It’s one of the three mattress stores within 2 blocks of each other, but I’m not sure which one.
Hint: it’s all of them.
Just one? Knowing how expensive commercial rent is in this area, I’m pretty sure quite a few of the stores around here are fronts. No way this town supports 12 different nail salons. There’s a taco shop and a greek place in the same shopping center that both taste terrible and are always completely empty. How does a vacuum and sewing repair shop stay in business in this day and age?
How does a vacuum and sewing repair shop stay in business in this day and age?
Commercial repairs, probably.
Lots of people are having their stuff repaired instead of disposing and buying new. Those tailors custom fit your clothes, do embroidery and patching, in addition to repairs. Shoe repair shops will restore leather, resole boots, and give them all a good shine. I’ve never had a vacuum repaired, but they’re pricey enough that I’d definitely try repair before buying a new one. Check out your local repair shops. They probably do good work, because they get a lot more practice than you might think.
When i see rent in some places i always have to do some math to figure out how much money they have to make to pay rent and one or two salaries. And i often don’t get it. There is an old town that is kinda nice, but not that much foot traffic, and rent is insane because it’s in the middle of an old town. Many stores and restaurants open and then close again, because they go under. But there is a computer store that is open as long as i can remember. And not like a cool hacker, i’ll sell you an rtx 5090 shop, a shop that still has a y2k sticker on the window and they still sell you McAfee for your pc. Absolutely bizzare
Used to be a Pizza place in my home town that had $1 large pizza on Wednesday no limit, they were the worst pizza in town, but they were packed every week. It went on for years then they got shut down turns out they were using the increase in foot traffic to cover people coming in to buy drugs.
Bakery across from prisoners rights office I used to volunteer at. Went to get a loaf to make a sandwich once. Open shelving all around, mostly bare except for a few dusty loaves. Ask this big, very white man with a head like a four-slice toaster, for said loaf and he goes in the back and comes out with a bag of Wonderbread rofl.
We have a local chain of antique shops, very high-end
Never see anyone come or go
We’re lousy with antique shops here, but there is this one that is only open two days a week, for a few hours. They just sell thrift store quality junk and discounted (new) disposable kitchenware. They start cleaning 30 minutes before “closing time” and don’t let you in the store.
There is a possibility that all of their real business is online and they just keep the storefront open with the crap stuff so they can claim to be a brick and mortar store.
Unless they’re a distributor or operating under a different name online I can’t seem to find anything
Their 3 separate ornate stores in a town with a population less than 20k do not direct anyone online
businesses that only accept cash are a telltale sign of laundering.
Not necessarily. They could just be declaring 1/2 transactions or something. Which would just be a form of tax evasion I think ?
There was a printing shop where I used to live. This was back in 2017ish. I lived there 3 years, and would walk by it all the time bcz i lived close by. I never saw a single customer go in there in the three years I lived there. They were money laundering.
I’ve never physically been in a print shop in my whole life but I’ve certainly used them many times by phone/mail/web.
The auction centre every time they sell art (or whatever some of that stuff is supposed to be).
The “Water and Donut Store” where they get mad if you ask for donuts, say it’s not the right time of day for donuts (all times of day/night are the wrong time, but there are always three or four stale, lonely donuts in the large glass donut cases) and have a station where you may, for a small fee, fill your water jugs with minimally filtered tap water. 🤨
say it’s not the right time of day for donuts
This feels like it’s taken right out of a video game.
There’s a psychic/tarot reader on the highway near me that’s been around as long as I can remember, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car parked out front.
No no that’s a failed cult. Quite different.
A failed cult would actually fail at some point, as in run out of money and lose the property.
These guys? Nope. I’m not sure a nuclear holocaust would uproot them at this point.
It’s pretty clever if it is a money laundering front actually because a “business” like that doesn’t really do anything that generates much paperwork and can claim it charged imaginary customers any amount it wants without having to justify it.
There are three recently opened smoke and vape shops in my village that are 100% money laundering schemes, they all sell American sweets as well for some reason
Once lived in a small town with not one, but TWO Hollywood Videos. In like the late 20-teens. Just napkin math numbers, you’d need every household in the town to rent a video twice a week to support both of those just maintaining their leases… Over a decade into the age of streaming dominance.
There was no way they weren’t doing something shady on the side.
😎 current U.S. presidential administration 😎
That one is easy to prove.
Subway?
My town has a population of about 2,000 people. There are five dedicated car washes within a 10-mile radius of my house, with two more under construction.
I honestly do not understand car washes and how they are supposed to turn a profit.
Biggest cost is the startup and then employees, with an occasional big maintenance repair. Buying cleaning products in bulk? The cost will make you feel cheated for what you pay for a quart to a gallon.
I get that, i used to service a small-ish car wash, and the amout of times something broke or didn’t work or the cost of osmosis filters alone was staggering to me. Always thinking about how many people would have to wash a car to just get that money back.
With drug money, duh.
Haven’t you seen Breaking Bad?
The drug trade is a trillion dollar industry. Got to wash them somewhere. Where better than at a washer?
Yup. Really easy to stuff some cash in the till and declare it as income with a car wash. Actually clean 100 cars a day? Buy enough cleaning supplies for 130 cars. Report on your records that you sold 130 washes. Dump the excess chemicals down the drain or just use them abundantly during washes. Sure, if you claim to wash a thousand cars when you only washed 100, then that could get you caught quickly. But if you’re not greedy, you could keep such a setup going for a very long time.
