Albert Richwagen III and his mother, Bertha, in their shop in Delray Beach.
Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
55 years ago, Robert Richwagen posed at the entrance of their first store, and framed the first dollar they made (below).
Photos provided
By Ron Hayes
On April 22, 1961, Robert and Bertha Richwagen put a dollar bill in a picture frame and hung it on the wall of their newly opened scooter shop in Delray Beach.
Now, 55 years and five addresses later, that first dollar Richwagen’s Cycle Center earned is still on a wall in Delray Beach, and Richwagens still run the business.
“In 1960, my dad was a tool and die maker at Pratt & Whitney,” his son Albert Richwagen III recalled. “My older brothers were GoKart racers and they needed a place to work on their GoKarts, so he opened a GoKart and Vespa scooter store at the corner of Southeast First Avenue and First Street.”
The GoKarts and scooters took off, and after a couple of years Richwagen moved the business to 205 E. Atlantic Ave., where Starbucks stands today.
“My mom would run the store during the day and Dad would come in at night to do repairs,” his son explained.
Another few years and business was so good that Richwagen left Pratt & Whitney, able at last to make a living off the store. They moved again, to 217 E. Atlantic Ave., home to the Buddha Sky Bar now, and stayed for the next 25 years.
Bob Richwagen’s success was not surprising. A native of Boston, he had learned machine work in high school, then labored as a welder in the Boston Shipyard during World War II. At Pratt & Whitney in Hartford, Conn., where he turned engineers’ designs into working models that could then be manufactured, he was part of the team that built a periscope used in America’s first nuclear submarine.
Now he brought that same ingenuity to his bike shop.
In the early 1960s, the Beach Boys sang “Let’s go surfing now, everybody’s learning how.” Delray’s teenagers were among those learning how, so Richwagen designed the “Richie,” a handmade surfboard he made at the shop and sold along with Raleigh bicycles. (You can see a rare surviving Richie at the Delray Beach Surfing Museum, 255 N. Federal Highway.)
When the surfing fad faded, Richwagen noted the area’s growing number of retirees and designed a three-wheeled bicycle for adults.
Bob Richwagen died of a heart attack on July 8, 1988, at 59. His widow, Bertha, took over the business with sons Paul and Albert, and Richwagen’s Cycle Center was renamed Richwagen’s Bike & Sport a year later.
“When I took over, we were the only Raleigh dealer around,” Albert Richwagen says. “I still have my Raleigh Chopper from when I was a kid, hanging on my living room wall.”
The business moved to 32 SE Second Ave. for a couple of years, then to 401 NE Second Ave., by the railroad tracks, for two more. In 2007, it came to the current location, 298 NE Sixth Ave., at the corner of Third Street.
Addresses are not the only thing that’s changed in the 55 years since Bob Richwagen framed that first dollar.
The GoKarts, Vespas and Raleighs are gone. Today, Richwagen’s sells mainly the Electra line, along with a few Schwinns, as well as powerboards.
The cost of a good bike has gone way up, with prices ranging from $249 to $5,000.
And the number of kids who ride bikes has gone way down.
“To be honest,” Richwagen says, “bike riding for kids has been on the decline for several years.”
In August, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the good news that bicycle deaths among children 15 and under had plummeted 92 percent since 1975.
Safety helmets helped, of course, but more significant, the number of children who rode bikes to school dropped from 48 percent in 1969 to a mere 13 percent 40 years later, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School.
And those kids’ good old American bikes aren’t even American anymore.
“Every bike under $1,000 is made in Japan, China or Taiwan,” Richwagen says.
But some things remain.
At 79, Bertha Richwagen still shows up for work on Saturdays and holidays, and the Richwagens take pride in giving back to the community that’s supported them for 55 years.
The store participates in bike safety rodeos at Spady and Pine Grove elementary schools and the Bike Valet service at the city’s weekly green market.
Working with Human Powered Delray, a local nonprofit, Richwagen’s rehabilitates bicycles confiscated by the Delray Beach Police Department, after which they’re given to needy and deserving students at Toussaint L’Ouverture High School for Arts and Social Justice.
In addition, Sandoway House Nature Center, St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School and Unity School have had Richwagen bikes donated for fundraising raffles.
“It’s the give-back,” Albert Richwagen says, “the paying forward.”
And now, the looking forward.
“I don’t plan on moving,” he says. “I want to expand.”
Even with a store boasting 3,000 square feet, Richwagen feels cramped.
“The only way to get a good deal on bikes is to buy 75 or 100 at a time,” he says, “so I have off-site storage I’m paying for.” And about 100 rental bikes live in the fenced yard behind the store.
“I’d like to build another building back there, with a mezzanine for storage, move the repair shop back in there and make this all one showroom,” he says.
The bike business, and bikes themselves, have come a long way since a tool and die maker from Boston started selling GoKarts in 1961, and his son is pedaling right along with the changes.
“Nowadays, the guys who are selling a lot of really high-priced road bikes, they have an espresso machine, a bar, leather couches and a computerized fit station to customize the bike to your body,” Richwagen reports. “I’d love to add that addition and then create a fit station and relaxing area for our customers.”
But that’s not what he loves about the business.
“Bikes are the breeze in your face,” he says. “When you’re in a car, you’re in a capsule. On a bike, you take it all in. You’re smelling it, hearing it, feeling it. It’s all green.
“I could get to the beach faster on a bike than you can in your car.”
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