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My problem with this whole phenomenon is that the explosion of smoke/vape/candy shops has become something of a commercial nuisance in places. It has a tendency

My problem with this whole phenomenon is that the explosion of smoke/vape/candy shops has become something of a commercial nuisance in places. It has a tendency to degrade the character of a business district when seemingly every other shop is selling basically the same set of products. It can feel a lot like that Lewis Black standup bit about finding a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Same thing happened with cupcake shops and microbreweries in my area. Now it’s happening with car washes. 75% of them will be out of business in a few years as the people who think “sweet, easy money!” discover it’s less fun than they imagined.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Now it’s happening with car washes. Yeah, I don't know what the correct number of car washes is to have, but I swear my city has enough for every car to wash every day with capacity left over.
  - madcow2011 2y ago
    Wait, do you live in my city? Holy cow, I thought it was just us noticing this bizarre trend of carwashes popping up on every street corner...
    - cogman10 2y ago
      A lot of it has to do with taxes. These carwashes are basically just real-estate parking. The formula is simple, buy a plot of land in an area you think will be high demand, plop a carwash on it to reduce taxes for owning that land (maybe pull in a few bucks here and there), wait for the land value to appreciate significantly, sell it for a profit to future development (or another person who thinks the land will further appreciate). End result loads of carwashes doing nothing. Pretty sure it was the same reason mattress stores were everywhere at one point. You just need like 1 person to operate the store so paying their salary is nothing compared to the future appreciation of the land value.
      - smileysteve 2y ago
        More simply, car wash equipment falls perfectly in the expedited 80% depreciation from the 2017 tax bill.
      - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
        Yup, a much more simple version of the Sears model. The business was worth 0, but the land was worth quite a bit.
        Suppafly 2y ago
        The business was worth a lot until venture capital ruined it.
      - Suppafly 2y ago
        Except in my town they are forcing useful businesses out and tearing down the buildings to build car washes. There probably is some advantage to holding land with something that produces some amount of money, but the fact that they are willing to tear down existing infrastructure to build them implies they are at least fairly profitable.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-21/car-washes-are-taking-over-the-us-here-s-why https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-21/car-washe... TLDR; it’s not just you, private equity and a subscription business model.
  - sgerenser 2y ago
    Around here (central NC) the joke is mattress stores. Although I understand they pop up everywhere there are suburban style strip malls.
mindslight 2y ago
I have the same gut feeling. But I also realize it's because these types of shops are one of the few types of small retail businesses you can open these days and possibly be successful, with everything else having had its margins thoroughly squeezed by the highly centralized megacorps.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  That is a solid take. Until you can buy it at Amazon/Walmart/CVS the tiny corner shop is the only entity willing to handle the legal gray zone. You will get crushed once it is fully commercialized, but not impossible to imagine you can make a good business for a decade.
MrSkelter 2y ago
It’s a deliberate tactic. Saturate the market, lose money while your smaller competitors can’t, then return to normal when your competitors are gone. Whomever is left standing gets an unchallenged monopoly. It’s why Starbucks will open stores beside competitors.
- vizzier 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-J2TS13GA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-J2TS13GA
- asdff 2y ago
  That's part of it, especially when it is a national chain coming in that can afford to subsidize a loss to compete. The other side of the coin is that there are areas with non-chain liquor stores on every corner and they've been like that for decades. Maybe the customer base for these sort of stores is simply larger than you might have figured.
asdff 2y ago
Its just indicative of customer desires. These shops wouldn't exist for very long if they couldn't bring in enough money from the local community to pay for their overhead and rent.
- ajkjk 2y ago
  Well it's not just indicative of that. It's also indicative of the lack of regulation for something that didn't exist previously. The shops could exist in a less-unpleasant way... just, nobody has forced them to yet. It's coming, though. Everyone is pissed. (Also I remember reading an article somewhere about how smoke shops are an ideal "short-term tenant" for landlords. Basically they cost very little to set up and close, so they can get short-term leases while a landlord e.g. waits for a higher-rent client or for some macroeconomic winds to shift. No idea how true that is but it's floating around in my head from somewhere.)
  - CogitoCogito 2y ago
    > Well it's not just indicative of that. It's also indicative of the lack of regulation for something that didn't exist previously. The shops could exist in a less-unpleasant way... just, nobody has forced them to yet. It's coming, though. Everyone is pissed. I suppose people could also just get used to them.
    - ajkjk 2y ago
      Sure but why should they? Nothing wrong with people not liking something and therefore doing something about it.
      - CogitoCogito 2y ago
        Live and let live? But yeah of course people can also try to get these "unpleasant" things banned, if they don't have anything better to do with themselves.
        2y ago
kstrauser 2y ago
Eh. There are a few liquor stores near me that are cookie cutter identical. The local weederies are no more of an eyesore than the alcohol stores. Which isn’t to say I disagree with you, just that I don’t think we should judge them more harshly than their more traditional competitors.
dmix 2y ago
You could just sell it like cigarettes/booze at convenience stores and eliminate the whole need for weed shops on every corner, and just have specialty weed shops for higher stuff, like liquor stores. If the gov required a full store to exclusively sell candy there'd be one on every block too.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  As sleazy looking as the shops often look, they're usually locally owned. I don't vape or use any THC products but I'd rather suffer a bit of an eye sore and have money stay somewhat local instead of it going to CVS and 7-Eleven.
rm_-rf_slash 2y ago
There is a logic in grouping the same businesses together. If a dispensary opens at, say, E 14th St in Manhattan, New Yorkers will know E 14th is the place to buy weed. So if you’re looking to open a dispensary (regulatory hurdles aside), you probably want to locate at the place New Yorkers go to get weed: E 14th.
kagakuninja 2y ago
Are you aware that there are many specialty shops that will sell you alcohol, many of them operating 24 hours a day? Many people find bars and liquor shops to be a nuisance; they also sell basically the same set of products!

ceejayoz 2y ago

Same thing happened with cupcake shops and microbreweries in my area. Now it’s happening with car washes. 75% of them will be out of business in a few years as the people who think “sweet, easy money!” discover it’s less fun than they imagined.

Suppafly 2y ago
>Now it’s happening with car washes. Yeah, I don't know what the correct number of car washes is to have, but I swear my city has enough for every car to wash every day with capacity left over.
- madcow2011 2y ago
  Wait, do you live in my city? Holy cow, I thought it was just us noticing this bizarre trend of carwashes popping up on every street corner...
  - cogman10 2y ago
    A lot of it has to do with taxes. These carwashes are basically just real-estate parking. The formula is simple, buy a plot of land in an area you think will be high demand, plop a carwash on it to reduce taxes for owning that land (maybe pull in a few bucks here and there), wait for the land value to appreciate significantly, sell it for a profit to future development (or another person who thinks the land will further appreciate). End result loads of carwashes doing nothing. Pretty sure it was the same reason mattress stores were everywhere at one point. You just need like 1 person to operate the store so paying their salary is nothing compared to the future appreciation of the land value.
    - smileysteve 2y ago
      More simply, car wash equipment falls perfectly in the expedited 80% depreciation from the 2017 tax bill.
    - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      Yup, a much more simple version of the Sears model. The business was worth 0, but the land was worth quite a bit.
      - Suppafly 2y ago
        The business was worth a lot until venture capital ruined it.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      Except in my town they are forcing useful businesses out and tearing down the buildings to build car washes. There probably is some advantage to holding land with something that produces some amount of money, but the fact that they are willing to tear down existing infrastructure to build them implies they are at least fairly profitable.
- fragmede 2y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-21/car-washes-are-taking-over-the-us-here-s-why https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-21/car-washe... TLDR; it’s not just you, private equity and a subscription business model.
- sgerenser 2y ago
  Around here (central NC) the joke is mattress stores. Although I understand they pop up everywhere there are suburban style strip malls.

mindslight 2y ago

I have the same gut feeling. But I also realize it's because these types of shops are one of the few types of small retail businesses you can open these days and possibly be successful, with everything else having had its margins thoroughly squeezed by the highly centralized megacorps.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
That is a solid take. Until you can buy it at Amazon/Walmart/CVS the tiny corner shop is the only entity willing to handle the legal gray zone. You will get crushed once it is fully commercialized, but not impossible to imagine you can make a good business for a decade.

MrSkelter 2y ago

It’s a deliberate tactic. Saturate the market, lose money while your smaller competitors can’t, then return to normal when your competitors are gone. Whomever is left standing gets an unchallenged monopoly. It’s why Starbucks will open stores beside competitors.

vizzier 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-J2TS13GA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-J2TS13GA
asdff 2y ago
That's part of it, especially when it is a national chain coming in that can afford to subsidize a loss to compete. The other side of the coin is that there are areas with non-chain liquor stores on every corner and they've been like that for decades. Maybe the customer base for these sort of stores is simply larger than you might have figured.

asdff 2y ago

Its just indicative of customer desires. These shops wouldn't exist for very long if they couldn't bring in enough money from the local community to pay for their overhead and rent.

ajkjk 2y ago
Well it's not just indicative of that. It's also indicative of the lack of regulation for something that didn't exist previously. The shops could exist in a less-unpleasant way... just, nobody has forced them to yet. It's coming, though. Everyone is pissed. (Also I remember reading an article somewhere about how smoke shops are an ideal "short-term tenant" for landlords. Basically they cost very little to set up and close, so they can get short-term leases while a landlord e.g. waits for a higher-rent client or for some macroeconomic winds to shift. No idea how true that is but it's floating around in my head from somewhere.)
- CogitoCogito 2y ago
  > Well it's not just indicative of that. It's also indicative of the lack of regulation for something that didn't exist previously. The shops could exist in a less-unpleasant way... just, nobody has forced them to yet. It's coming, though. Everyone is pissed. I suppose people could also just get used to them.
  - ajkjk 2y ago
    Sure but why should they? Nothing wrong with people not liking something and therefore doing something about it.
    - CogitoCogito 2y ago
      Live and let live? But yeah of course people can also try to get these "unpleasant" things banned, if they don't have anything better to do with themselves.
      - 2y ago

kstrauser 2y ago

Eh. There are a few liquor stores near me that are cookie cutter identical. The local weederies are no more of an eyesore than the alcohol stores. Which isn’t to say I disagree with you, just that I don’t think we should judge them more harshly than their more traditional competitors.

dmix 2y ago

You could just sell it like cigarettes/booze at convenience stores and eliminate the whole need for weed shops on every corner, and just have specialty weed shops for higher stuff, like liquor stores. If the gov required a full store to exclusively sell candy there'd be one on every block too.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
As sleazy looking as the shops often look, they're usually locally owned. I don't vape or use any THC products but I'd rather suffer a bit of an eye sore and have money stay somewhat local instead of it going to CVS and 7-Eleven.

rm_-rf_slash 2y ago

There is a logic in grouping the same businesses together. If a dispensary opens at, say, E 14th St in Manhattan, New Yorkers will know E 14th is the place to buy weed. So if you’re looking to open a dispensary (regulatory hurdles aside), you probably want to locate at the place New Yorkers go to get weed: E 14th.

kagakuninja 2y ago

Are you aware that there are many specialty shops that will sell you alcohol, many of them operating 24 hours a day? Many people find bars and liquor shops to be a nuisance; they also sell basically the same set of products!