Lee’s Locksmith & Bicycle Shop

Lee’s Locksmith & Bicycle Shop has been a fixture on North Federal Highway in Hollywood for so long that it predates most of the buildings around it. The business traces back to 1944, when Lee Ragatz started selling bicycles a short distance from the shop’s current location. His son, Donald Jimmy Ragatz, moved the operation to 1101 North Federal Highway in 1969, and the shop has stayed at that same address ever since. Marco A. Salvino Sr. joined as manager in 1976 and bought the business outright in 1984, and by the shop’s own account he remains the only owner to date, a rare bit of continuity for a small retail business that has now been open for more than eight decades.

The bicycle side of the operation covers new bikes, rentals, accessories, and repair service, along with skateboards for customers looking for something a little different. It is a full-service setup rather than a boutique showroom, the kind of shop where a flat tire, a tune-up, and a new bike purchase can all happen in the same visit. That range matters in a beach city like Hollywood, where bikes get heavy year-round use on the Broadwalk and surrounding neighborhoods and need regular upkeep to survive the salt air.

What makes Lee’s unusual is the second business folded into the same storefront: a full locksmith department. Key control and duplication, access control systems, safes, and security camera installation are all handled alongside the bicycle counter. It is an unusual pairing on paper, bikes and locks under one roof, but it has apparently worked well enough to keep the shop running under a single family and then a single subsequent owner for over eighty years. For longtime Hollywood residents, that dual identity is often exactly why they know the name, whether they first came in for a bike tune-up or to get a house key copied.

The shop keeps solid, customer-friendly hours: open Monday through Saturday from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening, and Sunday from 10 until 4, a schedule that covers weekend bike traffic along the beach as well as weekday locksmith calls. Being open seven days a week is not something every small hardware-adjacent business manages, and it reflects a shop built around walk-in convenience rather than appointment-only service.

For anyone new to Hollywood looking for an alternative to big-box hardware stores or chain bike shops, Lee’s Locksmith & Bicycle Shop is worth knowing about simply for its staying power. A business that has survived under one family’s ownership and then one subsequent owner since 1944 has clearly figured out how to keep neighbors coming back, whether they need a new bike, a repair, or a set of keys cut on a Saturday afternoon.