NYC recording studio The Magic Shop may be the latest victim of NYC real estate market

SoHo recording studio The Magic Shop opened in 1988 and has birthed many well known albums, such as Sonic Youth’s Dirty, The Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs and David Bowie’s The Next Day. Unfortunately, the ever-skyrocketing NYC real estate market may force it to move or close. From the New York Times:

“There are so many variables in what makes a studio great, and many of them are completely mysterious,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “There’s no way I could recreate this.”

Yet over the past three decades, the cobblestone block outside has been transformed from a crime-ridden back street to a showcase for the rich. At the studio’s opening party, Mr. Rosenthal said, his family’s car was broken into. Now this block of Crosby Street between Spring and Broome Streets is home to a Bloomingdale’s and a “hipster synagogue,” while a condo building under construction across the street is offering parking spaces for $1 million apiece.

Once a pioneer of the neighborhood, Mr. Rosenthal, who was born in the Bronx and early in his career drove a cab to get by, now cannot afford it — an increasingly common lament in an age of hyper-gentrification.

“Sometimes I feel like a guy who owns a gorgeous horse-and-buggy business in 1899,” said Mr. Rosenthal, 62, who has an untamed mop of gray hair and likes to keep Neil Young songs cued up on his phone.

The Magic Shop owner Steve Rosenthal, who also owns The Living Room (which relocated from the LES to Williamsburg, tried to buy the two floors the studio occupies (with help from Dave Grohl) but his offer was rejected by the building’s landlord.