this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
576 points (98.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43950 readers
1106 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)