For years, Miguel and Carlos Cevallos made a living by drawing posters for neighborhood nightclubs, taco trucks and restaurants in Queens, painting in the businesses’ basements or on their tables and attracting clients by word of mouth.
Now, hip Brooklyn ice cream shops and Manhattan retro diners wait their turn to get one of the brothers’ colorful signs. They’re in demand in San Francisco music stores, national restaurant chains, bars in Belgium and bakeries in South Korea.
It doesn’t matter that the brothers are more than 80 years old or that the two, born in Ecuador and raised in Colombia, speak limited English. They have embraced their new customers and draw all day in the Manhattan apartment they have shared for nearly 20 years.
“Destiny is like this. Sometimes one finds success later in life,” Carlos Cevallos said recently, while sipping a tea in an empty Manhattan diner. Dressed in suits and ties, as they are…
