Wheels of Fortune Used, rusted bicycles might not make most of us see dollar signs, but to an enterprising merchant shipping America's discards to the Vietnamese countryside, they may as well be made of gold. By Traci Hukill Before Phillip DeLeon Sr. A more fitting epithet was never coined.
Rusted frames hang from pegs in the ceiling like skeletons.
Ropes of old dry bicycle chain nestle among greasy, clinking heaps of bolts, brake calipers, and sprockets piled like knucklebones. The interior of the old building at 702 S. First Street, the oldest bike shop in San Jose and operable since 1912, truly looks like a place where old bicycles go to die. LaRiviere builds his bikes from scratch. People bring him bicycle parts from frenetically cleaned sheds, apartment complexes and garages. LaRiviere, a solid, placid man who might have been a brontosaurus in another life, hangs the frames up, leans the rims against the impossible ranks of wheels awaiting resurrection, drops the bolts and brake levers and sprockets in a bucket or a pile.