There is a wool shop that never has any customers, in the center of town, so not cheap real estate, and I saw someone go in there after looking in the windows, and got yelled at to get out.
It’s in Switzerland, so shady financial stuff isn’t exactly rare.
Which canton of Switzerland?
Basel Stadt.
Oh, yup, makes sense and sounds reasonably suspicious haha
Not defending this particular wool shop but often those sorts of specialty shops also have an online side. Weird that they would throw customers out though
Eh, it also depends on where you live. I don’t know what it’s like over there, but we have an addiction crisis where I live. People steal many odd things, sometimes because they like them, sometimes to sell them, and other times because they hatch a crazy plan that they give up on halfway through.
We definitely have certain people that are regularly kicked out of stores due to prior misbehaviour. (Assult, theft, biohazard stuff, etc.) Sometimes there’s only so much that you can deal with from the same person, you know? It can get to the point where you just ban someone.
Cellphone cases stores
There’s a road near my house that has over ten barber shops on it. The road is about half a mile long. I’m not sure of the percentage, but they can’t all be legit.
Hey weird. Me too. None of them know how to cut hair either. Are we neighbors?
Also a dozen empty hotels that have no vacancy.
Oh you mean the barber district!
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.
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.
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.
I see things haven’t changed ;)
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Hey zuck you need to be more relatable and normal…
Ok I shall get more Botox and facilitate a human barbeque with humans attending .
When I lived in Daytona a shop opened up that sold nothing but Super-Whippers - $1 plastic whisks. They had two display trees in the front windows, one with black whisks and one with white whisks. They were never open and there was a hand-written sign on the door that said “Closed. If you want a Super-Whipper, they have some at the nail salon next door.” The store was in a strip mall less than 200 ft. from three dollar stores and a Publix, all of which sold plastic whisks.
Pretty sure it was a front lol.
“Super-Whippers - for all your affordable Dominatrix needs!”
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.
Slightly related: I just assume any business that operates on a cash-only basis is commiting tax fraud.
Completely agree!
https://lbry.tv/@rossmanngroup:a/stripe-adds-more-fees-to-the-small:5
Youre part of the problem
OP said cash only.
Like actively refusing card options. Because if you loose a potential customer you may did not have to pay the card transaction fee but also lost their revenue.If you have credit cards as an option everyone will choose it because convencience, cash only is the only way
There’s a small bar in a town near me that has really good food. Their prices are insanely low but you pay for every single thing you add, so a plain hamburger might be $7 but each topping you add 50¢ or whatever. Basically they know their customers and manage to offer both cheap and premium food.
Anyways point is, they have two different prices listed on their bills, one for cash payment and a slightly higher one for a card payment, so that’s how they walk that line
Someones confidently incorrect.
It is convenient. But sometimes I prefer cold hard cash.
Reason: Better spending habits than with the abstract spending of electronic cash.Edit: I was confidently incorrect while writing ;)
The thing is that the video I linked is from someone who likes to vote with his money, people like that will only accept cash
There are good reasons
P.S its “confidently incorrect” not “confidently wrong”
Thanks for the P.S. edited it!
Tbf if I ran a business I would probably go cash only because payment processors have become somewhat predatory.
Why not add a cash discount? Charge slightly more for credit card transactions to cover the fees. I actually wonder why more haven’t done this.
Thats fair. The working class has to work outside the law to make it but corporations are able to brutally fuck us in a legal manner.
The old pizza place used to be owned by a big drug dealer and you could rig up, order a special topping o. The top and you could get weed over the counter.
Then my local chicken fast food restaurant did the same but you got to go through the drive Thu.
They had to close it down and deep clean because they were selling everything lol.
At least one of the three lamp stores within two miles of each other here. mf i’ve never seen anyone walk into a lmap store in my life, have you?
Pretty to drive past at night though
Could simply be they supply contractors and ship to them?
When I was in Seattle there is this pizza place in a suburban neighborhood that only open for 3 hours 4 days a week from 2:00 to 5:00. All of the workers were the same ones every day and they all three looked no nonsense but friendly enough when you ordered .
The pizza was really good and the calzones were fantastic, so I would go there often, but I almost never saw another customer in the place even though they had at least twenty tables with four chairs at each table set up in two giant dining rooms.
And they were in and out of the way spot with a very small sign. And I think at the most I ever saw one table taken up when I went there and that was only once.
And I never waited in line.
It just seemed like a really odd disposition for a pizza place that obviously needed to pay for a pretty high overhead considering how much space it took up.
Just as a counterpoint. I don’t know what americna nightlife is. But, in the UK, if there was a pizza/takeout place that inly opened after 12 until 5, it would be a great business idea. Chances are, there’ll be a fuck ton of drunk people using it.
American nightlife is pretty dead compared to UK/Europe, But this was actually 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Odd hours.
Oh yeah, that definitely is weirder. It’s like outside of busy hours. And before tea/dinner.
American nightlife is pretty dead compared to UK/Europe
Not in a college town! I’ve seen entire restaurants sustained primarily drunks trying to sober up a bit and get some food in their bellies at bar time before stumbling home
I guess I’m thinking more of the nightclubs and weird art exhibitions and whatnot, every EU country I was in had events starting at 11 and going to 5am, which is pretty rare across the states even in larger cities. Or maybe it just seems like there were fewer events because they’re so spread out geographically.
I feel like I’m Italy or Ireland, someone was always telling me there was a warehouse rave two blocks down or punk show that started at two am.
Huh I had no clue! I figured nightlife just meant bars and clubs but that sounds like Europe knows how to do nightlife far better!
There was this pizza store nearby that had insanely cheap pizza. It costed less than half of their competitors. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. The price made me think it wasn’t a legitimate business.
Yeah I didn’t even say this but the price of like a full-size calzone like a huge one I think was $5 base and I was like what the heck is going on here
I’ve often thought about what I would do if I won the lottery, and this is it- I’d start a few businesses, not really caring if they are profitable, but just to have access to the stuff I want at a known place and time. Sure you could just own the equipment to make really good pizza anytime, but leaving it dormant most of the time would seem like a waste. Rather make it into a business, even if it doesn’t cover the cost, it would at least reduce it somewhat…
I guess if you like serving people that would be fun, since you know if any customer was rude, you could just tell them to get the f*** out.
No, but there is a shoe repair shop that I wonder about. Is it even possible to repair modern shoes?
Yes of course it is. Those places do more than just repair too, they also do a lot of work adjusting shoes for people who have, for example, one leg that’s a bit longer than the other.
Now, you probably wouldn’t repair an athletic shoe, because those are supposed to be replaced as they wear out, but anybody who has a nice pair of dress shoes or boots or loafers may want them resoled when they wear out because the rest of the shoe is still good, and it’s wasteful to toss them. It’s a fairly simple process that takes a skilled worker about a half hour or so.
The ones I have seen (Germany) usually are also key/lock smiths can replace your watch battery and maybe se other smaller similiar tasks or sell stuff like wallets.
I always kind of assumed really expensive ones can be repaired. Would be interesting if someone could confirm or deny this.
Yes. A good quality pair of “goodyear welted” (the traditional construction style that allows the soles to be replaced) boots or shoes, well maintained and resoled as needed can actually be less expensive over the long term as well as more comfortable and stylish compared to midpriced fast-fashion disposable footwear.
They probably mean dress shoes which can be resoled, polished, resewn, etc. But yes modern shoes can be repaired, I have glued the soles back on a few pairs now that were otherwise in decent shape.
There’s a neighborhood restaurant near me that is unreasonably bad. You can’t tell the staff apart from people who are just hanging around - and you do need to figure it out cause no one is coming to take your order. They’re dirty, disinterested and rude. Food is typically some piece of meat and fries which is served swimming in sauce, and often it’s way overdone or cold / raw. They’re often missing ingredients. You just get the feeling overall that they’re truly not interested in having customers.
You just get the feeling overall that they’re truly not interested in having customers.
To be fair, there’s also lots of legitimate businesses like that.
Years ago I lived in a small town on the edge of a new town in the UK and there was a shop that was rarely open but was piled high with used car radios.
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.
