The Dry Cleaning Business in Wilmette; an ensemble

      Drive around Wilmette. Find anything surprising in business districts? I know, I know, there are four, yes four, Starbucks in Wilmette alone, but that could be a whole other post. I'm talking about something more discreet, something that teenagers don't exactly find themselves wandering in and out of. You guessed it, it's the alarming amount of dry cleaners.

There are seventeen (seventeen!) dry cleaners in Wilmette.

This GoogleMap shows the clusters of cleaners in Wilmette.

According to GoogleMaps, there are three different dry cleaners in the small business district of Fourth and Linden. And it Downtown Wilmette, there are three more dry cleaners. This potpourri of garment cleaning services is impossible to miss once you notice it. It feels like around every corner, there's another dry cleaner. But really, how much ironing, pressing, and buttoning do our clothes need? Does every town like have this many dry cleaners? 

I decided to do some investigating. I found that in Park Ridge, a suburb with 10,000 more people than Wilmette and 2 more square miles in area, there are only twelve dry cleaners, according to Yellow Pages. But why? Why does Wilmette, a town with an average income of $40,000 more than Park Ridge, have that many more dry cleaners? Perhaps, it is because of the type of workers in the wealthy suburb of Wilmette? Do we simply wear more clothes that need to be dry-cleaned?