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.
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)
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?
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.
I once knew someone who was in deep trouble with a gambling debt. Then his brother won the lottery, and gave him the money to pay off his debts, and enough money to find a way to find a decent career so he wouldn’t get in more trouble.
The guy ended up buying a restaurant but didn’t hire any employees. Instead, he decided he and his wife would work there (neither had any cooking training or entrepreneurship education). It was in an industrial area in a strip plaza, all he had to do was like pizza slices for takeout or something and it would’ve been fine. Instead he wanted it to be a restaurant, but it was a mess.
Needless to say it started failing almost immediately. He hired an illegal immigrant and paid her unfairly, cash under the table. His wife was also severely obese and couldn’t stand for long, so he ended up getting his brother and sister in law to work at this dog shit place for free (yeah, the same guy who gave him the money in the first place).
Then he made a deal with the mafia to close off a back section of the restaurant for them to use for organizing gambling. No one was ever allowed in there, it was basically just their private room.
I don’t even know if the place is still open anymore, or what happened after that. I lost all ties to that place long ago.
Edit: I just looked it up and it’s closed, unsurprisingly. I’m not sure if he was caught or ran out of money. It could really be 50/50. The guy was so connected, he got a major newspaper to write a piece about the restaurant back when it first opened. Still blows my mind.
That man’s on the bottom of a river.
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.
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.
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.
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
It’s gone now but for a long time we had a 24hr fruit shop.
I used to live in a town with no less than three scuba shops.
It was not on the water.
I live in Vegas.
Where do I even begin???
Mattress firm
I’m seeing a pattern here.
Our small, rural town had a bar change hands a couple times over the past few years. One day several murdered out Mercs, one an AMG, start parking in front of it. Not to stereotype, but they were greased up, wearing tracksuits and gold chains, guys from the Balkans are driving those cars and operating the bar. Never went in while they were around, but within a year, one of those guys got caught by DEA trying to move some serious weight of cocaine and meth.
The bar shut down pretty quickly after that.
It’s been many years since I was there but there’s a ski shop in Gainesville Florida.
There’s a beauty supply place where the inside of the store is just rows and rows of generic amazon junk. The thing is … that place gets extreeeemely high amounts of traffic and people even leave their engines running while visiting this place. It’s just so suspicious seeing as the place is just a junk-shop for amazon teir beauty supplies
