Jewelry Display Boxes

Silver skull rings line a display case at Tombstone Silverworks in Daytona Beach. N-J | Mark Lane

If you were writing the Great Bike Week Dream story, it would be hard to do better than this:

It's 1990 and two brothers drive a station wagon hauling a trailer from Long Island, N.Y., to Daytona Beach. It's packed with boxes of silver jewelry -- skull rings, pendants with motorcycle engines, death heads ... imagery from Native American art, biker jacket patches and Grateful Dead albums.

They set up on Main Street during Bike Week and spread their wares on folding tables in a building across from Froggy's Saloon.

And what happens? The stuff flies off the tables. They sell everything. And they have a blast. The brothers look at their earnings and make a life-altering decision on the spot -- they take out enough for gas money home and put the rest down on an 87-year-old building they noticed.

Twenty years later, the brothers own about an acre of property on Main Street and North Hollywood Avenue. They own three warehouses for their mail-order operations. They owned the landmark Dunn Toys & Hobbies building from 2000-2006. And, yes, they still cast silver skull rings at their building on Main Street, next to Pinewood Cemetery.

That's the story of Scianablo brothers Peter and Thomas, and Tombstone Silverworks.

Peter, now 63, is a solid, barrel-chested guy with the sunburn of a guy back from a motorcycle trip, thick moustache and a voice that carries. He's passionate about things. A lot of things. But especially Main Street.

"This is a Very Special Thing here! We saw a big crowd! We saw the ocean! We thought, how can you go wrong? This place is going to explode! ... Well, we're still waiting."

The move made sense. They had started out in the family jewelry business, but the retail jewelry business they knew was dying. And the cost of New York property? "We watched it skyrocket," Peter said.

Meanwhile, Thomas' self-taught sideline of casting silver jewelry with rock'n'roll and biker themes had taken off.

"He named it 'lifestyle jewelry.' We did it on the side," Peter said. They sold it at flea markets and through biker magazines. The hobby morphed into a business.

In August 1990, the brothers sold their homes and business and moved to 405 Main St.

"We slept on the floor downstairs before we got a place," Peter said.

"Main Street is a whole different place than 20 years ago," recalled Tom Guest, president of the Main Street Merchants Association. "Now, it's a place where people come night and day and feel safe." Then it had a reputation "as a drug haven." He described the brothers as being active in improving Main Street and a big part of the street's business mix.

"I met them when they first got here," he said. "They make and sell silver jewelry, stuff from the Southwest, and skulls and weird stuff you stick in your ear. It's jewelry a lot of bikers like and kind of attracts a real diverse group."

For a time, the business was also one of the country's largest suppliers of body-piercing jewelry. Noticing that customers were altering their jewelry to work with piercings, they got into body jewelry early, according to Peter.

"We were on the ground floor," he said. "From 1997-98, we felt the ground was shaking ... We would sell them by the thousands: angels, butterflies, skulls ..." But amid a flood of cheap imports from Chinese factories, the body jewelry business peaked by 2000, he said.

And no, it's not something he's into himself. "I don't even know where people put some of this stuff," he said, surveying a large showcase that contained only part of their catalog.

Still, the core business of Tombstone Silverworks hasn't changed much in 20 years: Be a must-see stop on Main Street during Bike Week -- and Biketoberfest -- then sell mail-order the rest of the year.

No, they don't set up at other Bike Week locations.

"We are here," Peter said firmly. "Main Street is the heart and soul of Bike Week."

And it's at the Main Street location where wax molds are carved, silver cast and jewelry made.

"A to Z, we do everything here. We don't outsource anything," said jewelry designer and Peter's son, Justin Scianablo last week from a worktable covered with pumpkin-colored grinning skulls of jeweler's wax. Polishing drums droned in the background and the shop hummed in preparation for Biketoberfest.

Peter remains optimistic about the place and future of bike events despite the current downturn.

"In time we'll see a different street here. This is a sleeping giant. We just need people with a vision," he said. "It's all here."

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