# ‘Kelly Clarkson Has Put Us in Danger’ **By:** Adriane Quinlan **Published:** 2026-10-13T14:55:34.488-04:00 **Source:** [Curbed](https://www.curbed.com/article/art-of-play-owner-speaks-kelly-clarkson.html) --- Photo: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/Getty Images In the past few days, a small specialty shop on Atlantic Avenue became an object of national attention. Kelly Clarkson had gone in wanting to buy something, she said, but she was brusquely told it wasn’t for sale. She then shared a harsh online review with her 8 million followers on X comparing her experience to “being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman.” The store, Art of Play, sells toys, books, and magic-adjacent objects, and its people responded to her tweet by clarifying that she hadn’t asked about buying just a deck of cards but instead about “‘Molly,’ a “one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird” that’s “permanently attached to the wall” and is used in the magic shows they perform there. Their message also said the bird, created by the artist Bliss Kolb, “isn’t for sale.” But internet sleuths tracked down a shot of the same wall with a price tag, and Art of Play responded with more details that only stoked the confusion, suggesting they’d told Clarkson to contact the artist who made the bird or purchase a similar, much cheaper model. (Clarkson has since responded herself.) On Tuesday morning, Adam Rubin, one of the shop’s three co-owners, opened up and faced a gaggle of reporters. This conversation has been condensed and edited. What happened?  This is an insane misunderstanding. Nothing happened in this shop to justify her scolding our shopkeeper on the way out, but I can let that go. You know, everybody has a bad day. But things changed when she used her platform to attack us. It’s asymmetrical social warfare. Did someone say that Molly wasn’t for sale? Walk us through how this actually went. I wanna tell you guys, the store was packed when this happened. It was not, like, a one-on-one interaction. The store was packed. If you have ever worked in a shop, and it’s busy, part of what you do is when somebody looks at something and they find it interesting is you show them something else that’s very similar. It has nothing to do with price. That’s just how you treat people. “Oh, you like this one where the pictures move? Do you have kids? Because we have another one where the people move. It’s for kids. Look at this.” Are you gonna get offended because it costs less? She was in the shop for less than five minutes. If this tweetstorm had not happened, we wouldn’t have realized there was a negative interaction in the shop; it was that undramatic. We treated her like a normal person, but apparently that didn’t live up to her expectations. But was it for sale or not?  We are a nontraditional shop. We work directly with artisans. This guy is an artisan who does not make many things like this. I think that’s where the misunderstanding might have come in. Bliss lives in the woods in a house that he made with his own hands. He’s not on social media. He doesn’t have a warehouse. It takes him years to make these machines. There are two in existence. This is one. If someone showed serious interest, we would reach out to him about getting them an automaton. This is not something that’s sitting in a warehouse. It’s like a piece of sculpture. It’s a fine-art piece. But there is a price tag —  So many people asked about it that we had put a price on it, but we talked to the creator when he came to fix the machine, and if someone showed serious interest, we would reach out to him about getting them an automaton. As you’ve noticed, we’ve raised the price due to popular demand. It now costs $15 million. Can I ask about something not controversial, which is what happened afterward? It seems like this has been a huge nightmare for the business.  Kelly Clarkson has put us in danger. People are getting threatened on the street, and the worst part is we didn’t know this was going to happen but Kelly Clarkson did. Anyone who expresses admiration, positivity, or sympathy for Art of Play is getting attacked by trolls. People were coming by almost entirely in support. On Monday, when we were closed, people were bringing pastries and cupcakes, according to the press that was staked out here. But our friends are getting attacked, and our fans are getting attacked. We’re concerned on behalf of our shopkeepers. What are the trolls doing?  They’re calling. They’re emailing. They’re leaving reviews on every platform, they’re review-bombing, they’re attacking anyone who mentions us on social media. They’re shouting, they’re screaming. They show up, they shout, “You’re racially profiling Kelly Clarkson!” This was out on the sidewalk, so neighbors called the police, and when they filmed the neighbors their followers doxxed the neighbors. This was Sunday. We turned off the phone, but all day long, these comments come up on the point-of-sale iPad while we’re ringing people up. There’s so much hate speech, so many threats of violence. If an actual customer tries to get in touch with us right now, they will never be able to. It’s calm here today, though.  I want to be very clear about this. Nobody who has ever visited this store in person is taking Kelly Clarkson’s side. So the other, cheaper bird that’s for sale — the $2,000 bird that a clerk might have told her about — is that available in-house, or is that a special order?  I think we’ve said enough. Have you gotten a huge number of orders and interest from people now wanting to buy it because of this thing?  The $2,000 bird? Oh, yeah. I’m gonna ask you guys to leave.