The year hasn’t been kind to Marie Konner. Since January, the 26-year-old City College student has lost two jobs and an apartment. And now, peering into a dryer at the Potrero Launderette on 18th Street, it seems she’s also lost a sock.  “That’s just about the way things are going,” Konner said, unable to find the missing black footie. “There haven’t been a whole bunch of positive things happen. But, it seems like it’s that way for a lot of people, so I don’t feel quite so bad. The way the economy’s going, I know a lot of people have it worse than me. But still…this year has really sucked, so far. It’s scary.”

These days, fear of the economic unknown is about as common as discarded sheets of Bounce in the City’s laundromats.  Whether at the Potrero Launderette, Mr. Burbuja’s on 24th Street, or Brainwash on Folsom Street, San Francisco’s great unwashed are concerned that their futures may not emerge from the latest spin cycle as bright as they want.  “Everybody’s worried about their jobs, their homes, their families,” said South-of-Market resident Susan Vargas, folding a pile of towels at Brainwash. “So many people are out of work or losing hours; there’s no security.  Everybody’s cutting back, saving their money because they’re not sure of their next paycheck.”

Cutbacks in Vargas’ household include fewer meals eaten outside the home and a delay in dental work for her husband, John, who broke a tooth on a pork chop bone three months ago. “I keep telling him to go, but he won’t spend the money,” she said. “He’s worried we’re going to need it for something else.”

At the beginning of the year Konner was laid off from a hostess position at a Pacific Heights eatery. Within a month she was hired and then let go by a Haight-area clothing store. “They never should have hired me,” she said. “They didn’t have the hours to go around for the people they already had.”  With her bank account dwindling, no income and her share of rent on a two-bedroom Inner Richmond apartment suddenly seeming like an excessive expense, Konner decided to tighten her budget. She trimmed $300 a month by moving into a cramped Kansas Street studio with her older sister, Kate. She also took advantage of unemployment – “it’s humbling,” she said – and the Federal Work Study program that allows her to work 15 hours a week, at $9 an hour, as a lab aide at City College of San Francisco (CCSF).  However, because economic shortfalls are forcing CCSF to cancel its summer session, even that position has disappeared.  “I’ll have to find something else; hopefully something stable,” said Konner, an accounting major. “There seem to be more jobs on Craigslist and other places, lately. So, maybe things are picking up.”

James Kent, a Florida Street resident who was loading three washers at Mr. Burbuja’s, said he thinks harder times are still to come. “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” said Kent, a delivery driver. “We’ve been hearing for two years that everything will hit bottom and then turn around, but it hasn’t turned around yet. Businesses are still closing. Schools are laying-off teachers. Muni’s cutting services. The state can’t pay its workers. That’s not turning around. That’s continuing in the same direction:  down.”

Kent said economic insecurity has influenced everything from his leisure time – “I don’t go to the movies or to ballgames like I used to,” – to his laundry habits. He admits that it will often be two weeks between trips to the laundromat.  “It costs 10 bucks in quarters every time I come here,” he said. “I don’t even separate the whites and colors, anymore. That would cost more. I just throw it all in and hope.”