Real shops,
real people

Gabe Fowler opened Desert Island in Williamsburg in 2008, when New York had few places to find alternative comics. Much of the work comes straight from artists. The shop publishes the free comics newspaper Smoke Signal and has organised the Comic Arts Brooklyn festival since 2013. At the start of 2025 it moved along Metropolitan Avenue to a new home, with supporters helping to fund the move.

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Peter Pan has served Greenpoint since the 1950s. It is run by the Siafakas family: Christos has worked as a baker in New York donut shops since the early 1970s, his wife Donna, and their sons and Donna’s sister serve behind the counter. Most of what’s on the shelves still follows the shop’s original recipes, with a few of Christos’s own added along the way.

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Near Washington Square Park, Chess Forum welcomes visitors to browse chess sets, sit for a game, or take a lesson. The shop also carries classic board games and chess books.

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Founded in 2016 by photographer Ahmed Klink and type designer Juan Carlos Pagan, Sunday Afternoon is a New York brand studio that also represents artists. The team works from the fifth floor of 424 Broadway, an 1868 loft building in SoHo.

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