By Courtney Dentch
Listen to the guys at Die Cast Collectibles talk about their cars and you may get the wrong idea.
While the conversations about transmissions, speed and suspensions may sound like regular car talk, these racers buy their gas in liters rather than gallons and use radio control devices to drive their cars.
Die Cast Collectibles, a shop specializing in radio-controlled cars that also goes by the name 105 Hobbies, has been offering parts and paints to model makers from its Richmond Hill home for nearly 40 years, said owner Peter Cernauskas.
Cernauskas’ father opened the store at 104-40 Jamaica Ave. in 1964 under the name Wilson’s Hobbies. The name came from the store’s first location, on Wilson Avenue in Ridgewood, Cernauskas said.
The Ridgewood store began as a television repair shop, but as the elder Cernauskas began to sell the model airplane and train kits he loved himself, the hobby kits and parts overtook the TV repair work, his son said. By the time the store moved to Richmond Hill, TVs were only a small part of the store’s revenue. he said.
“He was interested in the hobbies,” Cernauskas said. “He had model airplanes and trains.”
Now most of customer demand has shifted away from the wooden kits to the plastic and gas and electronically powered cars, said Cernauskas, who took over the business after his father died in 1977. Aside from the radio-controlled cars, Cernauskas sells a lot of slot cars, small cars that fit into grooved tracks that power the vehicles, and metal die-cast collector cars, he said.
In 1984, Cernauskas closed the retail store to run a die cast wholesaling business, but the shop reopened about five years later, just in time to get in on the RC market, which was just becoming popular, he said.
“That’s what we carry now,” Cernauskas said. “Racing is pretty big around here.”
Cars can range in price, starting at about $300 for a basic model, and going as high as $1,500 once customers swap out engines, transmissions and other parts, or tinker with suspensions and gear-shift ratios until they run out of modifications, he said. The store offers all the upgrades, and Cernauskas’ three employees — also RC aficionados — are always willing to make repairs or adjustments to help a car run faster.
Two of the employees were actually longtime customers before they started working behind the counter, some of the latest in a succession of customers-turned-staff, Cernauskas said.
“Most people who hang out here end up working here eventually,” he said. “If you hang out long enough, you’ll get a job.”
Billy White, one of those employees, had another theory.
“Once you spend enough money here, then you get a job,” he joked.
But the store staff also get away from the cash register to race their cars alongside customers’ toys, Cernauskas said.
While any empty parking lot makes a great racetrack, there are some set meeting spots for drivers looking to test their cars, he said. One group, Queens United RC has permits from the city Parks Department to race in Cunningham Park in Fresh Meadows, and the whine of the cars can be heard on Fridays and Sundays, Cernauskas said.
Others meet near the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park or at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, but Parks Police may break up the race or even issue citations since racing the cars is not permitted in the parks, he said.
“They run anywhere they can,” Cernauskas said of his customers. “Sometimes parks police will stop them for illegal use of parks property.”
And while much of the business at Die Cast Collectibles comes from repeat customers, some are so loyal they have been coming for decades, Cernauskas said.
“A lot of people who come in here with their kids say they remember coming in when they were kids.”
Reach reporter Courtney Dentch by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com, or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 138.
