Originally Sal and Gloria were going to call their place Zen and the Art of Peacekeepers but that whole “Zen and the Art of” thing has been beaten to death (See “Zen and the Art of Beating Book Titles to Death”).Instead they decided to create two businesses to maximize their street cred.
Gloria never hesitates to put bullet holes in things or people she feels threatened by. It’s a stand your ground thing. Badly parked cars, small yappy dogs, people using leaf blowers and anyone says ‘let’s circle back outside the box’ is as good as gone. (The “Hillbilly” handle is a gimmick.)
Sal, her meat puppet, used to spend all his time playing tunes on his empty oil drums and had quite a following. People would gather in the shop, play with the zip guns and listen to him play for hours.
His actual business is fermented juniper berry juice. He makes and sells gallons of it when he plays. It puts people in a here & now, chop water, carry wood frame of mind and they often dance all night even though he kicks them out at 10:00. Frequently they’ll be found in the morning, sleeping naked in the shallows of the Lehigh River which flows behind the shop.
Unfortunately, Gloria and Sal were harassed by code enforcement officials who said they couldn’t play music in a gun shop where children might be present. The music is a bad influence. They had to either ditch the drums or not allow children in the store to buy guns.
Not wanting to lose half her business or hurt Sal, Gloria simply put up a curtain dividing the shop into two separate areas. To make it even more official, she added another phone line. That’s all it took to satisfy the code enforcement officers, along with a gallon of juniper juice.