Brooklyn’s secret old-school comic book store

Tucked beside the elevated subway tracks on McDonald Avenue in Gravesend is Pinocchio Discounts—just about the best name ever for a comic book and baseball card store that looks like a holdout from a totally different Brooklyn.

My guess is that the sign goes back to the 1970s; I almost expect the cast of Welcome Back, Kotter to be inside.

A Yelp review says the shop has been owned by the same couple for 30 years, but it must be older than 1988. Yelp and Google reviewers give the place a definite thumbs up.

[Thanks to Ephemeral reader D.S. for the top photo. Second photo: Yelp]

“Afternoon by the sea at Gravesend Bay”

Cape Cod? Chesapeake Bay? England? France? It’s actually Gravesend, the town settled by British Quakers in Southern Brooklyn, as depicted in 1888 by painter William Merritt Chase.

Lovely and peaceful, isn’t it? I have no clue what block in today’s Gravesend this location would correspond to. But Gravesend Bay extends into lower New York Bay, and that’s either Staten Island or New Jersey in the distance.

Brooklyn’s lost village of Cripplebush

This map of the borough’s original five Dutch towns and one English town depicts a Brooklyn with the same geographic place names used today.

Bushwick, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Gravesend—they still go by their 17th century monikers. And the smaller villages within them, like Williamsburgh and New Lots, remain local names as well.

Then there’s Cripplebush, in the town of Brooklyn. What’s the deal with Cripplebush?

The Eastern District of Brooklyn, published in 1912, explains that Dutch residents of nearby Wallabout were granted a patent in 1654 to incorporate Cripplebush, “at the intersection of the Cripplebush Road and the Wallabout and Newtown Road or about Flushing and Nostrand Avenues of to-day.

“In 1830 Wallabout Village was started, including within its limits the Cripplebush settlement, and still later the section became known as East Brooklyn.”

Cripplebush Road no longer exists. And Cripplebush settlement, which other sources have described as a swamp, must have been quietly absorbed into Wallabout in the 19th century.