Ray's Candy Store Gets Help from Fox News, Facebook, Slacktivists

Neither More Nor Less

Fox 5 News is the latest media outlet to catch on to the plight of Ray's Candy Store, an Alphabet City hole-in-the-wall still selling classic New York concoctions (and where this blogger got her first egg cream for $1.50 in 1999). Ray is in danger of being booted from his space due to rising rents and the expensive repairs needed, but the neighborhood is rallying to help.

A Facebook page is up to donate money to the cause, a protest is planned for Saturday night, and a benefit concert may even be in the works. Fox 5 has a video (below), in which Ray offers some insight on the changes in the neighborhood: "There are no more kids. They are all adults. Wall Street bankers, so they really don't want a candy store." Not even one with burlesque dancers on the counter?

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By Jaya Saxena in Food on January 19, 2010 2:10 PM

Comments [rss]

youngpro

get over it, rent-controlled/stabl'zed

youngpro

i think i read his rent is something like $3500 a month, which is PEANUTS for commercial space anywhere in the city (i pay that for my 1-bedroom). and it also hasn't gone up since the year 2000 while everyone else's rent goes up every 1 or 2 years.

get over it- survival of the fittest. pack up and move out.

just saying

You pay $3,500/mo. for a 1-bedroom apt.? Please give us some tips as to what the rest of us need to do to nail a great deal like yours. There can't be many of these bargains around.

youngpro

get over it, rent-controlled/stabl'zed

AnnaZed

Seriously, this is absurd.

The business, which by the way is filthy, can't sustain itself at that location anymore. It has exactly zero cultural significance. Ray is an ok guy if you don't factor in that he runs an establishment so filthy that eating there would be a hazard if I ate anything from there, which I haven't since 1985.

nicemarmot

Oh come on. I really don't think that Alphabet City has filled up with bankers and hedge funders. It's tools that like to party who are displacing you, Ray.

Outter Burrougher

dumb question - but if I understood the earlier article correctly, if Ray can pay the back rent (and, presumably, future rent when it comes due), he will be allowed to stay; rather than a protest and concert, why not patronize ray's? you know, actually keep him in business instead of making him a charity case?