Hard times bring big business for pawn shops

[babylonsister]

Hard times bring big business for pawn shops
By ERIC ADLER
The Kansas City Star


To find out how hard, how tough, how economically desperate America’s crumbling economy is becoming, follow Kevin Brandon into the back of his shop.

“Come on,” the 43-year-old retired Kansas City, Kan., street cop says, waving you on back — away from the glass counter with the hocked jewelry and watches and DVD players, into the rear warehouse of National Pawn on East Truman Road.

And there it is: the stuff of people’s lives, some 2,600 items: mowers, ladders, wheelchairs, stereos, bikes, televisions, saws, golf clubs, clothes …

More and more of it is being pawned, he says, not by regulars, but by an ever-growing stream of “people struggling to survive.”

“It’s the economy. It’s just killing people,” he says. “Like this…”

He points to two sewing machines, tells a story. A woman comes in, maybe late 60s, maybe early 70s, carrying the machines. Her husband just died of cancer. She’s broke.

“She never pawned anything in her life,” he says.

She’s not alone. There’s the woman in the $80,000 Mercedes. He’d never seen her before a recent visit, but it wasn’t long before she was back again. And again. She’s hocking her jewelry.

The customers who arrive in motorized wheelchairs — yes, customers, plural. They ride through the door, struggle to stand, pawn their chairs for ready cash and then hobble out the door.

more...

http://www.kansascity.com/703/story/844724.html

[undeterred]

1. better to walk in pain than ruin one's credit score

:sarcasm:

[DesertFlower]

2. it's a sad situation.

the other day i went to get my hair touched up. business has been bad for the salon. i asked "is business any better"? the owner said "let's put it this way, it hasn't gotten any worse". i was the only customer in the salon.

it's the same with the nail salons. these people have mortgages or rent to pay and they've got to eat too. my nail girl is a single mom with 2 teenage daughters.

[Sequoia]

3. Pawn shops, eh.

There's this town in California called Windsor who doesn't want certain types of stores in their "family value" community. They're building a wall around their town and cutting down over 100 redwood trees to expand the freeway (that not many cars are going to drive on in the fuure anyway because of gas). Here's the stores and why:

Smoke Shops - exposes children to drugs (hipppies, liberals)

Pawn Shops - encourges people to steal and sell to pawn shop (low lifes, riff-raff, cons)

Check Cashing stores - shifty people without bank accounts who need money for drugs (immigrants, Mexicans)

The city council ought to build a wall around their brain.

Oh, but wine places...bring it on....(upscale, church minded, richer people with jobs and family values).

[babylonsister]

4. Wow, that's pretty snooty of them. Wait til they 'need' a pawn shop. nt

[JHB]

5. There's always places like that...

In my area, one snooty locality tried to ban people from performing car maintainence in their own driveways. Naturally, this was pushed by those who went to the mechanic's for even the smallest stuff. And there's whole bunches of communities that try not to allow drying clothes on clotheslines, as if some undies on a line make their big houses look like a slum...

[Sequoia]

7. I dry my clothes on a line...hammock too.

Electric dryers cost $$$ to use. Some lady wrote an article in our local paper about the joys of line drying your clothes and called it "eco chic". No kidding. She even has a dopey website about the proper way to hang your clothes.

[sarcasmo]

6. We have as many pawn shops now as check cashing joints.

The check cashing place has slowed down, no jobs to cover that check cashing interest rate.