He has worked in the shop between East Seventh and St. Marks Place and lived in the same apartment above it ever since. “Compared to my life before, everything after has been a picnic,” he said. Mr. Alvarez didn’t witness the Revolution in 1979 but he kept his store open throughout the Tompkins Square Park riots a decade later. “I was protective of the protesters,” he said. “I sold them 40-ounce beer bottles, and they would throw them at the cops.”
