dog food advisor blue buffalo

new york city, i love it. new york city is good to me. my name is ray, ramon alvarez, and i'm from iran and i own candy store for 43 years. and i am 84 years old. i used to sell roast beef sandwich, pastrami nobody wants it, they want onion rings. (laughs) or oreo, fried oreo.

in the summer it's ice cream, and in the winter it's french fries and fried oreo and fried dough. zeppoli, or beignet. i was an illegal alien. i was in the navy for nine years. when we came to norfolk, va, i jumped the ship and i swim to the ground and i went to miami. and then i came to new york, and i did all kinds of different work, pot washing, dish washing... i want to be my own boss.

i run and run until i drop dead because i work 16 hours every day. i live upstairs. i am only 12 steps away from here. everybody comes here because when i was here there was no other shops, so they come and they say, "thank you for being here." about six years ago, i called my landlord, i say, "it's a cold winter."

"i'm not making any money. can i pay you in the summer?" he said, "no no no, we don't do that." "this is business." so he sent me an eviction notice. so they said, "okay, pay the rent." "and you are off the hook." you know how i got the money? the [neighborhood] people, they throw me money like crazy. and they throw me $400, $200, $100, five dollars, ten dollars, and then they had a concert. i made $4000.

i paid rent, i bought a freezer. i bought ice cream machine. neighborhood used to be bad. very bad. needles, guns. new york magazine used to say, "the best place to live is the upper east side." everybody move to the upper east side. then they said, "now, you want to see a movie star?" "lower east side."

and everybody move here. actors, actresses. now they say, "brooklyn." now everyone is in brooklyn. (laughs) i read a lot. i read persian empire history. in poetry. it's very interesting. to get a girl like you, they'd have to send 300,000 men on the horse. with swords. and go to another country and kill a thousand of people. and bring the girl [back]. in america, you buy her one drink and that's it.

she is yours. (laughs) i am in america for 53 years and i love america.