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| - Once you can get over the fact that in the grand scheme of things you are PAYING for a service you are providing FOR YOURSELF, this car wash is not that bad.
Southwest is on the corner of Spring Mountain & Jones, lumped in a little auto complex, and can be easy to miss because there's a smog check tent right in front of it. Once you pull into one of the several stalls, there are two bill change machines that you can get quarters from, which is the preferred currency self-serve accepts for its different functions, all of which cost $1.25 each - tire & motor, soap, rinse, wax, etc. Watching the time tick as I went through the soap and the rinse gave me the same anxiety as I had in high school taking the SAT and listening to the proctor announce "5 minutes!"
I'm going to be honest. This was my first foray at a self-serve car wash so I wasn't sure what to expect. "Do you pay for the time used in the stall or the amount of soap and water consumed?" "Will there be supplies be available, and are they already there, or do you have to pay for them?" "I just paid for the soap service and I hear noises but I don't see anything!* WHY ISN'T THERE AN EMPLOYEE HERE TO ASSIST!?" I can see self-serve vets rolling their eyes, but eventually I got the hang of it. I was so clueless to how this whole thing worked, but I knew enough that my car was a disaster and that I'd want to take my time to get everything so I still brought my own magic eraser to detail the minor scuffs. Most of my fellow car washers were pretty much in, pay a few bucks, and out, but my car had gone so long without a wash that it took me a bit longer.
For those that never feel like the gas station car washes get it all, or live in a house where the HOA thinks a 2ft slab of concrete constitutes as a "driveway," this is as literal of a self service as it gets.
*There are spray nozzles on both sides of the stall. Obviously I was on the wrong side
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