleaning," an exceptional new French film, explores them with unusual insight, empathy and daring. A dark and troubling film that investigates what we accept, what we encourage, and what we finally can't tolerate in our emotional and sexual relationships, "Dry Cleaning" mesmerizes with its ability to be both explicit and ambiguous, candid and restrained.

It's a de-pressing situation: Women in Southern California are finding they pay more than men do for dry cleaning, a per-item gap that can amount to as much as $1.25. Although many dry cleaners slowly are changing the practice, others still cling to the varied charges, saying it is an issue that affects their purses. They claim it takes more time and labor to clean women's versus men's clothes.

The Board of Dry Cleaning and Fabric Care, an obscure state agency threatened with extinction, on Monday fired controversial Executive Director Michael Siegel and elevated Judith Husted, the agency's second in command, to handle his duties for the next three months. The board has been under fire for more than a year by Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra), who has authored a bill to abolish the $900,000-a-year agency, which regulates about 6,500 dry cleaning facilities.

The seven shirts all looked alike, so even when told two of them were women's, the dry cleaning shop owner simply wrote down seven at $1.10 each and prepared the bundle to go to the off-premises laundry he uses. When the shirts came back, the bill had been changed to show five shirts at $1.10 and two blouses at $2.50. That, despite the fact the shirts were all hung in plastic together, their gender still almost indistinguishable.

Milt Wagenheim Longtime dry-cleaning businessman Milt Wagenheim, 91, who for 32 years operated Civic Cleaners in downtown Los Angeles and was nicknamed the Mayor of 2nd Street, died Tuesday at a convalescent home in Long Beach, his family said. He had been in failing health for some time. Wagenheim's shop on 2nd Street between Broadway and Hill Street was frequented by lawyers, judges, journalists, police officers and other downtown workers who always heard a joke from the 5-foot-3 proprietor when they picked up their clean laundry.

One night in April 2007, as Mike Partain hugged his wife before going to bed, she felt a small lump above his right nipple. A mammogram -- a "man-o-gram," he called it -- led to a diagnosis of male breast cancer. Six days later, the 41-year-old insurance adjuster had a mastectomy. Partain had no idea men could get breast cancer. But he thinks he knows what caused his: contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he was born. Over the last two years, Partain has compiled a list of 19 others diagnosed with male breast cancer who once lived on the base.

Roy L. Pearson learned Monday that his pants are not worth $54 million. In fact, the lawsuit he filed when a pair of trousers went AWOL at a local dry cleaner set him back $1,000 in court costs -- and potentially a much larger sum in attorneys' fees for the folks he sued. More broadly, Pearson's pant suit came to epitomize, for many, serious flaws in the legal system.

Re "Delgadillo used his staff for baby-sitting, errands," June 21 If the city of Los Angeles is capable of specifying who should drive the publicly purchased automobiles used by its senior elected and appointed officials, why can't it also mandate the kind of vehicles these employees drive? City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and all others in his vaunted category should be weaned from the gas-guzzling glamour tanks they maintain at our expense. This would, in turn, eliminate family member abuse of car privileges, because I'm sure Michelle Delgadillo and others would be less than eager to drive a gray Toyota Prius with a city logo on its doors.

California will become the first state to phase out the use of perchloroethylene, or perc, a chemical used by commercial dry cleaners that has been linked in studies to bladder, esophageal and other cancers.

California is poised to become the first state to phase out the main chemical used by dry cleaners, following a unanimous vote by the state's Air Resources Board on Thursday to develop a plan to eliminate perchloroethylene -- or "perc." Citing health risks to workers, nearby residents and businesses, the board took the action despite industry protests and a contrary recommendation by its own staff. The South Coast Air Quality Management District enacted the first ban anywhere in the U.S.

Dry-cleaning is one of the great misnomers of modern life. It isn't a dry process: Liquid solvents such as perchloroethylene and petroleum are used as substitutes for water. Nor is it clean, as far as the environment is concerned: The Environmental Protection Agency identifies "perc" as a cancer-causing agent, and the petroleum used to scrub threads releases smog-producing compounds and is flammable at high temperatures.

Practical View recently found that the same plain wool winter coat cleaned at two Westside dry cleaners cost $8 at one and $16 at the other. Aren't there any guidelines for pricing and why don't most dry cleaners post prices? Neither the state of California nor the city of Los Angeles require dry cleaners to post prices. Larry Maizlish, owner of Orchid Cleaners, Long Beach: "The problem with listing prices is that prices are based on labor.

At Hollyway Cleaners in West Hollywood, "the doctor" is always in to assist in removing heinous stains. The medics are members of the Amersi family, owners since 1983, who not only receive your dirty laundry but do a lot of listening as well. We dropped by and took a load off. * Kevin Bolyard West Hollywood Graphic designer What are you having cleaned? Curtains for my living room. They've been in storage for two years. Why were they in storage? My relationship broke up.

Light, slight and more touching than uproarious, Elizabeth Logun's "Butter" is a low-impact British farce about coupling and decoupling that goes down as smoothly as, well, butter, in director Dave P. Moore's new production.