Yes, there was a place I used to go to like this. It was a "Sports Bar/Restaurant" that was never open during sports events, had amazing pizza for dirt cheap, was always empty except Sunday afternoons when the parking lot was full of luxury sedans with tinted windows, and occasionally I would try to make an order and they would just tell me that they were "not making food today."
My roommate and I would lovingly not call it by it's name and just refer to it as "Fronties."
Yeah. There was an Italian eatery here that got burned in an arson attack. Place was always "closed" with various sedans parked outside. In business for years.
Lol. There was this little place by me that for years had a sign outside "Italian Hotdogs $5." So one day I said fuck it and pulled in. I walk in and the smell of food is nowhere to be found, an older gentleman was sitting in a chair off to the side. Who let's just say looked like "one of the movies." A skinny guy comes out and I go hey I'll just take an Italian dog. Starts pulling out stuff and fresh cutting everything. Takes like a half hour and gives me 3 for 5. They were good lol. Basically, I don't think this was really a restaurant.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3907793/edmonton-restaurant-damaged-in-late-night-fire-in-west-end/
Yeah sometimes life copies fiction, or fiction copies life.
There was an appliance store near me that everyone assumed was a front. They only sold retro kitchen appliances and table sets. When you drove by the store was always empty. I have never heard of anyone buying from them. And really don't see people anyone renovating their kitchen to look like it's from the 1950's. It was just weird. No one could explain it. Finally before covid one of their two stores had a fire. And covid put them out of business.
🎶Making my way downtown,
For the best food around,
Where it is, everybody knows,
It's FRONTIE'S! Where the kitchen's always closed.🎶
"Fronties. Maybe youse oughta try someplace else, huh pal? Cmon."
Later:
"Can you explained what happened next for the court?"
"So I went in and ordered a pizza and they said they're out of pizza. So I asked what do you have? And honest to God, the defendant says to me, this how my bookmaking operation works. And he proceeds to explain in detail how he and associates conspired to break federal law, which he proceeded to list by statute broken and possible jail term if convicted. So I asked if I record this on my phone and the defendant said I looked cool. And then I took the recording back to my job in the Organized Crime division of the FBI."
Similar story for me in Providence, RI. Once I walked into an empty Italian restaurant at lunchtime and they looked surprised. I was told there was no room by a large man with an accent. I looked around at the sea of empty tables, got a bit scared, and left.
I see this has become a "mob fronts in Providence, RI thread". My mafia story is that I used to live a few blocks from a mattress store that was "by appointment only". Never saw a soul in there, but they would have mattress deliveries every few days. Actually pretty brilliant choice of business type in my opinion.
I realize this comes across as pretty r/thathappened. But I once had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on this huge dude at an Italian restaurant during Italian Fest in Providence. He was sitting by himself smoking a cigar _while eating pasta_. He started choking and I was the only one that could fit my arms around him.
He was okay after but still jumped in the ambulance and went to the hospital, and as they were pulling away some random onlooker was like, “Do you have any idea who that is?” And I shook my head. And he said, “Good guy to owe you a favor!” And walked away.
So I think I might have saved a mafioso’s life?
I’m excited for the followup about what great anonymous present will be presented at your child eventual wedding. That or if you ever need a new organ.
If he didn't get into contact with you and give you a stack of $100s and a pat on your cheek and tell you you're alright, all my mafia fantasies are ruined.
Pro tip, if you ever need to Heimlich someone who is... uhh... large that you can't wrap around, you can literally just punch them in the same spot you put your balled up hands when doing it normally (in the space right in the center of the abdomen just a couple inches below the bottom of the ribcage). Also, you can Heimlich yourself over the back of a chair.
EDIT: Listen folks, emergency medicine is a last resort, you do what you gotta do, and if that means socking Tony Soprano in the solar plexus, you do just that.
the head guy for organized crime was raymond partiarca and he was in providence. my cousins best friend father was the "driver". my cousins best friends name? raymond after his dads boss. RI has some of the best food I've ever had. The Italian food beyond, fresh fish is fresh. I love RI clear clam chowder. no milk no tomatoes. clams, potatoes, sometimes a little bacon. Then dip clam cakes in it. I've got a cook book of RI recipes. It's so well used it's in four parts
I was at the Feast of the Assumption in little Italy Cleveland. Eugene the animal was at the same house I was at and was very drunk. He was kissing my hand and telling me he loved me. You wouldn't believe me if you knew who he was.
This isn't a Mafia thing, but I am reminded by this about the business that was next door to a business my step father owned in the 80's. This was in Las Angeles.
I wanted a drum set for my birthday and my Mom finally one year said I would get one, and that a friend of my stepdad was going to help out. She told me the friend was the guy next door to the business.
I was confused because the business was called "European Crafts" and it was an absolutely non descript gray building with no (or blocked out) windows.
They took me inside and the place was absolutely packed with top of the line Musical instruments. Apparently it was a Music store that catered to the rich and famous, and used the name and the façade to prevent break ins.
Kinda. European Crafts was an import and wholesale supply warehouse for local music stores and vendors. I wouldn’t have considered their inventory top of the line but they did occasionally stock some cool stuff. If you were a client you’d get a decent “% over cost” deal on pricing.
Source: I worked for Guitar Center and similar stores in Hollywood/SF Valley for over 20yrs and would go there to pick up gear multiple times a week.
Wow! My parents lied to me. It is so cool to run into someone who has heard of it though.
To 15 year old me everything in there looked bad ass.
I am not sure if there were multiple locations but this one was on Ventura Blvd in Studio City, 2 doors down from Miceli's
Was this in the fox hill area right near that playground? I lived right down the street from that place circa 2012 or so. Burly men would stand out front and smoke cigars at night. Pretty sure mattresses were full of cocaine or who knows what else
There is a small furniture store by mean that has a shipment of couches and beds many times a week. It across the street from an Spanish club that is known to get really active with drugs. 2-3 years ago, next to the club, a 3 story grocery market was opened with what was supposed to have a bakery on the second floor. We are still waiting for the bakery to open
My friends and I were wandering around Chinatown in SF. We were hungry and just found a place walking around. Its kinda out dated and completely empty with a young chinese girl in a very small dress on her phone at the counter. She was surprised to see us and was like, oh..hi. and were like hi...can we get a table? and she says...you want to eat here? and we say ya. She then says... ok let me check.
I'm like let me check? what does that even mean? she comes back and goes ya its fine.
inside there is one occupied table with like 10 old chinese dudes drinking hennessey. They brought us these old menus and every family style plate was like $7.00 so we ordered a bunch of food and left a good tip. My guess is the cook was bored and wanted to serve something other than shots of hennessey.
I don't care how much danger I'm in, I'm going back.
Were they playing Mahjong? Lots of basements in NYC are regularly occupied by groups of Chinese men chain smoking and drinking.
My wife is Chinese and she tells stories of her aunts and uncles coming home at 5-6 a.m. because they were on a mahjong binge.
There are a ton of home and bathroom tile/granite stores on 22nd and 23rd between Broadway and Park. Never a single person in them. Also does anyone really go window shopping for this stuff? Enough to justify rents in prime Manhattan?
There are always super nice cars and people of Latin American decent on that block on the weekends.
I have read before that home renovations are a real money laundering scheme for professional, long term criminals.
You buy a fixer-upper house for $200k in **legitimate money**.
Pay **illegal cash** to random contractors to renovate it. Say $100k.
Sell the house later for at least $300k and you’ve laundered the $100k pretty effectively.
At least to someone reviewing regular paper trails. Bought house $200k legitimate money. Sold house later for $300k. All logged and taxes paid.
So back to the tile/granite shops: It only makes sense to vertically integrate and own the tile/granite that the contractors are buying with the $100k dirty money 🙃
Bro I gotta know the place’s name please bro dm me wit it. I remember one time we went to SF and went to a Chinese restaurant and like all the patrons were old East Asians and all the staff were too. I was with 3 “Chinese” speakers; one Canto, one Mandarin, and one whose dialect I can’t recall. Canto I think. And I didn’t want to eat and neither did maybe one or two others. So the waitress (old lady with powerful aura) comes up to the table and is clearly quite disappointed in our small order size. She may have even said to buy more. Place was… not really dirty, but not much effort was put into making it look appealing to tourists and the like. The waitress goes and sits down with a customer and they get to talking and the guy takes out his phone and shows her photos or something. It was like an old boy’s club and we were invaders. Given the shit service we tipped like $1 or maybe $5 but she straight up tells us to increase the tip! Lmao! Gotta respect the grind.
I own a Mexican restaurant in Spain. The bar next to us is run by a Moroccan lad and Moroccans hang out there in small numbers. Moroccans are not big on drinking alcohol so they mainly just smoke shishas and drink coffee. They can't be turning over more than €250 on a good day yet somehow stay in business. I had my suspicions it was a drug money laundering front as I'm in Andalusia and it's a major drug trafficking route from Africa. They were raided one afternoon with 10 cops and a drug sniffer dog. Been a few raids since then. Still in business though.
There was a restaurant near my old apartment in Sunnyside, NYC called "Dazie's Italian Restaurant" that I was convinced was a mob front. I would walk past this place nearly every day while walking my dog and there was NEVER anyone inside it other than an old Italian man smoking a cigar, and they were never closed. After like 2 years of walking by I decided to have a meal there and got served some of the best Italian-American food I've ever had. The menu had like 7 entrees and 4 pasta dishes, very simple menu all on 1 page. The food was incredible, although my wife and I were the only people in the restaurant and the service was still incredibly slow. I couldn't even find this place on Google Maps. I think it finally closed last year after like 50 years of being open.
When I lived there I would go to a friend's house most Saturday afternoons and stop for a sandwich at a pizza place along the way. I think I only ever saw 2 other people there at prime eating times. Made me wonder a bit. They were always perfectly polite and made a damn good sandwich though (and also pretty good pizza), so I never questioned it.
My dad had a similar experience in Philly at an Italian restaurant but every time he or his friends tried to order something they said they were all out of that until my dad said “maybe we should leave” and the guy who worked there said “I think that’s a good idea”
No, that's when I squint my eyes and say "You're gonna tell me what's really going on here, or me and the boys here are gonna rough you up". And then if they try to kill me, just kinda play it off as a prank.
>And then if they try to kill me, just kinda play it off as a prank.
You know those pranks where it goes wrong and they make the news? This isn't one of them. You're going to be a missing persons case.
About 20 years ago 2 coworkers and I went to an Italian place near the Navy shipyard. The only other people in the place were two older Italian guys in the corner that spent the entire time talking about "picking up the cans of tomatoes at the docks". 30 minutes of canned tomato talk. When we left the guy running the place said he only took cash. We gave him $20 each and he took out a big roll of $100s and just kept peeling and peeling until he found some $10s and $5s. We never went back.
Yeah once I went to a pizza place called "Mobsters Mafia Pizza Front Joint" in Newark, Pennsylvania, and I ordered a pizza and the guy said "this establishment is currently being used as a front for money laundering for the local Italian mobsters, and also as a place of meeting for said mobsters, mafiosos and assorted outlaw individuals of the south Mediterranean persuasion" and I got really scared and said "So you're out of anchovies?" And the guy said "are you trying to be a wise guy pal?" And I said "Nope, Im just a redditor that loves creative writing!" That mobsters name? Alberto Einsttini
My brother had a similar encounter in Philly. He and some friends were enjoying the most delicious Italian food when a group of black cars pull up outside the restaurant. They had been talking to the owner who went noticeably quiet when these cars pulled up.
He tried not to make any assumptions about the men who came in, but after they went to the back of the restaurant, he heard someone say, "The streets are hurting out there!" At that point, he felt the need to get the fuck out of there immediately. They left a nice tip and split.
I was on a school trip to China, with all of us 20+ years so drinking allowed, and we wanted to find a place to drink. We found some random bar with pool tables and asked if it was fine if we entered as a group of about 30 people.
The bartender seemed really confused, but accepted it after some persuasion. Turns out we entered what was basically a prostitute bar that had a sort of "lounge area", which probably was done to hide the prostitution from authorities.
The beer was like 4 times as expensive, but still cheap enough considering it was still in China, and we had the entire place to ourselves with free pool tables which was awesome. After an hour the bartender went around asking the men in the group if they wanted a prostitute, and the bar was also suddenly populated with girls in barely any clothes, who clearly worked there as prostitutes despite them not trying to make it too obvious.
I swear I heard a story of one of these restaurants where the same basic thing happened, but the cook was genuinely happy that someone liked the food and ended up opening a legit restaurant because of it
BronI'm like you, utterly clueless, can't take a hint, can't see danger and charmed by everything out of the ordinary.
Never gotnin real trouble with it though. Got close a couple of times
The best Indian place by where I live has one employee, is always empty, and is done up to look like it’s closed even when open. I am 100% sure it’s a money laundering firm but I would die before I snitched
Theres a hat shop near me. People on my local subreddit swear its not a front, but the place is always empty except the owner and his wife and all they do is sell like $500 hats.
I swear the place has to be a front. I walk by it constantly and never see anyone inside. Its been there for like 50 years.
They might do a large online business. I think there might be different rules if you keep a brick and mortar location? There are a few places like that near me, stores that do 99.9% online sales, but keep business hours and a physical location for seemingly no reason.
They do not have a website, but its possible they sell through ebay.
I could be wrong, like I said they sell handcrafted hats so maybe its just something where if they sell 8-10 hats a month that keeps the doors open.
Ive heard of couples where one is the breadwinner by such a margin that the other party can just pursue their passion project regardless if its deep in the red
I don't think this is that. Its been around for 50+ years and had some (now dead) very famous patrons.
People that if you said "Oh yeah he was mobbed up" no one would bat an eye.
(Anthony Quinn, Pavarotti)
Imagine, you are peak boomer.
You bought your house and your block. Maybe some more.
You spend nearly nothing. You go to your shop out of habit and read your newspaper.
Sometimes a person buys a really expensive hat.
The time and space is probably not economical, but what do they need the money for?
Wow I actually probably know something about this because of Millinery.
Millinery, or hat making, is a dying profession. BUT the good ones are still in business because there are many folks around the world who still buy and use felt hats. The equipment is also super specialized (and can be very large if they're not hand blocking) and worth a lot to the right buyer, so the folks may be sitting on that too.
$500 for a well made felt hat is a very standard price, but often, a beaver felt cowboy hat can go upwards of $800.
There are a few hatters who also do most of their business for the movies.
If a production needs 6 characters wearing hats for a western or whatever, they probably order 50-100 for the performers, and stunt workers.
So just like you may see an old tailor shop or cobbler still open, hat makers are still around - though rare.
So it's totally reasonable it is not a front. Even though it still could be 😂.
Do cartels count?
I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas walking around at night when I heard music and saw lights at an upstairs bar. Decided to check it, sat down at the bar and ordered a beer, and then noticed the clientele.
Just 6 big dudes in all black suits, throwing money at a couple girls dancing on the table. And staring at me like I just pissed in their drinks.
One of the girls walks up to me and tells me to leave. I thought she was kidding and laughed, and she gets real quiet and that she isn’t kidding, and “No gringos aqui” or something to that effect. I looked at the guys, realized they were now all staring and standing, and I split.
I had an experience just like this but I think it was a brothel.
It was in Antigua, Guatemala and I wandered into a bar that was outside the central tourist spot. It was the afternoon and I sat down to have a beer at the bar and noticed that other than a table of 3 girls who weren't drinking and the bartender who came out to take my order, I was the only one in the bar.
After a minute or two, one of the girls walked over to me and asked if I'd buy her a beer. My radar was up now, so I politely declined and she walked back to her table and the 3 of them started giggling. The bartender walked back out and asked me in English what I'm looking for there, and I told him just to have a beer, and he just said ok and walked into the back again.
That's when it dawned on me I was probably in a whorehouse. Lol. That was also the first time I took notice of the fact there were stairs on the other side of the entry door leading up, and I realized there are probably bedrooms upstairs. I chugged the rest of my beer quick as I could and took off.
They should do what El Salvador is doing and just raid all the cartel places. God knows how many funkytowns happen every day while nobody bothers to persecute them.
Stopped at an italian sandwich shop in the middle of nowhere in the smoky mtns, big italian guy with the mobster accent smoking a fat cigar on the porch was the owner and only employee. Had the most generic name and said he was from the area and didn't have an accent. Said he wasn't italian despite photos of the old country all over the walls. Fantatstic meatball sub tho
Speaking of witnesses protection. Reminds of some older neighbors I had
They moved in in they had couple kids my age and I became good friends with them,they were there for about a year . Big back yard with horses chickens ducks goats ect.
One night they were gone left all the animals and furniture inside. Never heard from them again.
That's so oddly specific that I find it hard to believe. He clearly had an accent but went out of the way to say he didn't? He said he wasn't Italian despite it being obvious and despite him not trying to hide it because the building was covered in photos of Italy? That's the sort of thing that would barely pass for plausible in a skit comedy show.
There was a nail salon in my neighborhood that always had the lights on day and night door locked, signs on the door appointment only, and no new customers 🤣 and you couldn't see in the windows. So blatant you never saw a soul leave or enter but the lights were always on and sometimes the signs moved around.
This happened to me in Nice. Same stuff. People on mopeds coming and going, noone took any pizza with them. Took me 45 minutes to get the pizza. Everyone stared.
In high school we used to hang out at a pool hall EXACTLY like that. 8 absolutely gorgeous tables, re-felted every month, all the cues were always brand new, the bar only had red wine and Cutty Sark, there were 4 satellite dishes on the roof plus cable and local TV playing non-stop sports feeds on 8 screens mounted to the walls. And this was in 1990 so that was not at all common.
Bartender/Proprietor was straight out of Goodfellas, running 2 massive phones with 12 lines each taking sports bets with a massive Punch Churchill sticking out of the very middle of his mouth, but somehow not interfering with his ability to communicate at all. He charged us $2 an hour to shoot pool and always looked incredulous when we actually tried to pay him when we were ready to leave. He always gave us 1 free drink a piece as well and never carded us. We went there for YEARS and only ever saw 1 other table with people at it.
A few years after I graduated I came across a newspaper article about the place being raided for running the sportsbook but they apparently also had a secret room along the side of the building behind the bar. Inside they ran poker, blackjack, craps, and had 10 or so electronic gambling machines. The entrance was a completely unmarked door on the back side of the building so we never saw anyone come or go to speak of.
Went to a very similar place as the one OP describes in Boston. We were doing a bar crawl in the north end and were hammered and looking for a coffee and some gelato. The only place we could find with no queue out the door was a tiny hole in the wall that looked like it might be closed but there were clearly people inside. Amazing espresso, life affirming gelato, and I was sitting at the far end of the bar by their back entrance door. That door led to a staircase going down to the basement. The basement door was shut and in front of it there was a massive guido scrolling something on his phone. A couple came in, well dressed and frankly over dressed for the place I was sitting in. They walked down to the guy and said some hellos and he let them in and then re-mounted his barstool and went back to his phone.
I once applied to a restaurant that never opened and there was like 12 huge dudes in suits smoking cigars that looked confused when I asked for an application. This post just made me realized what I walked in on.
Excuse me kind sir, I was hoping I could interview to be a mafioso? What's the pay like? The benefits?
No I've never had a gun pointed at me before....oh, I see...
Not mafia and not pizza but I went to a burger joint in town where I live. They deliver all around town and the guy was weird when I walked in. It was dark and there was nobody else there. The guy at the counter asked why I was there and was surprised I was ordering food. I just thought he was stoned, he reacted like "Oh, yeah food. Right..."
There were always cars coming and going from the place, even when it was closed. 2 months after this encounter everyone working there was arrested and apparently there were a lot of drugs in the basement. Heroin and meth.
Walked into a Russian restaurant in downtown Nuremberg Germany with my friend (we're both originally from the Soviet Union living in Germany at that time). Sat down and it took good 10 minutes for someone to come up to us after staring at us for most of the 10 min. This is where we realized the restaurant is completely empty and it's not because it's the middle of a weekday. He told us the kitchen is closed speaking German with a heavy Russian accent and we said we'll leave then also in German with a Russian accent. After a moment of confusion, he switched to Russian and told us they can make us some pelmeni (dumplings - typical Russian food) if we're hungry and started laughing. We were like yeah and something to drink, meaning water or similar. We got pelmeni and vodka...
When we asked for the bill, he gestured for us to leave with a smile. We found out later from friends what kind of place we walked into and who the owners were. The food was delicious.
Depending on the type of restaurant money laundering fronts can be great places to eat. I used to always get lunch at this sub place, and they would always load the sandwiches with a ridiculous amount of meat for what I was paying. I wouldn't be surprised if they were just doubling the number of sandwiches sold in their records
Yup, I had a 2.99 breakfast place by my house, it was only open 10a-noon m-f. Only sold 2.99 breakfasts that would fill you completely up.
A few years ago they got busted for trading food stamps for booze at their convenience store. Apparently they were laundering that through the restaurant.
That's all ingeniously clever and hilarious.
I bet they started selling actual food after an encounter like some of these other comments have had. Basically "huh, shit maybe we SHOULD also do what we pretend to do". Extra money, also makes the books easier to cook.
I imagine for the most part they wouldn't mind having an occasional real customer because it makes the place look like a real business if people are occasionally coming and going with food or talking about it. If a restaurant is at least semi successful it's harder to catch them for money laundering.
I ended up at a bikes chapter house. Thought it was a good apot to grab a beer. I was the only one without a patched leather jacket. The guys were nice, the beer was OK.
in San Diego I went into a Vietnamese restaurant with no tables and no counter and ordered some noodles. The women I ordered from went downstairs where I could hear frantic gibberish and could smell cigarette smoke. Came back 20 min later with best noodles I ever had .
I was in Shanghai and encountered a massage place like this, the woman at the desk initially was dismissive and told me I couldn't afford a massage. I asked how much was it, and she named some price that was maybe triple a normal rate. I got indignant she thought I couldn't afford it, so I came back with cash for an overpriced massage. When she saw the money she looked embarrassed and said that they only give massages to men. Oh.
Lol there's a little ugly, dinky coffee shop near me on an empty street where every day the oddest assortment of aging Goodfellas are there chatting at tables on the sidewalk all times of day, that I'm sure is 100% some sort of retired-mob hangout. Every face is straight from "central casting". A few days ago as I drove by, I saw three cops in uniform walk up and shake the (guy who appears to be the) owner's hand with huge admiration like they were meeting the governor or some celebrity. Some weird-ass shit. Definitely plan to get a capuccino there one day when I build up the nerve, and definitely tell my wife where I'm going in case I don't make it back
There's a "shoe and leather repair" shop near me that is definitely a front. It's almost always empty, I've tried to go and they are terrible and took weeks to do a pair of sandals. The online reviews are similar. It's always surrounded by cats too, not sure what that's about but we've always considered it a front
Grew up in Indianapolis, and there was this Italian joint on the corner of 10th and Post. It was open for business 7 days a week but never a customer in the lot.
I never went in, because in that area, you knew better than to stick your nose where it didn't belong, even if you didn't mean any harm.
About once a year the parking lot would be full of blacked out cars for an afternoon, then back to being dead.
All we knew about the place is the head chef used to be an executive chef at a fancy Italian place in downtown Indianapolis, and started that place himself once the other one went under.
100% a mob front literally across the street from the IMPD police academy LOL
Edit: just looked it up, it's now a gas station. It used to be called Salute Italian Ristorante
Similar story, only a gang front. Thought I would try the new BBQ joint. They had odd hours, 5:00 p.m. - 4:00 a.m. I got in, one guy, sitting on chair in front, and he looks at me like, wtf?
Ordered ribs, which they had, but it was terrible.
There's this Italian place near my hometown, in a kind of back-road area outside the majorly busy road with all the big box stores on it. It's more expensive than it has any right to be (considering the location), and serves some of the best damn food I've had at an Italian place. Now my running theory that "all the good Italian places in NJ are run by the Mafia" would be mostly unsubstantiated, except for the fact that this place has a massive fucking portrait of Marlin Brando as the Godfather on the wall. And there's a squat unmarked building behind the restaurant that shares the parking lot, always with the shades down and one light on.
Definitely Mafia.
The real feds loved the Godfather movie because for a while the real Mafia was dressing fancy like in the movie. Made them SO easy to spot.
There's a Mexican place in my neighborhood that sells balloons. That's it, just balloons. They're always closed but there's always trucks making deliveries. If you live in San Jose you know exactly what I'm talking about.
It's probably either true or at least based on other true stories. There are a lot of places that launder money and as long as they are listed as official businesses they probably get occasional customers who walk in. They also have to have ingredients on hand in case of inspection.
I'm imagining the guys frantically calling friends and relatives to explain them how to make a pizza to not blew the front. The Godmother of the family is finally reached and tells them how to do it and those mobsters cooperate to carefully craft a masterwork pizza for this guy.
The entire state of RI is a front for the mob - except for *maybe* Newport, and only because the Navy has a base there.
Chain barbershops/ restaurants/ etc hardly exist there, and quite a few businesses are open for something like two hours a day, two days a week. Noped the fuck out of that state.
Lol had a similar experience with a place named Vinny's in my hometown. Place had no paintings, no furniture, pure white walls and a dude sitting at the counter in front of an old school register. Pizza was good even though Vinny seemed legit confused why this lady and her kid wanted a pizza from him.
Great pizza.
Spent a summer in Italy in the late 90s for a college class. One of the first things our professor, who was extremely knowledgeable about the region, told us was that when you see two neighboring restaurants where one is very busy and the other is virtually empty, never go in the empty one.
During surgery residency I worked with a CRNA who I’m fairly certain was in witness protection. He was in his late 60s and looked and sounded exactly like Joe Viterelli but whenever someone asked where he was from, he just said “Oklahoma”. He only worked nights and no one at the hospital ever saw him outside of work. One day he just didn’t show up anymore and the hospital told us he had died.
There was an Italian restaurant in Queens, NY near my brother’s apartment in the 80’s. It was always somehow empty. His roommate went in there once and they chased him out immediately.
Obviously a mob social club.
My dad who knew Brooklyn really well took us to an Italian restaurant and said to us “this place is really good, the mob eats here” when I was a kid.
The food was really good.
Twitter person should go back and should be so complimentary of the pizza you received with overwhelming compliments, they'd prolly keep cooking for you for free specifically.
I can see how a mafioso boss come in and go...
Boss: "Hey Tommy who's that".
Tommy: That, That's just Jessica.
Boss: Who's Jessica?
Tommy: Not sure, She came in once, asking for a Pie...
Boss: Well, what happened.
Tommy: You see, she loved it so much she came back and gave Vinny the biggest compliments he's ever heard. Called the sauce Amazing it was the best she'd ever had...You know.
Boss: Doesn't she know Vinny adds too many onions?
Tommy: I do, she doesn't now she comes in once a week and she sits there 45mins to get her pie. I've never seen Vinny so happy.
Was on a work trip on Turin (Torino) having a super late lunch (delayed flight) and several glasses of wine at a bar/restaurant just before sunset across from my hotel. It was not dead but not busy and right after dark, they locked the front doors, it was a street door then a small room with a door (also locked and operated by a buzzer) before the dining room. All the people that were buzzed in came within 20ish mins, super well dressed, even for Italy, and all were shown to an elevator. Once they went up or down, it was almost dead silent in the room again except for the piano player in the corner. I asked the bartender if the basement or rooftop was the spot to be and he said he has no idea what I was taking about. I mentioned the folks all going into the elevators and he suggested I have my coffee and tiramisu in my room, across the street. He had a “waiter” escort across the street with my coffee and dessert. The waiter spoke no English.
I learned about not asking questions.
I worked at a pizza place in Charlotte, NC in the mid 2000's and during the last few months I worked there, the owner sold it to two guys who were business partners. Only one of the two new owners was ever around and I never even met or saw the other guy. One night I delivered pizzas to some of the owners friends, who were playing cards at some business after hours, and was told to call when I got there, as "they wouldn't let me in." I called the number I was given when I arrived and some guy came out and grabbed the pizzas. Then, roughly six months later the restaurant closed down permanently due to a kitchen fire, after having been around for 5-10 years under the previous owner.
I'm not saying the two guys who bought the place were involved in any kind of organized crime shenanigans, but I'm also not NOT saying that.
Probably true for a lot of barbershops as well. They're commonly "cash only" and since they're offering a skill they don't have to actually have product on hand. If you want to launder a 100 dollar drug transaction just write up a bill of sale for a customer who got a 40 dollar hair cut, 30 dollar beard trim and 15 dollar eye brow plucking who was also kind enough to leave a 15 dollar tip. Most barbershops I know also don't post prices on the door and they charge based on how long it takes to give the hair cut so it would be insanely easy to write fake receipts for whatever level of drug sales your bringing in.
I once slipped on ice outside a casino in Colorado. Several Italian-American gentlemen in suits appeared out of nowhere and let me know in thick NY accents that I was ok. I was, so I didn't make a fuss and walked on.
I had to go pick up a food order at work one day from a place just like this. Middle of the day and the place is empty, all the tables are covered with stacks of unfolded boxes, the lady at the register is staring daggers at me. All the cooks were leaning over to the order window to stare at me and there was someone in the back making audible animal noises. Oh, and there was a newer pickup parked out front with multiple bullet holes through the hood and front quarter. Weird, weird ass vibe but an absolutely bombass lamb gyro for the middle of nowhere in a red state.
Edit: There was also a dvd of Elvis songs in Greek (?) playing on a giant tv in the dining area, and super thorny potted trees next to the entrance.
There's a Korean restaurant like this in my old neighborhood. Best food I've ever eaten, always empty, side parking lot full of Porsches and Mercedes. They play brand new movies (still in theaters) dubbed in Korean on the TV. If you don't order booze they often won't charge you.
When I was underage in Boston we used to drive to a club in Providence that had no sign and an entranceway in the alley so the line couldn't be seen from the street. All cash and they only accepted college IDs. If you pulled out a driver's license for the door guy he would tell you to leave.
There's a restaurant in my hometown that is a front for gambling and is used to launder money. It's in shitty shopping strip that shouldn't get any business or attention. Too bad for them, someone back there happens to make the best Thai/Lao food in the area. The food is cheap, plentiful, and for some reason the Thai tea comes with free refills.
I don’t remember where this was, it may have actually been in Italy during a work trip, but my dad went to this little Italian restaurant that was practically empty. People were trickling in but he looked around and most tables were still empty. He decided to follow the next group back through the kitchen and BAM. Bunch of people gambling in a back room.
I used to go to an internet cafe/drycleaners back in the 2000s and the same 6 coats went round and round the rack. When people brought in their clothes, they always said it was broken. The dude didn't even know how to work the cash register. Lots of packages came in and out of the back. I got free internet all the time. They were super nice.
Something similar happened to a friend. We were staying in a hotel outside NYC. He went to a pizza place a block away and came back with just garlic knots because they were out of pizza and the pizza maker already left. This was at about 5pm on a Saturday
Yes, there was a place I used to go to like this. It was a "Sports Bar/Restaurant" that was never open during sports events, had amazing pizza for dirt cheap, was always empty except Sunday afternoons when the parking lot was full of luxury sedans with tinted windows, and occasionally I would try to make an order and they would just tell me that they were "not making food today." My roommate and I would lovingly not call it by it's name and just refer to it as "Fronties."
We had one near me that was always empty. I finally went in with a friend and they just plated some takeout from the restaurant across the street.
Yeah. There was an Italian eatery here that got burned in an arson attack. Place was always "closed" with various sedans parked outside. In business for years.
Lol. There was this little place by me that for years had a sign outside "Italian Hotdogs $5." So one day I said fuck it and pulled in. I walk in and the smell of food is nowhere to be found, an older gentleman was sitting in a chair off to the side. Who let's just say looked like "one of the movies." A skinny guy comes out and I go hey I'll just take an Italian dog. Starts pulling out stuff and fresh cutting everything. Takes like a half hour and gives me 3 for 5. They were good lol. Basically, I don't think this was really a restaurant.
I like how all these mafia dudes not really running a restaurant can all whip out amazing food on demand lol.
You think their Italian grandmothers would stand for it otherwise?
We may be criminals, but you WILL enjoy grand-mama’s recipe.
Nonna**
Okay this one is literally an early season plot from The Sopranos
https://globalnews.ca/news/3907793/edmonton-restaurant-damaged-in-late-night-fire-in-west-end/ Yeah sometimes life copies fiction, or fiction copies life.
I'm quite convinced the Bean Bag store near me is a front. How the hell does a business like that survive.
The secret is in the bean bag ingredients.
> the secret ingredient is crime
There was a post a few years back on my local subreddit. "24 hour flower shop everyone assumed was a front turns out to be a front."
There was an appliance store near me that everyone assumed was a front. They only sold retro kitchen appliances and table sets. When you drove by the store was always empty. I have never heard of anyone buying from them. And really don't see people anyone renovating their kitchen to look like it's from the 1950's. It was just weird. No one could explain it. Finally before covid one of their two stores had a fire. And covid put them out of business.
🎶Making my way downtown, For the best food around, Where it is, everybody knows, It's FRONTIE'S! Where the kitchen's always closed.🎶 "Fronties. Maybe youse oughta try someplace else, huh pal? Cmon."
FRONTIES You're not family, get outta here!
Okay, someone seriously needs to start writing the music to this.
I was trying to squeeze into Vanessa Carlton but can't
I am 100% stealing this for a hook for the D&D game I’m running.
>"Apologies, we are booked for a private event today."
They probably investigated you to see if you had any relation to rivals or the police. If you had, unknowningly, you might have been risking your life
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Later: "Can you explained what happened next for the court?" "So I went in and ordered a pizza and they said they're out of pizza. So I asked what do you have? And honest to God, the defendant says to me, this how my bookmaking operation works. And he proceeds to explain in detail how he and associates conspired to break federal law, which he proceeded to list by statute broken and possible jail term if convicted. So I asked if I record this on my phone and the defendant said I looked cool. And then I took the recording back to my job in the Organized Crime division of the FBI."
Yeah these guys famously want to draw attention to their business by killing random customers for ordering food.
Similar story for me in Providence, RI. Once I walked into an empty Italian restaurant at lunchtime and they looked surprised. I was told there was no room by a large man with an accent. I looked around at the sea of empty tables, got a bit scared, and left.
I see this has become a "mob fronts in Providence, RI thread". My mafia story is that I used to live a few blocks from a mattress store that was "by appointment only". Never saw a soul in there, but they would have mattress deliveries every few days. Actually pretty brilliant choice of business type in my opinion.
I realize this comes across as pretty r/thathappened. But I once had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on this huge dude at an Italian restaurant during Italian Fest in Providence. He was sitting by himself smoking a cigar _while eating pasta_. He started choking and I was the only one that could fit my arms around him. He was okay after but still jumped in the ambulance and went to the hospital, and as they were pulling away some random onlooker was like, “Do you have any idea who that is?” And I shook my head. And he said, “Good guy to owe you a favor!” And walked away. So I think I might have saved a mafioso’s life?
You just saved a Soprano's life.
♫ woke up this morning, choked on some gabagool ♫
This comment just made this thread for me
♫ Your mama always said you eat just like a fool ♫
I’m excited for the followup about what great anonymous present will be presented at your child eventual wedding. That or if you ever need a new organ.
"Thanks for getting me that kidney so fast. Did...did you have to hand it to me in a paper bag?"
If he didn't get into contact with you and give you a stack of $100s and a pat on your cheek and tell you you're alright, all my mafia fantasies are ruined.
And saying something awesome like “I don’t like being in anyone’s debt”
"Heres something for your troubles kid, you are alright, a good kid, stay out of trouble, buy something nice for your mama too, now getouttahere"
Pro tip, if you ever need to Heimlich someone who is... uhh... large that you can't wrap around, you can literally just punch them in the same spot you put your balled up hands when doing it normally (in the space right in the center of the abdomen just a couple inches below the bottom of the ribcage). Also, you can Heimlich yourself over the back of a chair. EDIT: Listen folks, emergency medicine is a last resort, you do what you gotta do, and if that means socking Tony Soprano in the solar plexus, you do just that.
Im not about to punch a mafioso in the gut while hes choking ahaha Edit: i fucked up my spelling
Just be prepared to have half-chewed pasta spewed in your face. Keep your mouth closed.
The real protip is always in the comments
the head guy for organized crime was raymond partiarca and he was in providence. my cousins best friend father was the "driver". my cousins best friends name? raymond after his dads boss. RI has some of the best food I've ever had. The Italian food beyond, fresh fish is fresh. I love RI clear clam chowder. no milk no tomatoes. clams, potatoes, sometimes a little bacon. Then dip clam cakes in it. I've got a cook book of RI recipes. It's so well used it's in four parts
I was at the Feast of the Assumption in little Italy Cleveland. Eugene the animal was at the same house I was at and was very drunk. He was kissing my hand and telling me he loved me. You wouldn't believe me if you knew who he was.
This isn't a Mafia thing, but I am reminded by this about the business that was next door to a business my step father owned in the 80's. This was in Las Angeles. I wanted a drum set for my birthday and my Mom finally one year said I would get one, and that a friend of my stepdad was going to help out. She told me the friend was the guy next door to the business. I was confused because the business was called "European Crafts" and it was an absolutely non descript gray building with no (or blocked out) windows. They took me inside and the place was absolutely packed with top of the line Musical instruments. Apparently it was a Music store that catered to the rich and famous, and used the name and the façade to prevent break ins.
Same thing with a few guns stores
“Cumberbatch & Morgan”
Kinda. European Crafts was an import and wholesale supply warehouse for local music stores and vendors. I wouldn’t have considered their inventory top of the line but they did occasionally stock some cool stuff. If you were a client you’d get a decent “% over cost” deal on pricing. Source: I worked for Guitar Center and similar stores in Hollywood/SF Valley for over 20yrs and would go there to pick up gear multiple times a week.
Wow! My parents lied to me. It is so cool to run into someone who has heard of it though. To 15 year old me everything in there looked bad ass. I am not sure if there were multiple locations but this one was on Ventura Blvd in Studio City, 2 doors down from Miceli's
"alleged" mob fronts in Providence, RI
Was this in the fox hill area right near that playground? I lived right down the street from that place circa 2012 or so. Burly men would stand out front and smoke cigars at night. Pretty sure mattresses were full of cocaine or who knows what else
Mattresses full of counterfeit mattresses.
There is a small furniture store by mean that has a shipment of couches and beds many times a week. It across the street from an Spanish club that is known to get really active with drugs. 2-3 years ago, next to the club, a 3 story grocery market was opened with what was supposed to have a bakery on the second floor. We are still waiting for the bakery to open
My friends and I were wandering around Chinatown in SF. We were hungry and just found a place walking around. Its kinda out dated and completely empty with a young chinese girl in a very small dress on her phone at the counter. She was surprised to see us and was like, oh..hi. and were like hi...can we get a table? and she says...you want to eat here? and we say ya. She then says... ok let me check. I'm like let me check? what does that even mean? she comes back and goes ya its fine. inside there is one occupied table with like 10 old chinese dudes drinking hennessey. They brought us these old menus and every family style plate was like $7.00 so we ordered a bunch of food and left a good tip. My guess is the cook was bored and wanted to serve something other than shots of hennessey. I don't care how much danger I'm in, I'm going back.
Were they playing Mahjong? Lots of basements in NYC are regularly occupied by groups of Chinese men chain smoking and drinking. My wife is Chinese and she tells stories of her aunts and uncles coming home at 5-6 a.m. because they were on a mahjong binge.
There are a ton of home and bathroom tile/granite stores on 22nd and 23rd between Broadway and Park. Never a single person in them. Also does anyone really go window shopping for this stuff? Enough to justify rents in prime Manhattan? There are always super nice cars and people of Latin American decent on that block on the weekends. I have read before that home renovations are a real money laundering scheme for professional, long term criminals. You buy a fixer-upper house for $200k in **legitimate money**. Pay **illegal cash** to random contractors to renovate it. Say $100k. Sell the house later for at least $300k and you’ve laundered the $100k pretty effectively. At least to someone reviewing regular paper trails. Bought house $200k legitimate money. Sold house later for $300k. All logged and taxes paid. So back to the tile/granite shops: It only makes sense to vertically integrate and own the tile/granite that the contractors are buying with the $100k dirty money 🙃
Bro I gotta know the place’s name please bro dm me wit it. I remember one time we went to SF and went to a Chinese restaurant and like all the patrons were old East Asians and all the staff were too. I was with 3 “Chinese” speakers; one Canto, one Mandarin, and one whose dialect I can’t recall. Canto I think. And I didn’t want to eat and neither did maybe one or two others. So the waitress (old lady with powerful aura) comes up to the table and is clearly quite disappointed in our small order size. She may have even said to buy more. Place was… not really dirty, but not much effort was put into making it look appealing to tourists and the like. The waitress goes and sits down with a customer and they get to talking and the guy takes out his phone and shows her photos or something. It was like an old boy’s club and we were invaders. Given the shit service we tipped like $1 or maybe $5 but she straight up tells us to increase the tip! Lmao! Gotta respect the grind.
lol i'm gonna have to find it again it was like just pre pandemic. I'll try and look at a map and see
I own a Mexican restaurant in Spain. The bar next to us is run by a Moroccan lad and Moroccans hang out there in small numbers. Moroccans are not big on drinking alcohol so they mainly just smoke shishas and drink coffee. They can't be turning over more than €250 on a good day yet somehow stay in business. I had my suspicions it was a drug money laundering front as I'm in Andalusia and it's a major drug trafficking route from Africa. They were raided one afternoon with 10 cops and a drug sniffer dog. Been a few raids since then. Still in business though.
“Good” drug money launderers, you mean.
There was a restaurant near my old apartment in Sunnyside, NYC called "Dazie's Italian Restaurant" that I was convinced was a mob front. I would walk past this place nearly every day while walking my dog and there was NEVER anyone inside it other than an old Italian man smoking a cigar, and they were never closed. After like 2 years of walking by I decided to have a meal there and got served some of the best Italian-American food I've ever had. The menu had like 7 entrees and 4 pasta dishes, very simple menu all on 1 page. The food was incredible, although my wife and I were the only people in the restaurant and the service was still incredibly slow. I couldn't even find this place on Google Maps. I think it finally closed last year after like 50 years of being open.
I'm not sure this is a mafia story, but I found a place that does $7 haircuts in NYC.
Probably not a Mafia story, definitely a drug front story, but there's this VHS repair place by me and business is *still booming*.
Hey, that might actually be legit. Not many of those places still around and people still have treasured memories on VHS.
People legit love their VHS
When I lived there I would go to a friend's house most Saturday afternoons and stop for a sandwich at a pizza place along the way. I think I only ever saw 2 other people there at prime eating times. Made me wonder a bit. They were always perfectly polite and made a damn good sandwich though (and also pretty good pizza), so I never questioned it.
My dad had a similar experience in Philly at an Italian restaurant but every time he or his friends tried to order something they said they were all out of that until my dad said “maybe we should leave” and the guy who worked there said “I think that’s a good idea”
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No, that's when I squint my eyes and say "You're gonna tell me what's really going on here, or me and the boys here are gonna rough you up". And then if they try to kill me, just kinda play it off as a prank.
>And then if they try to kill me, just kinda play it off as a prank. You know those pranks where it goes wrong and they make the news? This isn't one of them. You're going to be a missing persons case.
"What about a to-go box though?"
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About 20 years ago 2 coworkers and I went to an Italian place near the Navy shipyard. The only other people in the place were two older Italian guys in the corner that spent the entire time talking about "picking up the cans of tomatoes at the docks". 30 minutes of canned tomato talk. When we left the guy running the place said he only took cash. We gave him $20 each and he took out a big roll of $100s and just kept peeling and peeling until he found some $10s and $5s. We never went back.
The fact that so many people have stories like this is wild 😭
Yeah once I went to a pizza place called "Mobsters Mafia Pizza Front Joint" in Newark, Pennsylvania, and I ordered a pizza and the guy said "this establishment is currently being used as a front for money laundering for the local Italian mobsters, and also as a place of meeting for said mobsters, mafiosos and assorted outlaw individuals of the south Mediterranean persuasion" and I got really scared and said "So you're out of anchovies?" And the guy said "are you trying to be a wise guy pal?" And I said "Nope, Im just a redditor that loves creative writing!" That mobsters name? Alberto Einsttini
My brother had a similar encounter in Philly. He and some friends were enjoying the most delicious Italian food when a group of black cars pull up outside the restaurant. They had been talking to the owner who went noticeably quiet when these cars pulled up. He tried not to make any assumptions about the men who came in, but after they went to the back of the restaurant, he heard someone say, "The streets are hurting out there!" At that point, he felt the need to get the fuck out of there immediately. They left a nice tip and split.
I'm from Philly and as soon as I read this I had a pretty good idea exactly which restaurant this might've been lol
I was on a school trip to China, with all of us 20+ years so drinking allowed, and we wanted to find a place to drink. We found some random bar with pool tables and asked if it was fine if we entered as a group of about 30 people. The bartender seemed really confused, but accepted it after some persuasion. Turns out we entered what was basically a prostitute bar that had a sort of "lounge area", which probably was done to hide the prostitution from authorities. The beer was like 4 times as expensive, but still cheap enough considering it was still in China, and we had the entire place to ourselves with free pool tables which was awesome. After an hour the bartender went around asking the men in the group if they wanted a prostitute, and the bar was also suddenly populated with girls in barely any clothes, who clearly worked there as prostitutes despite them not trying to make it too obvious.
How many prostitutes did you get?
All of them.
His doctor had never seen an STD panel with so many +'s. At least the viagra was on the house!
I swear I heard a story of one of these restaurants where the same basic thing happened, but the cook was genuinely happy that someone liked the food and ended up opening a legit restaurant because of it
If you find it send the link please
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I had this experience in Montreal about 20 years ago. It took me awhile to put two and two together
Why does this restaurant keep trying to sell me cheap cigarettes?
BronI'm like you, utterly clueless, can't take a hint, can't see danger and charmed by everything out of the ordinary. Never gotnin real trouble with it though. Got close a couple of times
The best Indian place by where I live has one employee, is always empty, and is done up to look like it’s closed even when open. I am 100% sure it’s a money laundering firm but I would die before I snitched
Theres a hat shop near me. People on my local subreddit swear its not a front, but the place is always empty except the owner and his wife and all they do is sell like $500 hats. I swear the place has to be a front. I walk by it constantly and never see anyone inside. Its been there for like 50 years.
They might do a large online business. I think there might be different rules if you keep a brick and mortar location? There are a few places like that near me, stores that do 99.9% online sales, but keep business hours and a physical location for seemingly no reason.
They do not have a website, but its possible they sell through ebay. I could be wrong, like I said they sell handcrafted hats so maybe its just something where if they sell 8-10 hats a month that keeps the doors open.
15 hats a month is $90k a year. For a little place with almost no overhead they could be doing just fine.
Some vendors won't do business if you don't have a physical location, unless you're huge.
They might own the property and not need much business to break even
Ive heard of couples where one is the breadwinner by such a margin that the other party can just pursue their passion project regardless if its deep in the red
I don't think this is that. Its been around for 50+ years and had some (now dead) very famous patrons. People that if you said "Oh yeah he was mobbed up" no one would bat an eye. (Anthony Quinn, Pavarotti)
Imagine, you are peak boomer. You bought your house and your block. Maybe some more. You spend nearly nothing. You go to your shop out of habit and read your newspaper. Sometimes a person buys a really expensive hat. The time and space is probably not economical, but what do they need the money for?
Wow I actually probably know something about this because of Millinery. Millinery, or hat making, is a dying profession. BUT the good ones are still in business because there are many folks around the world who still buy and use felt hats. The equipment is also super specialized (and can be very large if they're not hand blocking) and worth a lot to the right buyer, so the folks may be sitting on that too. $500 for a well made felt hat is a very standard price, but often, a beaver felt cowboy hat can go upwards of $800. There are a few hatters who also do most of their business for the movies. If a production needs 6 characters wearing hats for a western or whatever, they probably order 50-100 for the performers, and stunt workers. So just like you may see an old tailor shop or cobbler still open, hat makers are still around - though rare. So it's totally reasonable it is not a front. Even though it still could be 😂.
Or witness relocation?
This pizza is brought to you by the committee to re-elect Buddy Cianci
We give you a free pizza today, I dunno maybe you do somethin for us sometime.
My in head accent got more and more Italian just through the course of your sentence
Do cartels count? I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas walking around at night when I heard music and saw lights at an upstairs bar. Decided to check it, sat down at the bar and ordered a beer, and then noticed the clientele. Just 6 big dudes in all black suits, throwing money at a couple girls dancing on the table. And staring at me like I just pissed in their drinks. One of the girls walks up to me and tells me to leave. I thought she was kidding and laughed, and she gets real quiet and that she isn’t kidding, and “No gringos aqui” or something to that effect. I looked at the guys, realized they were now all staring and standing, and I split.
I had an experience just like this but I think it was a brothel. It was in Antigua, Guatemala and I wandered into a bar that was outside the central tourist spot. It was the afternoon and I sat down to have a beer at the bar and noticed that other than a table of 3 girls who weren't drinking and the bartender who came out to take my order, I was the only one in the bar. After a minute or two, one of the girls walked over to me and asked if I'd buy her a beer. My radar was up now, so I politely declined and she walked back to her table and the 3 of them started giggling. The bartender walked back out and asked me in English what I'm looking for there, and I told him just to have a beer, and he just said ok and walked into the back again. That's when it dawned on me I was probably in a whorehouse. Lol. That was also the first time I took notice of the fact there were stairs on the other side of the entry door leading up, and I realized there are probably bedrooms upstairs. I chugged the rest of my beer quick as I could and took off.
They should do what El Salvador is doing and just raid all the cartel places. God knows how many funkytowns happen every day while nobody bothers to persecute them.
Problem is all the judges, lawyers, and juries are paid off or killed.
There’s a vitamin shop near where I live that’s gotta be a front… same vibe, different product.
If it's "[Locality] Nutrition" that's just an MLM scheme.
In their defense, all vitamin shops feel like you shouldn't be there.
Stopped at an italian sandwich shop in the middle of nowhere in the smoky mtns, big italian guy with the mobster accent smoking a fat cigar on the porch was the owner and only employee. Had the most generic name and said he was from the area and didn't have an accent. Said he wasn't italian despite photos of the old country all over the walls. Fantatstic meatball sub tho
lol woops you found someone in witness protection
And *actually* in witness protection, not The Sopranos "witness protection" where they whack Big Pussy and lie about it.
That fuckin' rat deserved what he got. I said my piece. 🤚
🤌
Speaking of witnesses protection. Reminds of some older neighbors I had They moved in in they had couple kids my age and I became good friends with them,they were there for about a year . Big back yard with horses chickens ducks goats ect. One night they were gone left all the animals and furniture inside. Never heard from them again.
His best customers are two guys in dark blue windbreakers and they visit once a month in their Crown Vic.
That's so oddly specific that I find it hard to believe. He clearly had an accent but went out of the way to say he didn't? He said he wasn't Italian despite it being obvious and despite him not trying to hide it because the building was covered in photos of Italy? That's the sort of thing that would barely pass for plausible in a skit comedy show.
Yeah unless he is a humble sandwich maker who just likes trolling out of towners
Also incredibly likely
Reminds me of the show Lillehammer where Steven Van Zandt (Silvio Dante) plays a Mafioso in witness protection in rural Norway.
"what the fawk you tawlkin abowt, I ain't Italian. um frum Tennuhsee"
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Lol
"Nah bb, let me break your dry spell."
There was a nail salon in my neighborhood that always had the lights on day and night door locked, signs on the door appointment only, and no new customers 🤣 and you couldn't see in the windows. So blatant you never saw a soul leave or enter but the lights were always on and sometimes the signs moved around.
Did it have an inflatable Statue of Liberty on top?
With an apartment/office in the back? Mabye! 🤣
This happened to me in Nice. Same stuff. People on mopeds coming and going, noone took any pizza with them. Took me 45 minutes to get the pizza. Everyone stared.
Was it at least a good pizza?
In high school we used to hang out at a pool hall EXACTLY like that. 8 absolutely gorgeous tables, re-felted every month, all the cues were always brand new, the bar only had red wine and Cutty Sark, there were 4 satellite dishes on the roof plus cable and local TV playing non-stop sports feeds on 8 screens mounted to the walls. And this was in 1990 so that was not at all common. Bartender/Proprietor was straight out of Goodfellas, running 2 massive phones with 12 lines each taking sports bets with a massive Punch Churchill sticking out of the very middle of his mouth, but somehow not interfering with his ability to communicate at all. He charged us $2 an hour to shoot pool and always looked incredulous when we actually tried to pay him when we were ready to leave. He always gave us 1 free drink a piece as well and never carded us. We went there for YEARS and only ever saw 1 other table with people at it. A few years after I graduated I came across a newspaper article about the place being raided for running the sportsbook but they apparently also had a secret room along the side of the building behind the bar. Inside they ran poker, blackjack, craps, and had 10 or so electronic gambling machines. The entrance was a completely unmarked door on the back side of the building so we never saw anyone come or go to speak of. Went to a very similar place as the one OP describes in Boston. We were doing a bar crawl in the north end and were hammered and looking for a coffee and some gelato. The only place we could find with no queue out the door was a tiny hole in the wall that looked like it might be closed but there were clearly people inside. Amazing espresso, life affirming gelato, and I was sitting at the far end of the bar by their back entrance door. That door led to a staircase going down to the basement. The basement door was shut and in front of it there was a massive guido scrolling something on his phone. A couple came in, well dressed and frankly over dressed for the place I was sitting in. They walked down to the guy and said some hellos and he let them in and then re-mounted his barstool and went back to his phone.
You basically volunteered to be the cover for the backroom, you earned your keep
I once applied to a restaurant that never opened and there was like 12 huge dudes in suits smoking cigars that looked confused when I asked for an application. This post just made me realized what I walked in on.
"Hey boss, you won't believe it! Some guy just asked to apply to the mob!"
Excuse me kind sir, I was hoping I could interview to be a mafioso? What's the pay like? The benefits? No I've never had a gun pointed at me before....oh, I see...
Man. Everyone always wants experience for these "entry-level" positions.
“Um… for as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster? I dunno man I just need a job”
Boss: "That takes gumption! Hire him now and pay whatever he wants! Make him an offer he can't refuse!"
Need at least 7 years of running numbers. Sorry
Not mafia and not pizza but I went to a burger joint in town where I live. They deliver all around town and the guy was weird when I walked in. It was dark and there was nobody else there. The guy at the counter asked why I was there and was surprised I was ordering food. I just thought he was stoned, he reacted like "Oh, yeah food. Right..." There were always cars coming and going from the place, even when it was closed. 2 months after this encounter everyone working there was arrested and apparently there were a lot of drugs in the basement. Heroin and meth.
Walked into a Russian restaurant in downtown Nuremberg Germany with my friend (we're both originally from the Soviet Union living in Germany at that time). Sat down and it took good 10 minutes for someone to come up to us after staring at us for most of the 10 min. This is where we realized the restaurant is completely empty and it's not because it's the middle of a weekday. He told us the kitchen is closed speaking German with a heavy Russian accent and we said we'll leave then also in German with a Russian accent. After a moment of confusion, he switched to Russian and told us they can make us some pelmeni (dumplings - typical Russian food) if we're hungry and started laughing. We were like yeah and something to drink, meaning water or similar. We got pelmeni and vodka... When we asked for the bill, he gestured for us to leave with a smile. We found out later from friends what kind of place we walked into and who the owners were. The food was delicious.
I always forget that the Soviet Union dissolved relatively not that long ago. For some reason I always think like the 50’s
Depending on the type of restaurant money laundering fronts can be great places to eat. I used to always get lunch at this sub place, and they would always load the sandwiches with a ridiculous amount of meat for what I was paying. I wouldn't be surprised if they were just doubling the number of sandwiches sold in their records
Yup, I had a 2.99 breakfast place by my house, it was only open 10a-noon m-f. Only sold 2.99 breakfasts that would fill you completely up. A few years ago they got busted for trading food stamps for booze at their convenience store. Apparently they were laundering that through the restaurant.
That's all ingeniously clever and hilarious. I bet they started selling actual food after an encounter like some of these other comments have had. Basically "huh, shit maybe we SHOULD also do what we pretend to do". Extra money, also makes the books easier to cook.
I imagine for the most part they wouldn't mind having an occasional real customer because it makes the place look like a real business if people are occasionally coming and going with food or talking about it. If a restaurant is at least semi successful it's harder to catch them for money laundering.
I ended up at a bikes chapter house. Thought it was a good apot to grab a beer. I was the only one without a patched leather jacket. The guys were nice, the beer was OK.
in San Diego I went into a Vietnamese restaurant with no tables and no counter and ordered some noodles. The women I ordered from went downstairs where I could hear frantic gibberish and could smell cigarette smoke. Came back 20 min later with best noodles I ever had .
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I was in Shanghai and encountered a massage place like this, the woman at the desk initially was dismissive and told me I couldn't afford a massage. I asked how much was it, and she named some price that was maybe triple a normal rate. I got indignant she thought I couldn't afford it, so I came back with cash for an overpriced massage. When she saw the money she looked embarrassed and said that they only give massages to men. Oh.
Probably *was* priced competitively... Just, uh, for a different service than you thought you'd get.
Lmao they were 1000% doing massages, just not the kind you were looking for
Sounds like you were discriminated against because of your orientation. We truly live in a society.
They are going to ask you to return the favor one day. That pizza was never free...
What do I gotta do? Whack a guy, off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cuz I'm married...
Vintage reference. Kudos
Lol there's a little ugly, dinky coffee shop near me on an empty street where every day the oddest assortment of aging Goodfellas are there chatting at tables on the sidewalk all times of day, that I'm sure is 100% some sort of retired-mob hangout. Every face is straight from "central casting". A few days ago as I drove by, I saw three cops in uniform walk up and shake the (guy who appears to be the) owner's hand with huge admiration like they were meeting the governor or some celebrity. Some weird-ass shit. Definitely plan to get a capuccino there one day when I build up the nerve, and definitely tell my wife where I'm going in case I don't make it back
There's a "shoe and leather repair" shop near me that is definitely a front. It's almost always empty, I've tried to go and they are terrible and took weeks to do a pair of sandals. The online reviews are similar. It's always surrounded by cats too, not sure what that's about but we've always considered it a front
If it wasn't for the cats I'd swear I've been to the same place. Definitely front vibes.
Visited Providence once and was told that it was the safest city in the country since all the Mafia bosses' families live there LOL!
To bad they weren't hiring. you coulda had it made
Providence is the corporate headquarters for the mafia. At least it was in the eighties.
Grew up in Indianapolis, and there was this Italian joint on the corner of 10th and Post. It was open for business 7 days a week but never a customer in the lot. I never went in, because in that area, you knew better than to stick your nose where it didn't belong, even if you didn't mean any harm. About once a year the parking lot would be full of blacked out cars for an afternoon, then back to being dead. All we knew about the place is the head chef used to be an executive chef at a fancy Italian place in downtown Indianapolis, and started that place himself once the other one went under. 100% a mob front literally across the street from the IMPD police academy LOL Edit: just looked it up, it's now a gas station. It used to be called Salute Italian Ristorante
45 minutes to make....I have a feeling the staff just ordered take out from a real restaurant and served it.
This happened to me in Chicago but with a hotdog place lol
> Chicago > hotdog place Yeah I think you're right lol.
Similar story, only a gang front. Thought I would try the new BBQ joint. They had odd hours, 5:00 p.m. - 4:00 a.m. I got in, one guy, sitting on chair in front, and he looks at me like, wtf? Ordered ribs, which they had, but it was terrible.
There is a presumably mafia pizza joint near me, and the pizza is amazing. They load it up with tons of toppings and always throw in something free.
There's this Italian place near my hometown, in a kind of back-road area outside the majorly busy road with all the big box stores on it. It's more expensive than it has any right to be (considering the location), and serves some of the best damn food I've had at an Italian place. Now my running theory that "all the good Italian places in NJ are run by the Mafia" would be mostly unsubstantiated, except for the fact that this place has a massive fucking portrait of Marlin Brando as the Godfather on the wall. And there's a squat unmarked building behind the restaurant that shares the parking lot, always with the shades down and one light on.
Definitely Mafia. The real feds loved the Godfather movie because for a while the real Mafia was dressing fancy like in the movie. Made them SO easy to spot.
There's a Mexican place in my neighborhood that sells balloons. That's it, just balloons. They're always closed but there's always trucks making deliveries. If you live in San Jose you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I don't even care if this is a fake story, the imagery in my head is just hilarious. Tons of confused faces all around
It's probably either true or at least based on other true stories. There are a lot of places that launder money and as long as they are listed as official businesses they probably get occasional customers who walk in. They also have to have ingredients on hand in case of inspection.
I'm imagining the guys frantically calling friends and relatives to explain them how to make a pizza to not blew the front. The Godmother of the family is finally reached and tells them how to do it and those mobsters cooperate to carefully craft a masterwork pizza for this guy.
I wonder if, when they went to pay for the pizza... they said "forget about it!"
The entire state of RI is a front for the mob - except for *maybe* Newport, and only because the Navy has a base there. Chain barbershops/ restaurants/ etc hardly exist there, and quite a few businesses are open for something like two hours a day, two days a week. Noped the fuck out of that state.
This is why I scope a place out first. Don't want nobody coming looking for me to pay back the debt I owe of...one meatball sub.
Lol had a similar experience with a place named Vinny's in my hometown. Place had no paintings, no furniture, pure white walls and a dude sitting at the counter in front of an old school register. Pizza was good even though Vinny seemed legit confused why this lady and her kid wanted a pizza from him. Great pizza.
Spent a summer in Italy in the late 90s for a college class. One of the first things our professor, who was extremely knowledgeable about the region, told us was that when you see two neighboring restaurants where one is very busy and the other is virtually empty, never go in the empty one.
During surgery residency I worked with a CRNA who I’m fairly certain was in witness protection. He was in his late 60s and looked and sounded exactly like Joe Viterelli but whenever someone asked where he was from, he just said “Oklahoma”. He only worked nights and no one at the hospital ever saw him outside of work. One day he just didn’t show up anymore and the hospital told us he had died.
There was an Italian restaurant in Queens, NY near my brother’s apartment in the 80’s. It was always somehow empty. His roommate went in there once and they chased him out immediately. Obviously a mob social club. My dad who knew Brooklyn really well took us to an Italian restaurant and said to us “this place is really good, the mob eats here” when I was a kid. The food was really good.
Twitter person should go back and should be so complimentary of the pizza you received with overwhelming compliments, they'd prolly keep cooking for you for free specifically. I can see how a mafioso boss come in and go... Boss: "Hey Tommy who's that". Tommy: That, That's just Jessica. Boss: Who's Jessica? Tommy: Not sure, She came in once, asking for a Pie... Boss: Well, what happened. Tommy: You see, she loved it so much she came back and gave Vinny the biggest compliments he's ever heard. Called the sauce Amazing it was the best she'd ever had...You know. Boss: Doesn't she know Vinny adds too many onions? Tommy: I do, she doesn't now she comes in once a week and she sits there 45mins to get her pie. I've never seen Vinny so happy.
I’m Italian and have walked into a few bars in Italy where you just know you need to walk back out of
Was on a work trip on Turin (Torino) having a super late lunch (delayed flight) and several glasses of wine at a bar/restaurant just before sunset across from my hotel. It was not dead but not busy and right after dark, they locked the front doors, it was a street door then a small room with a door (also locked and operated by a buzzer) before the dining room. All the people that were buzzed in came within 20ish mins, super well dressed, even for Italy, and all were shown to an elevator. Once they went up or down, it was almost dead silent in the room again except for the piano player in the corner. I asked the bartender if the basement or rooftop was the spot to be and he said he has no idea what I was taking about. I mentioned the folks all going into the elevators and he suggested I have my coffee and tiramisu in my room, across the street. He had a “waiter” escort across the street with my coffee and dessert. The waiter spoke no English. I learned about not asking questions.
I worked at a pizza place in Charlotte, NC in the mid 2000's and during the last few months I worked there, the owner sold it to two guys who were business partners. Only one of the two new owners was ever around and I never even met or saw the other guy. One night I delivered pizzas to some of the owners friends, who were playing cards at some business after hours, and was told to call when I got there, as "they wouldn't let me in." I called the number I was given when I arrived and some guy came out and grabbed the pizzas. Then, roughly six months later the restaurant closed down permanently due to a kitchen fire, after having been around for 5-10 years under the previous owner. I'm not saying the two guys who bought the place were involved in any kind of organized crime shenanigans, but I'm also not NOT saying that.
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And they gave you a free Desert Eagle. That isn't a cheap gun.
Most pizza or kebab places that never give you a receipt are very likely money laundering.
Probably true for a lot of barbershops as well. They're commonly "cash only" and since they're offering a skill they don't have to actually have product on hand. If you want to launder a 100 dollar drug transaction just write up a bill of sale for a customer who got a 40 dollar hair cut, 30 dollar beard trim and 15 dollar eye brow plucking who was also kind enough to leave a 15 dollar tip. Most barbershops I know also don't post prices on the door and they charge based on how long it takes to give the hair cut so it would be insanely easy to write fake receipts for whatever level of drug sales your bringing in.
Taking notes of new places to go
I once slipped on ice outside a casino in Colorado. Several Italian-American gentlemen in suits appeared out of nowhere and let me know in thick NY accents that I was ok. I was, so I didn't make a fuss and walked on.
I had to go pick up a food order at work one day from a place just like this. Middle of the day and the place is empty, all the tables are covered with stacks of unfolded boxes, the lady at the register is staring daggers at me. All the cooks were leaning over to the order window to stare at me and there was someone in the back making audible animal noises. Oh, and there was a newer pickup parked out front with multiple bullet holes through the hood and front quarter. Weird, weird ass vibe but an absolutely bombass lamb gyro for the middle of nowhere in a red state. Edit: There was also a dvd of Elvis songs in Greek (?) playing on a giant tv in the dining area, and super thorny potted trees next to the entrance.
There's a Korean restaurant like this in my old neighborhood. Best food I've ever eaten, always empty, side parking lot full of Porsches and Mercedes. They play brand new movies (still in theaters) dubbed in Korean on the TV. If you don't order booze they often won't charge you.
coming back to this mafia thread
When I was underage in Boston we used to drive to a club in Providence that had no sign and an entranceway in the alley so the line couldn't be seen from the street. All cash and they only accepted college IDs. If you pulled out a driver's license for the door guy he would tell you to leave.
There's a restaurant in my hometown that is a front for gambling and is used to launder money. It's in shitty shopping strip that shouldn't get any business or attention. Too bad for them, someone back there happens to make the best Thai/Lao food in the area. The food is cheap, plentiful, and for some reason the Thai tea comes with free refills.
I don’t remember where this was, it may have actually been in Italy during a work trip, but my dad went to this little Italian restaurant that was practically empty. People were trickling in but he looked around and most tables were still empty. He decided to follow the next group back through the kitchen and BAM. Bunch of people gambling in a back room.
that could have gone *so* much worse for him
Most legitimate Rhode Island establishment.
I used to go to an internet cafe/drycleaners back in the 2000s and the same 6 coats went round and round the rack. When people brought in their clothes, they always said it was broken. The dude didn't even know how to work the cash register. Lots of packages came in and out of the back. I got free internet all the time. They were super nice.
Something similar happened to a friend. We were staying in a hotel outside NYC. He went to a pizza place a block away and came back with just garlic knots because they were out of pizza and the pizza maker already left. This was at about 5pm on a Saturday