The john wick world vibes are pretty impeccable but it's very funny to imagine a normal person stumbling into one of the assassin hotels and trying to buy a drink with their visa
I'm told this happens in real life when people stumble into businesses that are really just fronts for organized crime, and try to order a pizza or whatever.
I used to go to a Turkish takeaway place with a back room for drinking and gambling, visible if you peeked around the counter. Rumor had it the cops turned a blind eye in exchange for free food. But I think they made most of their money serving greasy pizza to the inebriated.
In all the years I visited the cool shops & restaurants that surrounded this place, I never saw it open. It was a running joke in Portland to speculate about what was actually going on.
My family moved into that neighborhood in the 70s, and Dixie Mattress was there. I dropped off a mattress there in the mid aughts. It was very weird. Kinda glad it’s gone.
That Trio Club at SE Burnside & 8th (or thereabouts) is another one I & others I know have been suspicious of. I’ve seen people in there, but never very many for such a big place in a prime spot
This happened to me at a pizza place called Via Via IV in Providence. I later found out Via Vias I through III had all been shut down for money laundering. Went back years later and there was a new pizza place called Cosa Nostra Pizza.
The origin story for one of the supermarket chains where I grew up was as a money laundering operation. Fine upstanding Italian gentlemen weren't going to sell bad food and it quickly became the dominant supermarket in town. I think they realized it was better to move the laundry elsewhere.
On the other hand, a friend stumbled into a mob front Italian restaurant, ordered spaghetti from a confused “waiter, and after to 45 minutes, ended up having the best pasta of his life
I will not name it, lest I be "whacked," but my favorite pizzeria was always empty yet the owners had curiously luxurious cars! And they made good pizza, too!!! I suppose for some reason, they had zero need to advertise!
I have my suspicions about this local shop that sells cheap coffee, lotto tickets, and the best donuts ever, all run entirely an Eastern European woman in her 50s
I always leave the shop thinking just how much can she possibly make in a day?
I once lived near this off-brand convenience store, which we called the “inconvenience store”: weirdly half-stocked shelves, a lottery machine, and expired food. I ran in once to grab a newspaper and it was, like, a week old. It had to be a front—no other way to explain its existence.
When i lived in Florence a crappy pizza place opened a few blocks away. It had a pizza oven on wheels (rather than built from brick), never had anybody in there and had uninterested staff. Was almost definitely a front. A nearby cafe actually did get busted for being a front.
fuck The Continental, the John Wick spinoff I want is a workplace sitcom about the tattooed greaser women who send the phone calls and eldritch telegrams
Imagine if you went to a John Wick dance club without realising it and you’re trying to impress a date when a bunch of guys start knife fighting and throwing themselves through panes of glass.
I can never stop watching the background actors in those scenes, just dancing away while people with guns shove their way through.
Apparently union rules say that if you have to give actors specific directions they no longer count as extras and you have to bump their pay or something.
I feel like this happened in an episode of Supernatural...
OR it was in a movie with a bunch of supernatural people in an underground bar scene that some normies somehow happened upon.
