CarrollBlog

I'm always interested in oriental rug stores. I don't like oriental rugs, but find the stores fascinating. No matter what town I am in, whether it be Szczecin, Poland, Santa Barbara, or Salzburg they are almost always the same: Empty of customers, full of stacks of hundreds of uninteresting rugs, and inevitably over in a corner of the store no matter how big or small it is, one or at most two mustachioed men sitting at a cluttered desk looking glumly out onto the street. None of these stores, NONE, ever seem to do any business. None of them ever seem to have any customers. Generally half of them have giant yellow signs in the window stating they are going out of business and everything inside is between 50-70% off. But there are at least three Oriental rug stores in my neighborhood alone which have posted those signs in their windows on and off over the past twenty years but have never gone out of business. They just take them down after a while and go on as usual. Closing sale finished. Nor has new management taken over. I am convinced these stores are all members of a huge worldwide underground conspiracy/ring which is up to no good. They only use rugs as their cover while all the naughty dealings go on in the back rooms. Or behind the desk between the mustachioed men.