Meet Don Pedrito, the Schwinn King of East Harlem - DNAinfo
EAST HARLEM— In a garage on an empty lot near 119th Street and Second Avenue, a man known as “Don Pedrito” turns rusted, worn-out pieces of metal into beautiful custom bicycles. Pedrito, who doesn't like to tell people his full name -- "there’s no reason to, everybody knows me by Don Pedrito" -- has been restoring Schwinn bicycles since retiring from a dry cleaner store in 2013. He picks them up from friends in The Bronx... One has a speedometer and another a metal swan that used to sit in the hood of a car, he said. “It’s my hobby,” said Pedrito, 63. “I like to be out here working, I don’t want to sit in front of the TV. ”. He is not out there every day, but he tries his best to open the shop whenever he has some free time, he said. While growing up in Puerto Rico, his father, a carpenter, used to ride the family’s only bike to and from work every day. “I would wait for him to come home so I could go ride the bike,” he said. He started collecting bikes a few years before retiring from a dry cleaner business on the Upper East Side. Pedrito had done everything from mop the floor, repair the machines, dry clean, and manage the store, he said. “I never missed a day of work in 45 years,” he said. Pedrito doesn’t just fix old bicycles. Source: www.dnainfo.com
