“I don’t have the money to buy an Indian Larry bike,” Mr. Docherty said. “But I had to get here. Some of the guys from the bike club back home want me to pack up some stuff, T-shirts and badges.”

Indian Larry bikes are made from scratch. From the handlebars to the kicker pedals, they are soldered, sculpted and painted in the Brooklyn shop, including the iconic Indian Larry down tube, for which two muscular humans strain to twist steel heated to 900 degrees. Even the nuts and bolts are made on the premises.

Mr. Docherty discovered Mr. Desmedt, a reformed bank robber and addict turned charismatic philosopher, master welder and mechanic, on the Discovery Channel television show “The Great Biker Build-Off.” In 2004, when Mr. Desmedt was filming the series in North Carolina, he died from a fall while doing a basic trick: standing on his bike, arms outstretched. (He had just sped through a wall of fire.) He was 55 and left behind his wife, Bambi Desmedt, a burlesque performer known as Bambi the Mermaid of Coney Island.

While Mr. Docherty examined the bikes, Ed Newbert, an oncology nurse from Boston, walked in. “I figured I’d make the pilgrimage,” he said. He walked two hours from Union Square to get to the shop so that he could sight-see along the way.