Hock Talk

 

Vice: How’s the recession treating you?

Ralf Karlberg: I’m going to take a guess: Your inventory is mostly jewelry. Are people having a harder time buying stuff back from you? Has anyone tried to pawn a giant ball of pubes or something equally troubling? What’s the most valuable thing someone has tried to get rid of? I hear that in New York, trophy wives are so paranoid about their husbands losing their jobs and divorcing them that they buy expensive furs and then go around the corner to sell them with the tags still attached. It’s like they’re creating their own pension fund. Does that happen here at all?

 

Vice: It looks like business is good.

Pere Arnau: Since when? Maybe all those clever bankers should copy the pawnshop business model. Has your clientele changed much since the money meltdown? What crap are the rich looking to unload? Or it was stolen.
Has anything weird come in recently? So no dirty stripper dildos and no deadly weapons?
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t seem like the type of person who feels bad when everyone else is taking it in the ass.

CONTINUED:
A PAWNSHOP IN… New York | Mexico City & Brussels | Amsterdam & Vienna | Paris & Milan | Berlin & São Paulo | Helsinki & Barcelona | Melbourne & Tokyo | Vancouver & Aukland | Stockholm & London |