Stores that only sell mattresses.
Or places like House of Watchbands.
I would also think working at a place that is so specific in its stock, like EVERY KINDA OF BATTERY IMAGINABLE or whatever the place is called would be a dead bore after the first 15 minutes on the job.
There’s a Mexican grocery near us that is always empty. I went in once for queso fresco, and I was treated like an alien, and a pretty stupid alien at that.
There’s also a huge farm near us that my husband is convinced is a front for something. The stock consists only of Angus beef cows (hard to make money on around here), and none of the farmers know much about anybody there, which is pretty unusual. Really, if it is a front, it’s a spankin’ good idea. Lots of expensive things to buy, and you can always claim it’s a bad year or the markets are down.
ETA: Queso fresco? Queso fresca? Quesa fresca? Gah. One of those.
There is a local restaurant around me that has always been terrible and changes names every few years. I talked to a guy that worked there as a head cook. He occasionally improved a recipe then the manager would notice and change it back. this happened a few times before he decided it wasn’t the place for him.
A shop I used to have my boots repaired at was a front. The father was/is a bookie and his sons have been arrested for assault more then a few times. They always did a good job on my boots when they got to them but it started taking too long for me to deal with(3months last time) I wasn’t going to give them a hard time I might have gotten my legs broken or something.
Beat me to it.
An entire fucking national chain of stores that never seem to sell anything.
I want to know the secret code word so I can pick up some quality weed. Been many years since I’ve smoked anything and I figure that if they can afford to advertise nationally, they must be selling the really good stuff.
The reason Radio Schlock never sells anything is that every goddamn time you go in there, the only available salesman is in the midst of explaining what sounds like the world’s longest and most convoluted cel phone contract.
Oh, and the code word? “Lantern battery.” You just pry off the top when you get home.
(After going back and reading most of the thread)
Now you guys are just making me paranoid. I don’t want to be thinking that 80-something year old Mama D, who ran a bunch of completely empty, horribly bad service restaurants in the Twin Cities area in the 80’s was really named Mama Drugs.
No wonder we could never get the waitresses attention. We should have lit up.
Hell, my friend and I once hurled a fork clear across the place and screamed in order to get service. Then we walked out to find Mama D herself sitting by the front door. She got an earful about the bad service.
One of my husband’s relatives has a used car lot. He makes a trip (flies) to Miami once or twice a month to pick up a car and drive it back to Ohio. Then he sells it on his lot. Somehow, this tiny used car lot allows him to live very well.
Of course, you’d never know it as nothing (his houses, his cars) is in his name.
Actually Scrap Book stores are selling product which has a crack-like impact on paper addicts. At $.85 for a sheet of 12X12 patterned paper, $6.00 for a stamp pad, and $2.00 for a pack of rub-ons, this “hobby” has a low threshold of entry which takes over pretty quickly. I go on hobby boards where people have galleries of their work and more importantly their stash of unused stuff.
20 years ago I was needlepointing, but I only have 1 unfinished canvas in the closet. I have enough paper goods to greet every momma in the nation.
In Lexington, KY there’s a local pizza chain called Sir Pizza. There are probably a dozen of them in the area, and they’ve all been open for a long time. I lived there for eight years, and probably asked hundreds of people during that time, and I never once talked to anyone who had eaten at one.
I went there once, out of curiosity. The pizza was laughably bad.
A lot of mobsters’ families end up living in Lexington, because the ones who do federal time usually end up at the Federal Medical Center prison just outside town. (They tried to place Henry Hill there in the WPP, and he remembered this and made them move him out to the sticks. See his Wiseguy Cookbook for the whole story.) I have to wonder if these facts are related.
You probably don’t want any of my stuff then, eh? Drat.
I don’t scrapbook but I use the stuff for cards and collage art and it does tend to accumulate… I think it’s the real reason houses have gotten so much bigger. Every house now has to have a “hobby room” the size of a warehouse.
Anyway, another vote for these stores aren’t fronts.
I gotcha beat. I have no idea how so many National (Panasonic) shops here stay in business. When I arrived in my tiny town in northern Japan, I lived in a downtown hotel for five months. Sharing the street with the hotel are 2 National shops. One is in the next block, the other, 2 doors down from the hotel. Both are tiny; most convenience marts in Japan have bigger sales floors. Much of their merchandise is stale, one even stocking an avocado kitchen refrigerator. Has that color made a comeback from the '70s?
Coming home everyday from work, I’d pass one store during its business hours. It NEVER had a customer. I’d watch both of the stores whenever I had time off. Never a customer. I walk, so I had to pass one of these stores to go anywhere. Always empty, weekdays and Saturdays.*
I wanted to buy a radio–our 2 local FM stations are on the band below what US and European radios pick up. Do I take a taxi to the next town over to go to the mall? Of course not, I’ll walk to the closest electronics stores. The, uh, clerk or whomever was watching TV and couldn’t be bothered to help or to take my money or even acknowledge my existence at either National shop. The soap opera or sumo matches were apparently too riveting. Maybe I scared them into paralysys. After all, I’m a big hairy gaijin. I asked my friends’ not big, not hairy Japanese wives what they thought. They echoed my experiences and implied strongly that the stores had “help.” They couldn’t see any way they stayed in business, either.
PS-I eventually got a radio. The quest for wireless audio entertainment ended with a conclusive thunk when I found the stations are too weak to be received by anything without a rooftop antenna.
There are Sir Pizza restaurants in Middle Tennessee, too. I’ve eaten there but it was years ago, and yes, the pizza is bad. We don’t have any Federal (or state)prisons nearby, though.
It’s not illegal to have a bad business model. It may not be probable cause enough to warrant further examination. Often cops know who the bad guys are, but have to catch them doing more than having a bad business day.
“We performed 24/7 surveillance on your store for a year, saw very few customers, yet you claimed over 4 million in sales.” Not gonna happen. I can already see the mobster claiming internet sales.
I’m obviously not a cop or prosecutor. But ‘strapped for undercover cops’ doesn’t mean they can do a year’s surveillance on a place to get a possible tax evasion charge. Gotta catch em with the drugs.
Coin-op car washes. All cash, no receipts, low overhead.
Why do people keep mentioning massage parlors? Whenever I patronize them, I get serviced quite satisfactorily.
I’m suspicious of most non-chain gas stations ever since I read a newspaper story 10 years ago about some gas stations that turned out to be a front for the Russian mob. Hell, I don’t even trust Valero. The one time I walked into my local Valero to pay for my mom’s gas and buy some candy, the cashier was an eastern European guy who seemed very nervous and kept telling me “it’s OK, it’s OK.” I paid for my Mentos quickly and got the hell out of there.
That must be some damn good rice pudding!
There was an insanely overpriced toy/collectibles store here that stayed in business for years because it was a drug front. There’s a music supply store not far from there that was always rumored to sell drugs too, but they’re still in business. And still in the same neighborhood, there is a McDonald’s that supposedly will sell you pot if you order a Filet o’ Fish, orange juice, and a strawberry milkshake.
There’s the Chinese “hairdressers” on the top of Ponsonby Road. Pretty flash area, gentrified Victorian, young urban professional, lotsa upscale bars, eateries, dress shops with Saabs parked outside. Hairdressers seems OK: big, well-lit premises, chairs and old-fashioned dryers, all the accoutrements. I’m killing some time in the area and decide I need a trim: this place looks OK, not too busy - wonder if they can fit me in?
Nobody in the chairs, this looks promising - lot of nice looking young Chinese ladies sitting around on sofas chatting: they ain’t wearing too much, but they’re probably going clubbing later - it’s that kind of area. I probably just lucked into a quiet time. So, I open negotiations with the older Chinese lady behind the desk - mid 40’s, a little heavy on the makeup, probably her husband bought her the place as a hobby business: he must be pretty rich; rents in this area aren’t cheap, and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of clientele - any chance they could fit me in right now?
Sure, how long would I like - half an hour or the full hour? Uh - do hairdressers charge on a time basis? Maybe she was asking how long I’d like my hair. However long it takes, anyway - just a trim, probably won’t take more than thirty minutes or so. So, which young lady would I like - maybe I’d like to sit down and chat a while with the girls on the sofa - can she get me a drink? Well, this is a friendly establishment, and no mistake - no harm in chatting with the hairdressers, anyway; they’re probably bored by the lack of customers.
Uh, she’s sitting kind of close, isn’t she - and why is her hand on my thigh? Come to think of it, one hundred dollars is kind of an expensive haircut, isn’t it, especially up front- and now her friend is squirming in my lap, and she ain’t wearing anything under that slip… Uh - this isn’t a “real” hairdressers at all, is it? It’s a, uh, brothel, isn’t it? My mistake, ladies. Exit, bright crimson, pursued by gales of Chinese laughter.
I’ll see your Irish Collectibles, and raise you Finnish-themed gifts. There was a store that sold those on Route 1 when I was at the University of Maryland. I always figured that place had to be a front for something…
There are so many nail salons around in the Bay Area, some of them must be fronts.