| Window of Dan’s guitar store/Hendrix poster | Guitar Music | 00:00 |
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| MAHER: America loves its icons -- and surely one of its most distinctive is the electric guitar. | 00:09 |
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| Well, there’s a little store on Manhattan’s 23rd Street which has become something of a | 00:18 |
| CU Acoustic guitar | shrine to this most American of instruments. It’s a place where you can get away from it all and give yourself up to the reverie of rock n’ roll. | 00:21 |
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| 00:31 |
| Store exterior | DAN: I think it’s a phallic symbol. It’s become a cultural icon. The design of it is so really ‘50s. There’s a little panache there, you know. I heard that guitar, | 00:34 |
| Dan in store | (sings) ‘’I’m a travellin’ man, made a lot of stops all over the world.’’ … you know that song, right? | 00:48 |
| Guitars in store | That guitar – when I heard that, it hit me in a place that I got physically excited! | 00:55 |
| Dan with customer | MAHER: Dan Courtenay has had a life-long passion for vintage guitars. | 01:04 |
| Customer plays | His store in Chelsea is a gathering place for those who share that passion. | 01:12 |
| Shots around store | Today Johnny Cash’s son-in-law, the Grammy Award winning guitarist John Leventhal, has dropped in to buy some strings. LEVENTHAL: Well the other thing I like | 01:25 |
| Leventhal and Dan | is every time I come in here Danny gives me one of these guitars. It’s great.. DAN [laughing]: You son of a bitch man, that’s a New Yorker, okay. | 01:34 |
| Leventhal plays | Guitar Music | 01:44 |
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| LEVENTHAL: I think in part the old guitars represent something of what Danny represents, which is the individuality. Each instrument is completely different. They weren’t built that consistently so when the good ones are good they’re really, really good and have a whole lot of personality and don’t sound like anything else. | 01:54 |
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| Guitar Music | 02:13 |
| Dan with customer | DAN: What do you want for the guitar? CUSTOMER: Well I’m trying to get a good sense of that, but I would hope somewhere like twenty-five hundred. | 02:33 |
| Customers in store | Guitar Music | 02:43 |
| Dan | DAN: Everybody likes this store, right ? And musicians love their guitars. This kind of store could only exist in Manhattan – I mean look around this place – I mean there’s no place like this anywhere else – there really isn’t ! | 02:55 |
| Hassidic Jew playing guitar in store | MAHER: After all – where else could you see this – captured on Dan’s mobile phone. | 03:07 |
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| Guitar Music |
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| MAHER: Only in New York! But just as unique to New York is the rush to embrace change. | 03:23 |
| Dan | DAN: We’ve been here for 18 years and I have to look at it this way – we’ve had a wonderful run here and I will never get rich here – in fact, I barely sometimes seem to get by. | 03:29 |
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| My gut is going to be out of here; my rent is going to go up and I’m month to month right now. I don’t even have a lease right now. | 03:39 |
| Dan playing electric guitar | Guitar Music | 03:48 |
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| MAHER: But Dan Courtenay isn’t the kind to dwell. After all, adversity gave us the blues, and for Dan, playing the blues on a fine guitar is about as good as it gets. | 03:58 |
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| Guitar Music | 04:10 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Michael Maher Camera: Tim Bates and Michael Maher Editor: Gregory Andersson | 04:15 |