WEBVTT - Dry Cleaning: Not Really Dry(!) 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:02.640 Hey everybody, we're back for the new year. We hope 0:00:02.680 --> 0:00:04.680 you had a great holiday. And while we know some 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:06.600 of you got some Stuff you Should Know live tickets 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:08.479 in your stocking this year, we know that there are 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:10.239 still plenty of people out there in Seattle in San 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:12.240 Francisco who can still get tickets. 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:15.200 Yeah, our Portland show sold out, so ts for those 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:17.919 late comers, but you can still go to Seattle or 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.120 San Francisco to see us. On January twenty fourth, we'll 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:23.680 be at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, And on Friday, 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.520 January twenty sixth, we'll see you guys in San Francisco 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.720 at the Sydney Goldstein Theater for SF Sketch Fest. Go 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.280 to stuffishould Know dot com or link tree slash sysk 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.080 and you'll see all the info you need and links 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.040 to buy tickets. We'll see you guys in a couple 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:38.519 of weeks. 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:46.880 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:52.600 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.480 Chuck and Jerry's here and we are ready to martinize 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.040 the heck out of you in one hour or less. 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.560 Yeah, you like heavy starch, medium guy. 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:03.960 You want a double crease in your pant legs. I 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:05.560 had to look that up. Have you ever heard of 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:06.120 such a thing? 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:08.760 Yeah? I got a triple crease? What are you talking about? 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:11.119 No, for real, have you heard of a double crease before? 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:12.120 I demand to know. 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:17.919 I don't think so, because I'm not someone who often 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:19.440 uses a dry cleaner. 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.600 You and a lot of people these days, pall. Apparently 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:27.160 the pandemic just crushed dry cleaning because people stopped going 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.920 to the office as much, which means that they stop 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:33.640 needing clothes that required dry cleaning as much. But even 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.880 before that, people had sorry to work from home a 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.520 little more and the office had gone much more casual 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.080 than before. So dry cleaners have been hurting for a while. 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.280 Yeah, I just I don't have much of a need. 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:51.720 If there's a particular stain or something that I'm really 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:53.880 dying to get out of a piece of clothing, what 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.880 is that, I'll take it into a dry cleaner. Uh. 0:01:57.720 --> 0:01:59.800 But I was taught at a very young age how 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.320 to launder and iron clothing, oh neat. But I also 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.440 don't often have to do that because I rarely have 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.960 to wear, like, you know, a pressed dress shirt to 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:11.679 a thing. 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:14.120 You don't put a double crease in your jeans? 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:15.680 What's a double crease? 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.680 So I looked it up. It strikes me as possibly 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.320 kind of like a nineteen forties you know, that woolf 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.079 from the cartoons, kind of zoot suit. Look, okay, maybe 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:27.800 those would have double creases. The only thing I could find, 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.640 there's a pair of Benetton pants for women that has 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.160 a double crease, and I'm pretty sure I could find 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.200 the second one, not one hundred percent, but I guess 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.440 that's the thing that some people request of the dry cleaners, 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.799 people who ain't quite right. I take it. 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:49.720 Yeah. My big dry cleaning sort of memory and story 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:50.160 is that. 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:52.560 You have a dry cleaning story. 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:54.840 Well not a story, but I just you know, my 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:58.920 best friend in high school, Rat who the cartographer, Hello 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:03.920 rad Ye. His dad Wayne had a closet with like 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:10.280 twenty five light blue, perfectly dry clean shirts, like twenty 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.360 five pinklins, twenty five white ones. It was like a 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.360 Patrick Bateman esque closet, and I remember just going in 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:19.040 there in high school and just being. 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.480 Like, wow, were there like leather gloves and a knife 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:23.520 stashed behind all this? 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.800 No, Wayne was a good guy, but anyway, that's my 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:31.720 dry cleaning memory from high school. I have a stat 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:36.680 here that's from twenty seventeen. There were in the United 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:40.080 States there were twenty six hundred dry cleaners. I've seen 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:43.720 that as high as thirty thousand now. But one thing 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.840 I wanted to point out is that dry cleaners in 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:51.800 the United States eighty percent of their employees slash owners 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:56.200 are ethnic minorities of the United States, and majority of 0:03:56.200 --> 0:04:00.440 which are Korean Americans. And all this just point out 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:02.120 as we go along, we're going to talk about the 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.600 expense of dry cleaning and changing your whole business because 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.560 of government regulations and the fact that these ethnic minorities 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:11.600 and small business owners that can be a tough thing. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:14.840 Yeah, I mean, there's definitely like a stereotype in the 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.880 United States that dry cleaners are often owned by people 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.000 of Korean descent or straight up Korean immigrants. And apparently 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.160 in the seventies that became a thing. In the same 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.839 way that we talked about Greek immigrants and their children 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.080 running diners in the United States, that's true with Korean 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:37.360 immigrants and dry cleaners. Apparently a Korean immigrant is thirty 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.560 four times likelier than the immigrant from anywhere else to 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:44.520 open a dry cleaning store in the United States. And yeah, 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.279 these are very small operations. In a lot of cases, 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.520 they're small businesses. And yeah, we'll see there's a lot 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:54.400 of financial pressure on them right now that seems potentially 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:55.360 fairly unfair. 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.800 Yeah, absolutely, and we're going to sort of go through 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.760 the process of dry cleaning. We've got a lot of 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:06.240 requests for this over the years. Yeah, my experience has been, 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.760 at least around here, most of the dry cleaners are 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.080 storefronts that will take your stuff. There are a lot 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.599 of washers and dryers, like you can do laundry on site, 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:19.600 but the stuff is sent out. It is not cleaned 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.640 on site. It goes to a separate facility for the 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.600 dry cleaning then comes back is on those amazing racks 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.760 that I just I love those things so much. That's 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.440 spin around, you know, all those close spinning around. 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:36.680 Can't you just imagine like a ham hanging from each 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:37.560 one in your kitchen. 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.240 I just for some reason I love it. But apparently 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.760 there are some where they actually do the stuff on site. 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.039 But the first thing we want to talk about is 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:51.320 the fact that dry cleaning is not dry. It just 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:52.760 means they don't use water. 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:55.800 That's a really important point, and I think we'll probably 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.360 restate it multiple times throughout this episode, just to make 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.400 sure we're dry at home, though yes we do, whether 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:05.599 we need to or not, I insist. 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.360 Let's just camera that simplistic fact home. 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.159 Yeah, it is weird. I think it's just kind of 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:16.240 a remnant or a relic of the original interpretation of 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:18.720 dry cleaning, because it did make sense back in the day. 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.560 Today it doesn't hold up. It's not dry at all, 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.080 So everybody, I'm sorry to ruin your illusions. Technically it 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:30.640 was Chuck who did that, but dry cleaning is fairly old. 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:35.120 There is a man, a black American named Thomas Jennings, 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.640 who was a tailor in New York City who in 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:41.600 eighteen twenty one got a patent for a process of 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.800 essentially dry cleaning you call it dry scouring, that you 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.760 could use to remove dirt and grease from clothing without 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:54.039 harming the fabric, which is pretty groundbreaking, but it's lost 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.000 to history. Apparently there was a fire. I want to 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:59.160 do at least a short stuff on this, Chuck. There 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:02.840 was a fire in eighteen thirty six that destroyed ten 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.880 thousand patents basically all the patents from seventeen ninety to 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.320 eighteen thirty six gone in this fire, and that included 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.920 Thomas Jennings patent. So we're not at all sure exactly 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:19.000 what the deal was, but we know that he was 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:21.480 the first to come up with probably what would be 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:22.600 considered dry cleaning. 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:25.640 Yeah, and Jennings himself could be a great short stuff 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.920 because he is the first African American to receive a 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.920 patent in the United States, and this was forty years 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:37.240 prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. And what's so remarkable about 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:39.240 that is is he was born a free man, but 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.080 in the patent application, you have to be a citizen 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.679 of the United States, and they granted him that patent, 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:50.640 thus recognizing him as a citizen of the United States, 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.480 which was a very big deal at the time. 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.760 He also helped to organize something called the Legal Rights Association. Again, 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:02.080 this is the eighteen twenty eighteen thirties, and that group 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.720 would challenge people in court with vile lawsuits against acts 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.480 of discrimination in the eighteen thirties. So that, yeah, he 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.800 definitely does deserve his own episode. It sounds like two yeah, 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:19.880 follow up, Okay, a couple of decades later, over in France, 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:24.360 there is a man named Jean Baptiste Jolie spelled like jolly. 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.960 It's a great name, all three names together with that 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:31.720 nice round Baptiste in the middle. He was he made die. 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:36.120 He was a dier, a dier maker, and he had 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:40.600 a tablecloth that was had an oil lamp knocked over 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.199 on it. Luckily it was probably not lit at the time, 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:45.520 or else this would have been a totally different story. 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:45.960 But the. 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:52.720 Flammable liquid inside probably camphene, which is kind of like 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:56.160 it's derived from the same stuff as that turpentine is 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.000 made from it. He found that where it had spilled 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:04.199 kind of like cleaned his tablecloth, and he said, you 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.480 know what, I think I might be onto something here. 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.240 Yeah, because that is we sort of buried the lead. 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:14.560 It's not dry cleaning, because there is liquid. But what 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.560 the liquids are and always have been, is some kind 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:22.080 of solvent to clean your clothes. Early solvents were very 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:27.880 dangerous and flammable. Sometimes it was kerosene, sometimes it was gasoline. Yeah, 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.679 I remember, I think it was. Was it the Viscilla 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:36.920 Axe murder episode where the rugs were super flammable because 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:38.200 they had been cleaned with gas. 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:39.600 I don't remember that. 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:42.000 I think that was it because I know at some 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:44.640 point we talked about the fact that gasoline was used 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.480 to clean stuff, and that's why one of these houses 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:49.080 like went up and flamed so quickly. 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.200 It might have been the hinter Kfek murders. 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:53.480 Oh was that a fire? 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:56.760 Oh no, I'll bet it was the Solder children, the 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.960 missing Solder children. There was a fire central to that one. 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.320 Okay, that may have been it, but I know we 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:04.120 talked about it. At some point. They used, you know, 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:09.120 like we said, kerosene, gasoline, turpentine, the resin of which 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.559 is terpene. And that is why when you go camping 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:15.120 you look for what's called like a lighter's not or 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:19.720 fat lighter, and that is the very resinous interior of 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.480 a pine tree, which is superflammable and that really helps 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.720 get a fire started. But all this to say is 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.920 that stuff was pretty dangerous to use as a close cleaner. 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:34.320 Yeah, so much so that like dry cleaners would explode 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:38.200 from time to time, so that dry cleaning facility that 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:42.720 the storefronts would send their clothes to would be located 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:44.800 on the outskirts of town because it was a very 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.080 very dangerous place, and after they started to move away 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:54.959 from more flammable solvents, they replaced them with synthetic compounds, 0:10:55.400 --> 0:11:02.760 specifically carbon tetrachloride and trichloroethylene, which worked ish. I think 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.600 the reason that people were kind of bullish on them 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.400 is because they didn't blow up, But there were a 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.640 lot of other problems with them, like just as an industry, 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:16.840 the carbon tetrachloride corroded your machinery, the trichloroethylene was really 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.079 harsh on your clothes, and both of them would give 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.000 you cancer and disrupt your neurological system too. 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.679 Yeah, for sure. Before they try these, they tried a 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:30.240 kind of mineral spirit called Stoddard solvent, which I think 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.040 that may have been flammable too. Yeah, But where they 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:39.520 eventually landed is on something called perchloroethylene or PERK as 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.560 we're going to call it as everybody calls it. 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:42.520 Is it perchloro? 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.960 Yeah, it sure is p e erc And that became 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:51.760 sort of the go to for a long long time. 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.000 It still is the go to percentage wise, and we'll 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:56.680 get to all that later, but it was much safer 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.920 to use. It did a better job of cleaning. The 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:05.840 equipment was smaller. It was kind of better in every 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.520 way as far as those previous alternatives. Yeah, that as 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:11.600 we'll see, it ate so great. 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.880 One other thing that was so alluring about it is 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:19.280 those dry cleaning facilities could come back into town now 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.840 and your little storefront could actually be the dry cleaning 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:27.720 facility because it required such less floor space. And this 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:30.760 solvent was just like a miracle, like you could get 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:34.199 people's clothes done in an hour. And actually it was 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.360 the guy who started one hour Martinizing, who was a chemist, 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.040 who was the one who went back and was studying 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.600 pair chlora ethylene as a potential solvent and brought it 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.720 into the dry cleaning industry and started one hour martinizing shops. 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:49.120 And the reason they could do it in an hour 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:51.760 if you paid them enough was because they had the 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:53.360 facilities on site. 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:58.160 Yeah. And his name was Gabby Johnson. I don't think so, No, 0:12:58.440 --> 0:12:59.400 was it something Martin? 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:02.560 Yeah, yes, Okay, I can't remember his first name, but 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:04.360 his last name is definitely Martin. 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.319 Because johnsonizing just sounds dirty. 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:08.520 It really does. 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:11.199 Let me go out and Johnson eyes. 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:16.960 It really does. Yeah, I'm like, I'm blessing right now. 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:19.080 So, like I said, we're going to talk more about 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.480 the sort of the downsides of perk. But even at 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.080 the time when they were like, Hey, this is so 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:27.040 much better and safer, you're like, but geez, working in 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.199 this thing all days, Like I'm like, my breathing is 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.120 a little weird and my eyes are irritated and I 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:34.920 get a little bit dizzy and stuff like that. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:36.480 Does anyone else see the elves? 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:41.080 Yeah, everyone's like, yeah, but it's not flammable. It's not 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:43.319 turpentine or kerosene, so it's better. 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.120 Yeah, some of these things. I think per chloroethylene is 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.720 actually related in some way to chloroform. So these early workers, 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.320 especially before we had any kind of handle on just 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:59.160 how bad perk actually is for you, we're handling this 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.480 really tough stuff. And we'll definitely talk a lot more 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:08.000 about perk later on. But the uh, well, should we 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:09.840 take a break and then talk about what happens when 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.160 you drop your clothes off at a dry cleaning place? 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.240 I think, so, okay, well, everybody, we're gonna take a 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:18.360 break and then come back and talk about what happens 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.200 when you drop your clothes off at a dry cleaning place. 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.840 Get I say something. Yeah, before the break, you sounded 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:04.920 like John Wilson. 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:08.120 Is that the guy who started one hour martinizing? 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.720 No, have you seen John Wilson's TV show How To 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:12.600 with John Wilson? 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:15.960 I can't say that I have. 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:20.000 It's great. I had a three season run and it's fantastic. 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.640 Does he have a glasses and kind of sandy blonde hair? 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:27.400 He has glasses, but he's never seen on screen. 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.040 So, oh no, I'm not sure who that is. 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:33.200 Then, yeah, her the show, but he also sort of 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.600 talks like this as a narrator. 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:39.240 Oh okay, yeah, he sounds like my kind of guy. 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:41.160 It's very fun, it's a great It's one of my 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.480 favorite shows, so highly recommended. But this is not about 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:46.720 John Wilson. This is about although he may do a 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.400 show called how to Get Your Clothes Clean, this kind 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:52.080 of thing he does, but when you drop your stuff 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.440 off at a dry cleaner, and we'll kind of whiz 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.720 bang through this first part because it's it's certainly not 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:02.920 super interesting, but they're gonna inspect your clothes. One reason 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:04.560 and they're going to do that is to see like 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:08.280 where the lasagna stain is or if it's not stained. 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.480 If it's just a regular old Hey, I'm Wayne Smith 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.200 and I want to get all my shirts perfect, they 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.080 are going to go over it so they can cover 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.360 their own butt. As far as when people come back 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.800 and say, hey, the button's missing, they can say, sorry, 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:27.120 sir or ma'am, your button was missing when it came 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.360 in here, because we wrote it down and showed you. 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:32.280 Yeah, peep the sticker chump. 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:33.280 Yeah. 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:35.720 This is kind of what they're famous for saying. If 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.680 they do find some stain that they're like, oh, I 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.480 don't know about this one. It could be tough. As 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.680 we'll see, the different types of stain require different types 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:49.400 of treatments. They'll pre treat it, and then the dry 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:52.040 cleaning takes place, and this is where the magic happens. 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:56.280 I really feel like this is some good stuff here. 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.880 That's right. So here's what happens. We repeat the fact 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.920 that it just means no water, your clothes are still 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:04.600 getting wet. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:06.359 Yeah, say it again? 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:09.520 Well I just did. Can't we say it another time? 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:10.199 Sure? 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.560 All right, no water, that's all dry cleaning means. 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.440 Yeah, it gets wet. Your clothes gets super duper wet, 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.320 soaked even but not in water instead in an industrial 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.639 synthetic solvent perk, the perk that we've talked about. 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:29.919 Yeah, and they do this in huge machines. And you know, 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:33.280 these cleaning machines are not that different from just sort 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:38.360 of your garden variety industrial wet laundry machine as far 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:39.119 as I can tell. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.840 Yeah, but there what's called dry to dry machines, meaning 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:46.960 that the washer and the dryer are housed in the 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:49.439 same machine. It's the same drum you put the clothes in. 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:51.840 Once they get washed, they get dried in the same 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.159 little drum, and then you pull them out. 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.919 Yeah, it happens. The cycles are much faster, and you know, 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:00.400 there's all kinds of things that we'll talk talk about 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.640 that make it different. But if you put it in there, 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.160 it's still got a drum that's gonna spin and jostle 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:11.280 your clothes around twenty two one hundred pounds depending on 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.280 how big the machine is. It is a stainless steel 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:18.560 basket that's perforated for drainage and stuff like that. It's there. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:23.480 They're super robust because perk is about seventy percent sixty 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.280 nine percent in fact, heavier than water is. Yeah, so 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:31.000 it's this stuff's heavy. It's all just super juiced up motors, 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:32.040 heavy duty equipment. 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.160 Yeah, and I mean they shoot a lot of perk 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.719 at this stuff. I think on the order of like 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.320 twenty five gallons an hour. They really johnsonize the clothes withever. 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:46.960 But what's cool you said that there's a lot of 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.919 differences between these these industrial dry cleaning machines and like 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:55.480 say an industrial washer dryer, And the key difference is 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.600 that that perk, the solvent that you use as the 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:06.120 cleaning agent, it's recovered to the greatest extent possible. We've 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.439 reached what are called fifth generation machines. First generation machine 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:11.439 was a washer, and then over here was a dryer. 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.439 And when you were dry cleaning something you moved it 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.240 from the washer to the dryer, you got perk everywhere. 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:18.760 You got it all over yourself, you got it all 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:20.840 over the floor, and you wasted a lot of it. 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:24.119 And some of the older machines you would have to 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.159 refill the perk that was used and recovered in this 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.040 machine every couple of months. Now it's on the order 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:33.199 of every couple of years. That's amazing, Yeah, because this 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.080 perk doesn't really break down very much and it stays 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.119 a viable solvent for years and years and years if 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:41.240 you keep it in this closed system. 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.160 Yeah, and it separates from water as well, right. 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:47.960 Yes, because it's again it's seventy percent heavier in the water. 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.360 Water floats on top of it, and most of these 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:52.879 machines feature a little mouse that comes along with a 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.199 tiny little snow shovel who's very happy to move the 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.040 water out of the way with its snow shovel and 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:00.240 water skis. 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:06.040 Yep, that's right. There are also things like carbon absorbers. 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.160 There are inductive fans. They have these sensors that will 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:14.840 lock everything if there is like if the perk level 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:17.239 is too high, you can't even open it. So they 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:20.480 got to get as much of that perk out of 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.840 that thing before you open the door, which has made 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:28.080 things much much safer. But again, perk has some dirty 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.960 secrets that we're going to reveal later on. Yeah, but 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:34.920 this thing is, you know, you're looking to get clean 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:39.320 solvent by pumping out that perk through a filtration system. 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:41.880 And even though, like you said, there's spraying a ton 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:42.560 of that stuff in. 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.800 There, Yeah, usually about twenty five gallons a minute, So 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:49.600 like I think there'll be two hundred gallons over like 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.320 an eight minute cycle pumped in and there's not two 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.280 hundred gallons of perk in there at any one time. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.440 Is new perk is coming in. The old perk that's 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.920 gone through the clothes already and is clinging to dirt 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.600 is filtered out right. So this is like this constant 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:07.120 process of perk, old perk, new perk coming in, old 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.600 perk going out through these filters and everything. And then 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.120 when the cycle's done and all the perk spun out 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.359 and it's been removed from the basket, they heat the 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:20.879 basket to vaporize the remaining perk, and then that also 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.080 gets captured because they run that through condenser coils to 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:26.080 turn it back into liquid and put it back in 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:30.960 the filtered perk reservoir. It's a pretty astounding machine that 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:34.200 the dry cleaners use for this stuff. But it's really 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.000 it's just impressive like this, the leaps and bounds that 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.760 they've gone through to figure out how to maximize the 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.000 lifetime of a perk molecule and minimize the chance that 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:46.879 it will be lost. 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.760 Yeah, for sure. Something I've done a lot of the 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:54.600 past two days is watch dry cleaning videos. 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:55.760 Oh, tell me you saw the one. 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:57.680 Well, I don't know what was the one. 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:01.160 It's called what is dry cleaning? Does dry cleaning work? 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.080 On YouTube? Did you see that one? No? 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:08.880 I watched a lot of similar ones. I love processes 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:12.200 like this so I can watch things like this and 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:16.320 stay riveted. I thought it was genuinely interesting. And one 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.320 thing this article points out is that quality control can 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:22.880