There’s a shopping center not far from where I live that used to have a Hollywood Video. Yeah, remember those? Anyway, since basically the entire media rental industry has died, the property was naturally vacated. I never gave much thought to what would eventually replace it, but I passed by it recently, and saw that it was replaced by an Advance Auto Parts.
This perplexed me, because within a five-mile radius from this particular Advance Auto Parts is literally two more Advance Auto Parts stores. Increase the radius by another five miles, and I can identify three more Advance Auto Parts. Literally, within a ten-mile radius lies five Advance Auto Parts stores (that I am aware of).
I have a hard time believing that the proper saturation point of automotive needs is a two mile radius per store; this isn’t Sim City, where heat maps can show the necessity for auto parts, and I have a hard time believing that people need auto parts this badly to where there are five Advance Auto Parts within a ten-mile radius.
The kicker? That’s just Advance Auto Parts. That doesn’t include the three Auto Zones, a Pep Boys and an O’Reilly’s Auto Parts also within this ten mile radius.
There are literally ten auto parts stores in this ten-mile radius of Fulton County.
Something about this fact seems awfully suspicious to me. I have a belief of what an abundance of auto parts stores signifies in terms of population, but lately, I’m beginning to think that auto part stores have to be a front or something for illegal activities or something.
I mean sure, auto mechanics are all inherently part criminal for the bullshit fluff they spew in order to inflate labor costs, stuff their pockets, and to overall grief customers in need. But the sheer saturation of auto part stores seems like they exist for a whole lot of other reasons than to be places where people can get a few quarts of oil, new wiper blades, and LED lights to rice up their compact cars.
So the conspiracy theorist in me believes that all these auto part stores are clearly drug fronts.
I mean, all these auto part stores have gigantic warehouse space, and day in and day out, there’s all sorts of harsh chemicals going in and out of the place. Between car parts, chemicals and all sorts of shipments involving machinery, parts and boxes, I have to imagine it would be easy to utilize the shipping routes of these auto part stores and smuggle illicit materials to and from all sorts of destinations.
Maybe it’s because I’ve watched shows like Breaking Bad and Weeds which have both utilized common commercial businesses as drug fronts that make me think that this is possible, but frankly when the day is over, I do think it’s suspicious that there are so many auto part stores not just in my county, but all across the rest of the metropolitan Atlanta area.
I’m just saying that if there’s ever any news in the future where a massive drug front was identified, caught and toppled, and they were using auto part stores as their front, you heard it here first.
