Ray’s Candy Store owner still loves the East Village despite brutal attack

For close to 50 years, Ray Alvarez has been working the night shift. Alvarez left the Iranian Navy and immigrated to New York City in the 1960s, finding work as a dishwasher and busboy around the East Village. He opened his own dessert shop, the snacks and sugary treats emporium Ray’s Candy Store, on the corner of Avenue A and 7th Street in 1974.

The store is open 24 hours, and most days, Alvarez works until 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning. He then heads upstairs to his apartment in the same building, only to return to the shop around 8 or 9 a.m. to take deliveries. It can be exhausting, but he’s grateful for the opportunity to run his own business in his adopted city, and he’s never felt unsafe in his neighborhood.

That changed last week when the 90-year-old Alvarez was attacked and beaten outside the store on Jan. 31, in what police are calling an attempted robbery. Alvarez told Gothamist this was the first time since he opened the store that he’s experienced any serious violence there.

“I went outside to have fresh air about 3 a.m. in the morning,” he said, during an interview at his store on Monday. “These two guys came with a package of soda, they wanted to sell me soda. And I said no thank you, I don’t want it. And one guy told his friend, ‘Hold this, I’m gonna kill this bastard.’”

Alvarez says one of the men took out an object he described as a belt with a heavy rock attached to one end, and started hitting him in the face.

“He swung and hit me in the head, and I went down on the sidewalk and I was bleeding,” Alvarez said. “I was shocked.”

Despite the incident, nothing has changed his feelings about the area. Alvarez loved the East Village when he first opened the shop in the ’70s, and he says he loves it just the same today.

“I still love America,” he said. “I love New York. People are very nice. One in a thousand is bad.”

Alvarez suffered bleeding, a black eye and facial wounds. He says he declined to be taken to the hospital…