A Brooklyn toy store caught in a viral dispute with Kelly Clarkson has jacked up the price of the mechanical bird at the center of the fight from $15,000 to $15 million — adding three zeros — as it rides a wave of attention that its owners say has also brought death threats and the doxxing of neighbors.
According to an account in the Daily Wire by Harris Sockel, the saga began Saturday when Clarkson, the Grammy-winning singer and former talk show host, tweeted to her 8.8 million followers that Art of Play, a “curiosity shop” on the border of Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, had treated her as though she were poor.
The store responded on Instagram, explaining that Clarkson wanted to buy “Molly,” described as a one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird that was “not for sale.” Clarkson then posted screenshots of a $15,000 price tag, alleging a shopkeeper told her in a “condescending tone” that the bird “is for sale but it costs $15,000, so if you’d like me to find something comparable for you, I can.”
Store owners say they’ve gotten threats
By Tuesday, co-owner Adam Rubin was telling TMZ that the celebrity “used her platform to squash us like a bug,” saying the store had received death threats and that neighbors had been doxxed. “Kelly Clarkson has put us in danger,” Rubin told New York Magazine.
At the store on a Tuesday night, staff and supporters were still processing the fallout. A manager told a patron the shop was being “literally attacked.” A storekeeper described the situation to Sockel as “asymmetric social warfare,” framing it as a lopsided fight between a global pop star and a small business.
Solidarity arrived in small Brooklyn gestures. Neighbors stopped by to say they had “always loved” the store and that Clarkson “was out of line.” Workers from an Afghan bakery around the corner brought free baked goods in a pie box. The owners of Buzzy, a nearby cannabis dispensary, dropped off merchandise. Outside press cycled through roughly hourly, with a German influencer waving prop dollar bills at one point, and a People reporter came in to photograph Molly.
According to the store’s account, Clarkson entered wearing a hat, a backpack, a yellow shirt and loose jeans. None of the staff recognized her. She browsed for a minute, picked up a $198 hand-stained glass “flower kaleidoscope” and a $240 zoetrope, then walked to Molly and asked to buy it, pointing at its $15,000 tag. The interaction, the owners told Sockel, was polite.
On whether Molly was actually for sale, Rubin offered a comparison: “It’s like going into a furniture store and asking to buy a couch.” The display piece wasn’t on the market, he said, and staff suggested a $2,000 wooden bird instead. The owners said they were confused by the outburst that followed.
Now Molly is for sale — at $15 million. “We added a few zeros,” the manager said. “It’s a piece of art and has changed value.”
A celebrity worth $45 million, a neighborhood that voted 71% for Mamdani
Rubin has sketched out what would happen if someone actually paid up. If “some crypto bro comes in and wants to buy this,” he said, gesturing at the bird, he would sell it — probably to Clarkson too, if she wanted it. He said he would then give every employee $15,000, pay the bird’s craftsman $1 million, and build an elaborate glass display for mechanical toys with a “NOT FOR SALE” sign on top.
The dispute has landed as a kind of cultural Rorschach test. The store, in a neighborhood Sockel notes swung roughly 71% for Zohran Mamdani, says Clarkson is punching down and “squashing” a small business “like a bug.” Plenty of others see a $45 million celebrity being condescended to by boutique staff and think she’s punching up.
Sockel writes that the exact nature of Saturday’s exchange remains unclear, but that a culture clash seems evident: Clarkson, a native Texan whose net worth is estimated at $45 million, dressed casually enough that staff didn’t recognize her, and did not take well to any implication — possibly condescending, possibly unintended — that she was priced out. The store, meanwhile, sells wood and metal toys to some of the wealthiest people in New York; on Tuesday night, neighbors were gossiping about Dua Lipa moving in around the corner.
Press cycle, sold-out magic shows and a bid for ‘positive social change’
The attention has generated its own absurdities. A reporter from The New York Times played with toys for 30 minutes before revealing herself, then two colleagues walked in; they wanted CCTV footage of Clarkson trying to buy the bird, but Rubin had already handed it to “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” a Times podcast. Rubin, bewildered, asked the Times contingent why they didn’t coordinate with each other, and said he was done doing press. “The Daily Mail is trying to pay me off,” he said.
Store owners kept trying to redirect visitors back to the merchandise — “Feel free to pick things up and play with them,” one said repeatedly. Employees, Sockel writes, at times seemed unsure who was press and who was a customer. Asked if sales were up, Rubin replied, each time, “This is busy for a Wednesday!” One employee slipped and called the people in the store “fans” before correcting himself to “customers.”
There is real business underneath the circus. The store’s magic shows, staged in a “hidden theater” inside the shop — employees keep emerging from a bookshelf — are sold out through the end of October. Tickets run $200 for the front row and $125 for rows two through four in a 26-seat house, math that works out to roughly $20,000 to $26,000 per week of sold-out shows.
Shopkeepers have talked about channeling the moment into “positive social change,” though the strain is showing. “Our neighbors are scared,” Rubin said. According to Sockel, someone wished terminal cancer on a neighbor’s cat, Enzo, as the neighbor reported on Substack.
The store is co-owned by identical twins Dan and Dave Buck, forty-something magicians from Northern California who reportedly made over $2 million selling DVDs of magic tricks. Dave told Sockel he traveled to Brooklyn specifically to monitor the store after the scandal broke. He also explained why Molly matters to him: he bought the crank-operated automaton about 15 years ago, and automatons are intertwined with magic — Harry Houdini took his name from an eighteenth-century French automaton maker named Houdin. Art of Play employees don’t teach magic in the store, Dave said, because “in a world where everyone has to know everything,” people need “one last bastion” of wonder and mystery.
The fight has even become an optics exercise. Sockel describes a manager pulling aside a visitor in a suit to explain that he had deliberately dressed down so as not to come across as an out-of-touch elite Brooklyn hipster. “Optics are important,” the manager said.
As for late-night comedy, a customer asked whether SNL might take on the saga that weekend. Hal, the manager, had looked it up: the show is on a two-week break. But he had a casting idea ready. “Sarah Sherman would play Molly,” he said.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/flipping-the-15-million-bird-kelly-clarksons-asymmetric-social-warfare-on-atlantic-avenue