After being forced out of Williamsburg a decade ago, a longtime symbol of Greenpoint's grittier past is now getting pushed out again.
Indian Larry, the custom motorcycle shop on Wythe Avenue, will be leaving at the end of the year after losing its lease when the landlord, a metals company that used to operate in the neighborhood, sold the lot to developers last year. Paul Eisenberg, a building manager representing the landlord, told BK Reader that the block had been rented out at a discount to the bike shop and others, and the owner felt forced to sell as property taxes increased too much.
One City Council Member says good riddance.
"After years of complaining, I’m relieved they lost their lease,” City Council Member Lincoln Restler told BK Reader. Restler, who has represented the area for the last four years, was not a fan of the famed bike shop and its annual block party fundraiser that sometimes attracted thousands of people.
“Their annual block party was a terror in the neighborhood,” said Restler. “Motorcycle gangs were going down fast, down one-way streets, the wrong way.”
That said, not everyone was against the annual party, which was headlined last year by the hardcore punk band Cro-Mags, and always raises funds for adrenoleukodystrophy, a rare brain disorder.
"The owner always supported the block parties," Eisenber said.
Indian Larry employees said it was surprising to see Restler complain about the business and the fundraiser in his weekly newsletter.
“To be honest, we didn't know who Lincoln was until yesterday. Like, we've never had a conversation with him,” Indian Larry manager Gabrielle LoSchiavo told BK Reader a day after Restler emailed constituents to break news of the store’s demise.
Bobby Seeger has been running the store since the death of the shop’s namesake, Larry Desmedt, who took his name after the custom-chopped Indian motorbikes he would ride in New York City in the late ‘80s. Desmedt, a cult celebrity in the punk and bike scene who was photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, was described as “a legend among biking enthusiasts and other custom builders" in his obituary in the New York Times.
Soon, Desmedt's cult status crossed into the mainstream through appearances on the Discovery Channel’s The Great Biker Build-Off and, before his death in 2004, he threw a massive public block party. After he died, Seeger decided to throw another one.
“So, instead of having a funeral where everybody's sad, they were like, let's just have another block party. That's what Larry would have wanted, and the tradition continued,” said LoSchiavo.
The bike shop is niche; it sells maybe one or two custom bikes a year, which typically start at over $80,000. The shop makes most of its business selling parts and merchandise showcasing Desmedt's roots in the city's bike and punk culture iconography.
"The neighborhood's changing in so many ways. It's definitely, like, a gentrification thing. Obviously, you know, a new development can make a lot more money than a little old mom-and-pop fabricator store," said LoSchiavo.
Since the late 2000s, the block parties also doubled as a fundraiser for the ALD Alliance, a charity Seeger runs with his now ex-wife, which takes its name from their son, Aidan Jack Seeger, and raises money to advocate for newborn screening for the rare and rapid brain disorder adrenoleukodystrophy. LoSchiavo said the block parties typically raise about $20,000 a year.
“Sometimes, there’s these traditions that go on and people think they should just exist forever, no matter how harmful they may be to our community,” said Restler, adding that his office fields dozens of complaints every year about the parties, ranging from noise complaints to photographs of skid marks.
LoSchiavo said the block party is "pretty contained" to the perimeter of the shop on North 15th and 14th Streets and that only a fraction of the participants, that total anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people, are on bikes.
“We'd love to stay in Greenpoint just because it's our home, but obviously everything's really expensive,” said LoSchiavo.
Meanwhile, the shop is eyeing nearby properties and Seeger still plans to throw another gathering next year, she said, even if the store’s next location remains up in the air.
