Photos: Inventor Collects Pieces, Parts to Create Bicycles and Stories

Konrad said sometimes people call him "Crazy Kato." "I don't know why they think I'm crazy, because I'm a genius," he said.

Kevin "Kato" Konrad wears many hats: construction worker, bartender and inventor of towering two-wheeled bicycles. "I don't know half the people who yell at me," he said. "But they know me… 'Kato', the bicycle man, the St. Pete bicycle man."

Konrad puts on a fifth coat of shellac on his newest project, made from the frame of a 1965 women's Schwinn model, which he found in the trash. He sanded the sprocket, the wheel that turns the gear chain, until the rusty metal shined like new chrome. "I love the sprocket," he said. "The sprocket's what you see when you pedal."

Konrad, an employee of Gulf Front Construction by day, nails the outer wall on a job at Madeira Beach. His partner on the job, Jonathan Farr, said that Konrad is one of the best carpenters he's ever worked with.

By night, Konrad is a bartender at Uptown Café on Central Avenue, though he has a tendency to combine work and leisure. On a slow night, he and friend Ted Suratt took on Ron Chisholm, at right, and Bill Dumler, one of the bar's owners.