It shouldn’t surprise me but I’ve been shocked by how many people believed that Kelly Clarkson was straight-up lying about the Brooklyn magic shop, Art of Play. I’ve seen so many people only who thought Clarkson was flatly lying about how she was treated at Art of Play – not “maybe it was a misunderstanding,” not “there was a miscommunication somewhere.” They just thought she decided to bitch out a magic store for no reason. When really, everything the Art of Play owners did and said after her tweet showed exactly why she called them out – they reacted by lying repeatedly and they treated her complaint with a snide disdain. Well, this story has reached peak ridiculousness. Art of Play’s co-owner has given several interviews in which he stops just short of calling Kelly Clarkson a war criminal. Not only that, but Pablo Torres published CCTV footage from inside the store, where you can see Kelly pick up a few items, speak to a disinterested sales guy, carefully replace the items on their shelves and leave the store… but not before she said something to the guy behind the register. Just as she said. Here’s what the co-owner had to say:

The co-owner of the Brooklyn store at the center of Kelly Clarkson’s mechanical bird controversy is blasting the singer for her “reprehensible abuse of power” after her public complaints allegedly unleashed a torrent of online harassment against his small business.

“It’s a pop star, a mechanical bird, it’s surreal. When this thing first started, everybody wanted us to die,” Adam Rubin, co-owner of Art of Play in Brooklyn Heights, exclusively told Page Six Tuesday, referring to the hundreds of threatening messages his staffers have received since Clarkson dragged their store on social media.

“And as the truth has come to light, thinking people realize this is reprehensible abuse of power,” he continued. “We have to reconsider the place we give celebrities in our society.”

Rubin slammed Clarkson for using her platform to take down a small business.

“This is not how you can behave as a citizen in the world, like, if you are this famous and powerful and you try to squash someone like a bug, then we’re supposed to blame the trolls for all the damage that’s inflicted. She lit the fuse,” he said. The children’s book author called the last 72 hours “totally surreal” after receiving an onslaught of hate from Clarkson’s fanbase.

“It’s been so intense — thousands of hateful phone calls, thousands of hateful text messages, Kelly Clarkson fans demanding we issue her an apology, and it’s just such a perverse distortion of reality, that anyone could look at the situation and think that we are the ones who owe an apology,” he said.

He also said that Clarkson’s fans “came out of the woodwork,” tracking him and his employees down on social media, spewing hatred at their friends and doxxing their neighbors. Rubin assured us that every customer who walks through his shop doors gets treated equally.

“Regardless of what happened in the shop, a misunderstanding in a crowded shop – everybody that comes into the store is treated the same, like a normal person. That’s what pissed her off,” he said. Clarkson didn’t get any special treatment due to her celebrity status, Rubin said.

“She was treated like everybody else who comes in, whether they’re in sweatpants or they’re 9 years old, or they’re a celebrity we don’t recognize,” he said, adding that nobody in his store had recognized her. “They all get treated the same way.”

He also blasted anyone demanding that the store apologize to the “Breakaway” artist.

“I mean, she threw a Molotov cocktail into our store, and while it’s on fire, they’re saying we owe her an apology?” he said. “This is asymmetrical social warfare.”

[From Page Six]

He kept going and he told a new version of “the bird is not for sale despite the price tag.” Listening to Adam Rubin’s pity party for himself, it’s easy to understand how he and the shop mishandled this situation at every level. They couldn’t even offer an apology in good faith at the very start of this, nor could they say that it was a simple misunderstanding which snowballed. They’re still blaming Kelly for coming into the store and feeling their disrespect and disdain!!

I suspect the issue lies with giving these kinds of long-winded, confusing answers when someone asks whether the bird is for sale. https://t.co/7DAa5guBTX

— troglodyte (@saddy_issues) October 14, 2026

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid. Screencap courtesy of Kelly Clarkson’s show.