Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Anna Stiga — that is, Stan Again, or crossword editor Stan Newman working under one of the pen names he uses with easier Stumpers of his making. This Stumper was pretty do-able, though a nest of small words near the puzzle’s center made things difficult for me: 23-D, five letters, “Gang members.” 26-A, three letters, “What 7 may be used instead of.” 26-D, four letters, “Daisy Duck niece.” 32-A, four letters, “Fell.” Wha?

Some clues of interest:

17-A, ten letters, “Old name for the giraffe.” I know the word from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I thought it hailed from the world of cryptids.

30-A, seven letters, “Popular bar since the ’20s.” I have never partaken. Have you?

30-D, five letters, “Ersatz duck calls.” An insult!

34-D, seven letters, “Introducer of ‘Trouble’ (1957).” The board game? No, that would be six letters, in 1965 (KOHNER). I had to DuckDuckGo to make sense of the answer.

43-D, six letters, “Walk.” Kinda dowdy.

44-A, nine letters, “Neon sign seen in Looney Tunes.” I thought of A Mighty Wind.

No spoilers: the answers, not in neon, are in the comments.