> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # ‘Singing Mimi’ rocks out at laundromat - URL: https://www.smdp.com/singing-mimi-rocks-out-at-laundromat/ - Published: 2005-02-07T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T06:04:11.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: local, Montana, #archive-import, Homeless *COMMUNITY PROFILES* *By KIM CALVERT Special to the Daily Press* MONTANA AVE. — Chances are if you see Mimi English tending to clothes at Fox Laundry, you’ll see more than the average fluff and fold. English, 79, spends seven days a week at the laundromat, dancing and singing to her favorite Celine Dion tunes while giving motherly advice to customers waiting for the rinse cycle to finish. The Los Angeles native has been working at the laundry, 924 Montana Ave., and living in Santa Monica for the past decade. Her day starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m. She said she hardly ever gets tired. “My singing and dancing is what gives me my energy,” English said as she swayed to the music playing on her boom box. “If someone wanted me to, I’d sing and dance all night.” Her favorite artist is Celine Dion and English knows all of her hits. “I just put on the CD and sing along,” she said. English said that one of her customers gifted her with a T-shirt from Dion’s Las Vegas performance. English said when she went to the hospital with a swollen knee, a woman lying on a gurney looked up and said, “Look, it’s Mimi,” when she saw the Fox Laundry diva. With almost eight decades of life experience, English has seen a lot of changes in Los Angeles over the years. She stopped dancing, singing and folding laundry long enough to sit down with the Santa Monica Daily Press last week to talk about what it was like back then, and what life is like now that she’s created her own cult following at Montana Avenue’s Fox Laundry. You were born in 1925\. What was it like growing up in Los Angeles back those days? “People think that LA was nothing but dirt roads back then but it wasn’t like that at all. We lived in East LA and were about three miles from downtown. All we had to do was take the bus to get to Bullock’s, Robinson’s, May Company — they were all downtown then — there weren’t any malls. But we would go to see movies at the theater in our neighborhood. My parents started taking us just as soon as we were old enough to be able to understand what was going on. It was probably one of the things that developed my interest in music. It was back in the days of those great musicals with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Our family had five kids. Two sisters, who were something like 10 years older than me, were from my mother’s previous marriage, and then there was me, a younger sister and a baby brother from my mom’s second marriage to my dad. My baby brother died when he was 5 from meningitis — a complication of measles. In those days there wasn’t a cure for it. We didn’t have antibiotics back then. It’s a terrible sickness. You run a high fever and the brain just burns up. He passed away over night. I was 10 at the time. It was really hard on us. The neighborhood at the time was mostly white working class families. Everything in the neighborhood changed when they put in the freeway. We lived about a block away, but my grandmother lost her house and so did a lot of other families. That’s when the neighborhoods in Los Angeles really started to change — when they put in the freeways. That was something no one had seen before. “ What was it like to be in Los Angeles during World War II? “We were all scared about what happened at Pearl Harbor. After the attack I remember they picked up people — the Japanese. We had two Japanese families living in big houses in our neighborhood. One of them was picked up by the government right after the attack because they had a two-way radio in their house. They just came and took them away. We knew them. We went to Roosevelt High School with them. It was shocking. They were here one day and gone the next. I think there really was a serious threat from some of the Japanese people that were living here. Some of them were loyal to Japan — not this country. I also remember the blackouts. We thought it was fun. It was pitch black. You know how kids are — you don’t really believe things like that are really dangerous. I remember walking around in the dark. You couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face it was so dark. But we just carried on. At one point they thought there were Japanese war planes flying over the Long Beach area. We could hear firing — gunfire.” What about romance? Have you ever been married? “I met my husband after the war. He came from back East and was a German- American that fought in the war in Europe. I met him at my church. I was living with an aunt and going to a Lutheran church. He directed the choir that I sang in. I was 22 when we got married. We moved in with his mother for three years while he went to school. Like a lot of women at that time, I became a housewife. He was a junior high school teacher. He taught in the Palms area. Our life was pretty much eat, work and sleep. We liked going to the theater. When the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion opened we used to go there a lot. We would get season tickets. “We never had any children but we did have pets. My favorite was our ducks. I love ducks. I love the sound they make. They can make pretty friendly pets. I love birds. Nothing was so thrilling as when my ducks laid eggs and had babies. That was so much fun. I liked that. I remember when I was a little kid I had a pet chicken that my father killed and we had it for dinner. I didn’t eat it. I was so upset. I thought that was terrible. > “It was just the most wonderful thing,” > “I go places and people will say, ‘I know you.’ Some people even ask for my autograph.” — English said. English said We lived in the San Fernando Valley for about 20 years. I hated it there. It was so hot I couldn’t stand it. We had acreage with fruit trees and stuff like that, and I canned everything. I used to bake bread. It was a lot of work. I was known in the family as the best pie maker. Lemon meringue is my best pie. We had blackberry vines and I used to pick them, freeze them and make blackberry cream pie. Another specialty of mine was kuchen. It’s a German pastry with berries, sugar, lemon and when it’s almost done, you add egg yolks mixed with sour cream over the top — delicious. I have some good recipes in my recipe box. I loved cooking. I loved to entertain. We had lots of parties and holiday events. I’d cook all kinds of fancy foods. “But my husband used to make me so mad. I’d fix him these gourmet dinners and then an hour after dinner, he’d sit down with a jar of peanut butter and jam, and make sandwiches. I hate peanut butter. So much for my gourmet cooking.” How did you end back on this side of the hill? “I divorced him. I found out that he was going out with another woman. We had been married for 29 years. At the time, I felt like I’d wasted half of my life. That’s what you feel like. But I’m a better person from having gone through the experience. The thing is, you don’t look back. You can’t think, ‘Oh, I should have done this or I should have done that.’ You just have to say, ‘so what?’ You just go on. “But it took me eight years to get over it. I was really so heart broken. It’s been over 20 years now. Part of what made it rough was that I had to try to get a job at the age of 50\. It’s bad like that today, too. I knew how to type and stuff. I used to grade English papers for my husband. I got some office jobs but they didn’t usually last very long. I got sick of typing and said I’d never type again. But I did try. I also taught preschool. I enjoyed working with children.” What do you think about Santa Monica? “Well, I love the weather. Love the ocean breeze, but the politics here aren’t so good. They’re always spending the taxpayers’ money on things that aren’t necessary and ignore the things that are necessary. The sidewalks are bad. They’re uneven, cracked. The tree roots have wrecked a lot of them. People have fallen. But the city isn’t doing anything to fix them. They’d rather spend our money on planting flowers in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard. Those things are causing even more problems with traffic. People tell me it makes it even harder to see pedestrians now. And if the politicians want the homeless here — I call them tramps — then they should either build them a place where they can stay or do something to get them out of here. I see a lot of them coming into the laundry and dealing with them is really difficult. I tell them if they want to do their laundry they should take it to Seventh and Colorado where it’s free. Customers don’t want to use a washer and dryer that just had some tramp’s filthy clothes in it. People here all say the same thing: Take care of them or get them out of here. Don’t let them wander the streets and bother people. Some of them are drugged out, some are really are dangerous, and we don’t know who is dangerous and who isn’t.” Have you ever had to deal with any scary situations while you’ve been working here? “There are times when we have problems with some of the homeless people. If we do, I don’t hesitate to call the police. I’m not going to put up with anybody’s crud. The other night some crazy guy came in and starting taking off his shirt. I called the police. I just had an uneasy feeling about him. Another time we had a homeless guy in here who was carrying a knife, walking around talking to himself, acting like he was nuts. That time we were afraid to call the cops because we were afraid that he would try to get even with us for reporting him. We had one guy come in here with a dirty, soaking-wet comforter who wanted to put it in the dryer. He didn’t want to wash it — just dry it. That’s a violation of the health code. So I had to stop him from doing that. If a customer is in here and someone’s bothering them, I’ll hear, ‘Mimi!’ and I’ll go back there and give them the third degree. I try to kick out the trouble makers.” What is the best part of your life these days? “Definitely singing and dancing. My favorite kind of music is rock. I studied voice at Pierce College after my divorce. I’d been singing in choirs and things like that for years, but once you study, it helps you learn to sing by yourself in front of people. You learn how to breathe correctly. I had singing lessons but I never took dance lessons. I just have the beat inside of me and dance naturally. “I really enjoy performing for people. I perform anytime. I put on Celine Dion and sing along. Celine is my favorite singer. I have friends that come here to the laundry to see me perform. People in the neighborhood know me as the lady that sings and dances — they know me everywhere I go for that. I was also on TV on a show called ‘Late Room with Zak.’ And I was in a movie, but there always changing things in it and it hasn’t been taken up by anyone yet.” How did you end up working at Fox Laundry? “I just came here and then started working here. I take care of people’s laundry for them if they don’t want to do it themselves. The regulars that come in all know about my singing. It’s mostly people from the neighborhood. Everyone knows me as the singing and dancing Mimi.” > “Everyone knows me as the singing and dancing Mimi,” Looking back on your life, is there anything you wish you could change? “I never think that way. Never say that. You also give people advice. Why? “If someone has a problem and they want to talk about it to someone that has some life experience under their belt I’m happy to help. It’s natural for people to want to talk about their problems to someone. I’ve been through a lot of stuff and in the process have learned a thing or two, especially about the divorce issue. Sometimes women will come in that are having problems with their marriage. After they talk awhile I ask them, ‘Ever think there might be someone else?’ They say ‘no’ but then hire a detective and find out that their husband actually is fooling around. I seem to just be able to feel it when that’s happening.” Any parting advice? “Don’t ever look back. It just pulls you down.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/020705-02_02.jpg) to the Daily Press Mimi English sings ‘I’m Alive’ by Celion Dion while fluffing and folding at Fox Laundry on Montana Avenue. (Photo: Kim Calvert/Special) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/020705-02_03.jpg) to the Daily Press Mimi English sings ‘I’m Alive’ by Celion Dion while fluffing and folding at Fox Laundry on Montana Avenue. (Photo: Kim Calvert/Special) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/020705-02_04.jpg) (Photo: Kim Calvert/Special) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 7, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/020705.pdf?ref=smdp.com)