I’m pretty well convinced that there are at least a couple of production companies that specialize in low budget horror movies that are just doing it for the tax write-offs…
Holy expletive deleted! $240 for a miniature tree in a ceramic planter? I guess if they cost that much, they wouldn’t need to sell a thousand a month. The question is, where would they find enough customers on a steady basis, willing to pay that kind of cash, to stay afloat?
There’s a place like this right in downtown Bothell. Ostensibly, it sells estate-sale furniture and so on: it’s a former residential house, with a big fenced yard, with the same bleached and mildewed furniture - including wooden chairs and upholstered couches - lying about in the yard as examples of what they sell, year after year. They do business by appointment only. Once I stopped by when the door was open, and was run out by a man who didn’t bother to veil his hostility and my unwelcome. In the minute or two I was inside, I didn’t see anything worth buying, and I’ve never seen anybody shop there. Whatever they do, they don’t do estate-furniture-sales very well.
Perhaps it’s a hobby store. Like the owner is retired and it gives him something to do when he’s puttering aroud during the day. There’s a bike shop here in town like that. They have utterly useless hours, but I think the owners are a retired husband and wife. They like bikes, but don’t really have the energy to really operate a serious business. They pay for the property by renting out apartments on the floors above the shop. They don’t need to run the bike shop, they just do to keep themselves busy.
There was a run down miniature golf place 30 minutes away from the nearest decent-sized town, middle of nowhere that almost never had anyone parked in front. It was on my way home when I lived in a tiny foothill retirement community. Who would go there? Then they did an elaborate re-model, put in a pond with bumper boats, foutains, the statue of liberty. They put in a little train track with a little engine to pull cars, a huge improvement.
More years passed and almost no cars were ever parked in front. I stopped to “get a soda” out of sheer curiosity—they advertised a snack bar. One teenager was behind the counter that displayed dusty bags of chips. He said the train wasn’t running and the bumper cars were closed. There were some old arcade games and an air hockey table.
They had to be laundering money.
Hahaha, we bought a piano there in 1986 or so. It’s just a family owned piano store staffed by, and I mean this in the best way, buy utter dorks. You must have caught them at lunch or something.
As I’m sure you must know it’s not exactly hard to find a place around here that’s mobbed up by the boys, but that place my friend is surely not.
Nobody’s said Starbucks yet?
Many years ago, there was a business in Schenectady that sold magazines and newspapers. The place where I worked got their daily papers there, and one day I was sent over.
Inside there were a couple of piles of daily newspapers, a small rack of magazine, and maybe one rack of candy. It was absolutely clear that there was no way they were making enough money selling this stuff to pay a day’s electric bill.
There may have been porn in the back, but I think the real business was making book. Schenectady was a big betting town.
It’s scary how often The Onion is out ahead with things like this article about Radio Shack’s business model.
Could you explain what you mean by this? I’m fascinated by this sentence, although I don’t understand the description at all.
Color Tile and all vacuum cleaner-repair shops. They could not possibly make a living in those lines. I suspect both are laundering drug money.
We’ve got a couple of fish tanks in the house and putter around with fish some. The lady that ran the store where we bought stuff had the audacity to up and die, so we had to find a new aquarium supply place.
Went to check out a new place and there was a guy from India behind the counter. They had maybe 10 tanks of fish, but everything I inquired about was “not for sale”.
I guessed they were just starting up and went back in a couple of weeks. Same deal.
After two more weeks I had my wife go in and try to buy some fish, just out of curiosity. Again, “not for sale”.
I don’t know what their business is, but it damn sure ain’t tropical fish sales.
In the 1980s, my mother worked for an educators’ magazine located in Washington, DC. They had part of a floor in a large mansion-like brick building.
The rest of the building belonged to a “nonprofit organization” I won’t name. The nonprofit employed about 75 people. The entire basement consisted of a specially cooled room that was rumored to contain a supercomputer. The roof of the building bristled with antennas, and the grounds were secured behind an impressive fence with cameras covering all angles. The large janitorial staff consisted of strapping military-age El Salvadoran* men, all unfailingly polite as they polished the spotless floors.
The alleged purpose of the foundation was to place foreign exchange students with American families. I have no doubt that they did this…their press releases claimed they placed about 200 students a year.
That’s 75 full-time people and a supercomputer to send brochures to 200 families, make a few calls, and have someone meet some planes at the airport once a year.
*The significance of the nationality is that Reagan was allegedly meddling in the war in El Salvador during that time period.
Sailboat
I once interviewed for a waitressing job at a very, very odd restaurant in Miami. I walked in to a place that looked for all the world like a scene out of Goodfellas. Linen table clothes, chandeliers, cloth walls, the works. It was overdone by a mile. They couldn’t give me a schedule, I would work “as needed.” They had a very special clientele, etc. Their was one other guy there besides the guy I interviewed with. The bartender. I swear on my life he must have come from central casting. Done to the 9’s in his black and whites, the perfect face to listen or be stone deaf, polishing the crystal glasses.
I drove past that place twice a day at least, I never saw cars, much like the poster upthread, occasionally there would be quite a few cars, all very nice cars, but if that was as often as once a month I’d be shocked, other than that, the place was a ghost restaurant.
I guess the million and one massage parlors don’t count, eh?
There is a bookstore here in an old house that really seems like the guys personal collection. Never really see folks there. That one seems like a rich weirdo livin’ the dream.
There is (or was, I haven’t been in the area in years) an absolutely fantastic Italian restaurant in the North End of Boston that everyone was absolutely positive had to be connected with La Familia. The name of the restaurant? La Familia. The place did a huge business, but their portions were huge, with good quality ingredients, and the prices were miniscule. Even during my pig-out days as a college student, one entree lasted for three meals. Either they were getting some kind of “help” in dealing with their suppliers, or profit wasn’t really their goal. It also didn’t help that there was an attempted hit there once.
There’s a business research firm here in Tokyo that prepares English-language annual reports for other companies, and other similar services. The office locations listed on their business cards are: Tokyo, Los Angeles and Langley. Can’t get your crime much more organized than that.
The last company I worked at was either a huge scam at the expense of the venture capital investors, or the best example ever of underpants gnomes. They were producing a new database-server-management-something-or-other-mumble. I was their head marketing and PR writer, and the best I was ever able to figure out is that their business plan was “the Internet”. The CEO also had no clue, but knew he had no clue and would start attacking if anyone tried to corner him on what the product did. When I interviewed in August, they said their beta release would be next month. When I was let go the following April as the company started collapsing, the beta release was still “next month”.
While not nearly as interesting as the mafia and drug joints mentioned above, a local road used to have three restaurants in three blocks, all owned by the same company. When the antique store that was in the only other building on the strip closed, someone spent several months and untold dollars gutting the place and converting it into “Skinny’s Crab Palace”, a seafood joint that was as uninspired as the name suggests.
Skinny’s Crab Palace lasted a month. After it closed, the owner of the owner of the other three resaurants took over, painted the place, bought a few plants and opened an italian restaurant that has stayed open for years.
In a neighborhood where successful business regularly close up shop because the rent is too high, there is nestled…wait for it…
a used magazine store. Yep, they are asking us to believe they sell the old, out of date magazines collecting dust in the window even though no one goes in or comes out.
In this hip, trendy neighborhood there is also a Bingo Store with astounding square footage. Apparently, lots and lots of the hot gay young guys and other assorted Gen Y-ers are really really into bingo supplies.
Still not enough? How about Irish Collectibles?
Why not just put up a sign: “Money Laundered Here”?
They have quite a few Mexican clothing and/or jewelery stores around. They never sell anything.
Turns out what they really do is cash checks and sell MO. It’s legal, sort of.
years ago (the 1980’s) a relative of mine quit a well paying professional job to work as a pizza delivery guy. Three months later he was living out of his car, but still “delivering pizzas”.
Apparently if you ordered their “extra special double topping” (not listed on menu) you would get a 99 cent pizza, and only pay $175. My relative delivered those.
The pizza place was eventually busted, and my relative went in for coccaine addiction treatment. He is a fundamentalist christian now… The guys that ran the pizza place skipped bail and apparently moved (fled) back to lebanon.
regards
FML
There’s a hamburger place here called Wee Bees. They have HUGE hamburgers with homemade baked buns, actual french fries cut from potatoes with the skins on, and shakes made the old fashioned way.
Good stuff, and cheap too. There’s never a line, even at lunch time you might find 1, maybe 2 cars ahead of you on a bad day. If you go inside, there are frequently darkhaired men in suits at one of the booths with briefcases (the men have the briefcases, not the booths :D).
The owner has run other restaurants in town, generally successfully, say for 5 or 10 years, but this one has been in town for hmmm…probably 20 years as far as I can remember and business has always been that way, slow, good food, and WAY below what one would think freshly made stuff would be.
I have no idea if they really are some sort of front or money laundering type operation, but my sister and I have joked about it for years because of the reasons I state above.