A beloved bouncer at a famous Upper East Side bar was temporarily paralyzed by COVID-19, prompting his former patrons to rally around him.
Friends of “Big Ray”, who have shaken the door on Dorian’s Red Hand for years, love him – and love him – with money.
Ray Vidal’s friends want to see him back on his feet, and had contributed more than $ 155,000 GoFundMe until Saturday.
“It’s so amazing,” Vidal told the Post about the outline of the support. “I knew there were some good people around me but I didn’t know how good they really were. And it’s good not to worry about debt.”
51-year-old Vidal has worked at the famed East East Side watering hole – known as the place where the so-called “preppy killer” Robert Chambers met the young woman who later strangled him for 23 years in 1986. He was killed by pressing.
Vidal became ill with coronovirus last March, spent three weeks in hospital and nearly four months later in rehab. He was temporarily paralyzed as a result of his illness and still has trouble walking.
He struggled to eat, sleep and breathe for a month, he said, and it wasn’t until April 2020 that he could hug his 6-year-old daughter. Vidal also has a 22-year-old son in the college.
He said that one day in May 2020, when he felt he was no longer ill, Vidal’s knee fell when he fell from bed and found that he was temporarily paralyzed, an extremely rare side effect of COVID. He had to spend three months in a rehab center to learn to walk again.
He is now able to walk again, but just barely.
Vidal said in the post on Saturday, “What is happening right now hurts me all the time and it hurts a lot to walk a little.” “I also take medication five times a day which makes it impossible to return to work.”
Vidal’s last day in Dorian was March 12, the day it closed due to an epidemic. It has since reopened, he said.
“I hope I’ll be back there,” he said. “we will see.”
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