There is a pizza place. We once went in to order food. There was no food, no menu, no drinks. We stood there and asked for a menu. They looked at us like we were nuts. We turned around and left.
To be fair, after COVID some of the diners started to only do delivery. So maybe it was that (most likely not, though)
tl;dr I was wrong.
I used to go to a restaurant that I was sure was a front.
Years ago I was walking home from the gym and I got peckish. I was in one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan so I didn’t think twice about just walking into the first place I saw.
The second I walked in I decided it was a big mistake. This place looked fancy. Nice place settings, real wood furniture, etc. I was dressed like a bum and probably smelled bad.
But the head waiter came out and treated me like royalty. Fresh baked bread, a sauteed flounder that he filleted right at the table and all around baller service at a very reasonable price. I was the only person there but it was early so I didn’t think much of it. I figured that if their food and service was this good when they thought I was a bum this is the place for me. I dropped a 100% tip and decided I’d go once a week and if I ever found a date I’d impress the hell out of her when we roll into a nice restaurant and the head waiter greets me by my first name and treats me like a big shot (aside: the first and only girl I brought there didn’t like their vegetarian options but ended up marrying me anyway).
Ever time we went the place was practically empty. This was one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan but they were still paying Manhattan rent. The food was always top notch and did I mention how awesome the service was? Mooci, the waiter once came back from vacation and insisted that I try some of the moonshine from his Sicilian Mother. Constant freebies too.
We decided there’s no way they could be turning a profit and assumed it was a mob front. Some older NYers may remember when the story broke that SPQR was a mob front, so it seemed pretty likely.
Well a few years ago we went back after moving out of state. The restaurant was under new management and everything sucked. Crappy place settings, shitty generic food and I didn’t recognize anyone there. It turns out they weren’t a mob front. They were just great cooks that sucked at running a business and ran out of money :(
I mean, Sicilian and living in NY, I would suspect it was a front too.
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That man’s on the bottom of a river.
Theres a video rental place down the way from me in Vancouver, BC. First, Vancouver is expensive as hell. Our average 1 bdrm is roughly 3k a month. This guy has a prime location, in Vancouver, on a busy street, with a video rental store. Who rents movies these days? Maybe some, but surely not enough to keep him afloat. It’s not an adult video store either.
I used to live in a town with no less than three scuba shops.
It was not on the water.
For decades there was a funeral parlor down the street from my house. Right in the middle of a busy residential neighborhood in the city. There’s only on-street parking and they had two spots in front of their building reserved for funerals. Only no one ever parked there. No cars, limos, hearses, anything. A neon open sign turned on every day over their door but no one ever came or went.
My parents had a tenant who was an elderly gentleman with few relatives. When he died, my mom called the parlor to arrange the funeral but no one answered. She left a message on their machine but no one ever called back. We weren’t fully surprised because we’d been calling it a front for years, but mom was unconvinced until then.
The building got fully renovated a few years ago and we actually saw a funeral taking place, so they’ve upped their game.
Every single Mattress Firm
I live in the middle of nowhere bumfuct Egypt. Randomly a Mattress Firm popped up in my town. Been there over a year now.
Immediate ??? was to be had.
I have NEVER seen a SINGLE VEHICLE in the parking lot. Not even staff inside. Wtf is this??
Then again there is a pretty heavy cartel family that moved here and bought the sheriff a hummer a while ago so. But they already have a couple well known washing stations for their cash so who knows?
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/676543180
A nice npr segment where they talked about mattress store because there are a bafflingly large number of them.
There are two Mattress Firms across the street from each other in my city. ???
This info doesn’t dox me, because I have learned this is the case in multiple cities.
There’s a microwave repair store in my city.
There’s always one person there when I dive by but never any customers. There’s a neon open/closed sign that changes daily so someone is there.
No clue what exactly is going on there.
I mean, you can try to have them repair your microwave
They may do a lot of commercial or mail in repairs.
I’ve never had a microwave repaired, so I’m assuming they charge enough per customer to only need to do about one repair a week. Sounds like hard, honest work is going on in there to me.
Surely at that point just have people phone up when they need a microwave repaired though rather than sitting in a shop all day doing nothing
In the city I grew up in, there’s a Chinese restaurant near my home that never gets packed, not even on busy weekends. I’ve also never seen more than 2 customers at a time eating there. And yet, it’s outlasted every single restaurant in the vicinity for 3 decades. That, and there’s always an expensive car or two parked in front.
What’s the menu? Big difference between a cheap place where 2 people spend 50 between them and another place where people spend 300 between them. Also if that occupancy is all day every day and they own the building outright they could just be comfortable, especially if it’s also their home.
The menu isn’t crazy expensive (for the area), but not like dirt cheap, too. You’re probably right that it might be their home so they can get by without much customers.
I got a Chinese joint two blocks away like that. I saw someone eating there for the first time for the five years that I’ve lived in my house. The cook is also the delivery driver, and we are both on the same one way street, so I’ll see him drive past a handful of times a night. Not enough though. I don’t think it’s a front though. Just cheap real estate that he probably owns.
In the town I live in one of the worst kept secrets is a small hundred year old mixed use 2 or 3 story building. The Laundromat at the bottom with a handful of old washing machines and dryers is always locked and never actually open. Former tenants have publicly stated it’s purely a front because the landlord doesn’t want to bother with a commercial tenant but because of the zoning it needs a commercial space on the ground level so they maintain a fake laundromat
wat, that has got to be costing them a ton in opportunity cost?
Not really. Hundred year old building, the owner probably owns it free and clear, and they have tenants in the residential units. Getting the commercial space up to code for a modern business would likely be prohibitively expensive, so they keep a fake laundromat there.
Yep, we have really expensive fashion boutiques on the promenade where I live. Nobody seems to enter and shop there. Ever. There’s usually a shopkeeper, female, who sits there all day, adjusting the clothes.
A lot of investment bankers’ wives open up fashion boutiques that see little to no business, it’s a write off for taxes. Not technically a front in the strictest terms.
… and once every three years or so it turns into a solarium or something for a couple of months and then reverts back to a boutique. At least that’s how it works here.
We have those too, but it’s too central and high-profile for them to be fronts. I’ve just assumed that because they’re so obscenely expensive (which they are) they don’t need to sell much volume to turn a profit.
It’s a shame though, because it’s a really nice area, and there used to be a bunch of shops there that were reasonably priced, so us mortals could shop there. It was bustling, now it’s crickets and rich people.
Oh yeah, I wandered in. I was with a group of people that didn’t really know each other. We were supposed to see a niche movie at the movie theater. It was a one time showing special event. It was a group of people that my wife met online that is into this franchise. Anyway, the company that made the movie forgot to send the movie to the movie theater. Or rather, they sent it to the wrong movie theater. They were going to show the movie the next day instead, and gave us all refunds and free movie vouchers. But the group was already all there, so we decided to walk to a local coffee shop nearby. It wasn’t a coffee shop. It was a casino. Casinos are not legal where I live. We walked in, awkwardly looked around and walked out and went to Starbucks.
Unrelated, but their toilet was on the patio outside. Very weird experience all around.
But wait, can you start at the beginning? How did you meet your wife?
In the casino’s patio bathroom.
Oh theres a bunch of those around here. Its not really a casino per say, but they have a ton of state sanctioned lottery games that look like video slot machines.
Have lots of those in Oregon. They are required to sell some food so they aren’t just straight up gaming establishments, but is a semi government-sanctioned way to bend gambling laws. “Lotto Delis” they’re sometimes called.
Yeah, that’s where I’m from. They all got that keno.
I live in Vegas.
Where do I even begin???
There are none that I know with 100% certainty, but there are a few types of businesses that are generally known to be fronts where I come from (and I suspect in many cities), and there are a few specific ones I’m confident are fronts.
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Massage parlors are commonly fronts for prostitution all over the world, or offer “extra” services. This is so common that many of them have prominent signs explicitly saying they do NOT.
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I swear, there must be more video stores than there are working VCRs in my city. And they seem to have kept mostly the same stock of VHS tapes for the past 30 years. They are rumored to be fronts for, again, prostitution.
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I have strong suspicions about psychic readers. There are a ton of them, and many are open at odd hours of the night in places that are not busy enough to get any legitimate foot traffic.
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Gyms are all fronts for…gyms. I mean, the gym business is corrupt enough that I feel like that counts.
Helsinki is, for some reason, full of massage parlours.
There’s a neighbourhood called Kallio that was formerly rather cheap but has become much more expensive and gentrified, and the massage parlours remain. I have no idea how they can afford their rent, as I’ve never seen anyone going into or coming out of one of those venues.
Obviously they provide “extra services”, but I don’t think that can be enough to sustain them. I suspect money laundering from drug sales etc.
Please reassure me Roskapankki is still operating.
Some friends of mine saw them carry a dead rat out the back room and throw it out onto the street while they were waiting for me there.
Yeah, it’s still there, but I’ve not been in for ten years.
I see things haven’t changed ;)
If you are in NYC, usually, from my understanding they are fronta for multi-family kinda squat houses. That’s why the curtains are so close to the front door and you almost never see anyone in there…actually, in all my time I’ve never seen anyone in one of those places. But they’re all set up the same. Pull back those curtains and it’s like a huge illegal house
You’re talking about psychic readers in NYC? I’ve definitely seen some foot traffic in the places downtown.
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There’s a car repair shop that is basically just a private garage, no sign, no ads, but on the regular, you see brand new, expensive cars with license plates from far away being “fixed” there. Always only takes an hour tops.
There is also a known drug dealing hot spot on the car park across the road of the car shop.
