Sam Ash's Midtown Manhattan location set to close its doors
NEW YORK -- After a century in business, a legendary Manhattan music store is soon to close.
Joshua Thomas has been coming to Sam Ash music store in Midtown twice a month every month since he was a little kid.
"I get a chance to play a lot of different instruments, so I start off with the guitars, go to piano and probably end up in the drums or something like that," he said.
But after 100 years in Manhattan, Sam Ash is closing its doors.
"I'm almost crying, literally," Thomas said.
"This is one of the best guitar stores I've ever seen in my life," customer Kevin Mehta said.
The store has been on 34th Street for the past few years or so, but for decades before that, it lived on 48th Street when the block was known as Music Row.
"You might see Led Zeppelin playing or Todd Rundgren," customer William Cameron said. "There was at least a half a dozen major guitar stores that used to be right next to each other."
Cameron remembers Sam Ash in the '70s.
"Forty-Eighth Street was kind of like going to the Vatican of guitars, man," he said.
"How has that changed?" CBS New York's Ali Bauman asked.
"This is the last place, practically," Cameron said.
When you walk through the aisles, now dotted with sales signs, you'll find musicians practicing alone, together.
"The other musicians you see here, you get to hear them play and it gives you inspiration," Thomas said.
Other Sam Ash locations around the country remain, but its New York flagship will surely be missed.