Please, I live in the Little Armenia neighborhood of LA. I’d be surprised if one of the little shops WASN’T a front for something.
My friends have a great story of stopping at this store in a minimall while waiting for a table at the Korean restaurant next door. They had seen the store a couple to times driving past it and had always been curious. All the merchandise was in piles on the floor and nothing had prices. Oen of these friends saw an older discontinued Sanrio (Hello Kitty) item on the floor and wanted to buy it. She took it to the two older women behind the counter. They just looked at my friend for a minute with deer in headlights eyes and then looked at each other. One of them named a price (something kind of pricey but not ridiculous) and seemed surprised that my friend still wanted it. One of the women then tried to operate the cash register. My friend who worked in retail leaned behind the counter and pointed out the buttons to use.
As my friends were leaving a bunch of young Korean dudes came in carrying more boxes of random car accessories and just dumped them on the floor. The dudes seemed very suspicious of the three white people inside the “store”.
This is not some kind of anti-Catholic Church rant. I don’t have anything against it.
When I lived in Taiwan in the late 70’s, the Catholic church there laundered money. How do I know? Because they regularly laundered my money!
Let me explain. At the time, the government had strict controls on money leaving the country. I was working and saving quite a bit of money. Even though I was teaching at a university, I was paid in cash. just like almost everyone else in the country.
Of course there was a Black Market downtown, but they would only change your Taiwan Dollars for US Dollars. And customs would bust you at the airport if you were taking too much money out.
The Catholic Church had a much better deal. You didn’t actually go to a church. They had an office just down the way from the main train station. They occupied the whole 5 floor building. A sign on the first floor door said, “Catholic Church of Taiwan” or something to that effect. On the third floor was Father Gerardi’s office. He would take your Taiwan Dollars and deposit the US Dollar equivalent in your US Dollar bank account in Hong Kong. In a week or so I would receive a statement from my HK account. He did this for me (and many others) for years. The office door was always open. There was no secret knock or anything. There was a small waiting room outside his office. I’ll never forget the time the guy ahead of me said, " I’ve got quite a bit today, Father", to which he replied, “How much have you got?”. The guy said he had a million Taiwan Dollars. He had a huge suitcase! If you wanted US cash, the good Father would simply open his drawer in which it seemed he had thousands of US Dollars.
I doubt they are still there today. Currency controls are much looser now
This one (oddly) doesn’t exist anymore, but was around for the first fifteen years of my life in Columbus. Casa di Pasta was a HUGE restaurant just north of campus that had quite possibly the WORST Italian food I’ve ever eaten. There was never anyone there on the giant patio, even in gorgeous weather. My friends and I went there once. I ordered chicken piccata, which was something like $13. It was a single plain white chicken breast, no golden brown and delicious whatsoever, in a puddle of weak lemony broth, with maybe five capers, and a side of pasta on what I swear was a coffee saucer. It all tasted vaguely like dish soap. And somehow, this place stayed open for over a decade. I’m not even sure how long, since I’m pretty sure it was there when I moved here.
One would think that a mob front would have better Italian food, at least.
A friend who lived in Glendale (CA) once mentioned going to his local Mexican restaurant and ordering the “10-cent green burrito” (a dime bag) on a regular basis until the place got busted.
Also, I’ve read enough stories about “chiropractors” and “therapeutic massage” places being fronts for prostitution that I am now suspicious of the massage place two doors down from my dentist’s office. I’ve never seen anyone go in or out.
Whenever I’m in a well-maintained resturant, with almost no business, I wonder if it’s a laundering operation. There may be a lot of reasons for such a circumstance, of course, but it’s a question. And the longer the business stays in operation without enough apparant business to justify it, the more I’m convinced that it’s the case.
There is an abandoned motel in my hometown here in Northern Virginia that has had a sign out front for as long as I can remember that says “Filmdex”. There are always a few random cars in front, but there’s a rusty, locked fence around the whole operation. Some people speculate porn is being filmed there, some say it’s an interrogation office for the CIA. But I’ve never known anyone who can say what Filmdex actually does and it would be the oddest location and building in the world for a film processor if that’s what the name implies.
There was a chili place near where I went to college that had to be a front for something. No one I ever met went there, I never saw customers entering or leaving, I never saw any advertisements for it, nothing. But they were always open, jealously guarding their parking lot. I had to be a front for something.
They owned the whole parking lot next to the building, and they had a tow company on call in case anyone parked there. There was a chinese place behind them, but you had to park on the street if you went there cuz parking in that lot garunteed you’d be towed in minutes.
I always had suspicions about a sandwich shop in my neighborhood. I never saw any people in there eating and no one I know ever mentioned having a meal there. They recently closed and a new BBQ restaurant just opened.
Like we need another one of those in Kansas City! :dubious:
I noticed a place recently on the way home. The sign says it’s a pool cue store. How can any business stay in business selling such a specialized item? It’s not even a Scotch Tape Store–at least everyone uses tape!
I haven’t been in to check things out though. Maybe there’s a bigger market for pool around here than I think.
When I was in high school I worked at a deli where the boss was running numbers in the back room.
Around that same time (mid '80s) a different employer returned from a beach vacation with his family (Cape Cod? Jeresey Shore? don’t remember) and said while they were strolling along they went into a glitter store. A regular retail store that sold nothing but glitter. Different colors , and all, but just one jar of each and still nothing but glitter. Other than a guaranteed tax write-off I cannot see how a glitter store could be anything but a front for something else actually profitable.
In the early 1990s, there were a bunch of dart stores in Buffalo. I have no idea how they made a profit. Still, I don’t know if they were fronts or not; they actually advertised in newspapers and on the radio.
In the Denver neighborhood where I lived for a few years, there was a pinata store. Sold nothing but pinatas. Despite the fact that the neighborhood was gentrifying, and the remaining Mexican-Americans were cashing out and moving to Brighton, the pinata store actually moved into a new, larger building while I was living there. Never say anyone leave the store with a pinata, though, much less parked in front.
Maybe that was their business. Set up a nice tempting parking lot, then have anyone who uses it towed. You can make a deal to split the impound fee with the towing company. In some cities, towing companies are allowed to charge outrageous fees for you to recover your car, so this could be quite profitable.
Growing up in Philadelphia, there was a pizza place. Good pizza.
It was a well known fact that the local Italian restaurant supply warehouse was mob-run. It was a well known local urban legend that if a pizza parlor stacked pizza dough trays in the front window, they were supplied by this warehouse and by assumption was mob-run as well. This particular Franco’s pizza stacked their dough trays.
About a year later, another pizza parlor opened doors in the same strip mall. It burned down to the ground less than a month after opening.
Locally here in Tampa, there is a store called the “House of Beads”. I think they sell used cars there or something. Anyway, I don’t see a great need for beads here other than the annual Gasparilla festival, and certainly not enough to sustain a business selling nothing but used cars – I mean beads.
