We've got a full one this weekend. Dinner at Insa on Friday with old friends. The Print Fair at Powerhouse all day Saturday, another dinner somewhere good because the neighborhood keeps giving us reasons, and Reggie Watts after. Sunday, we’ll get out early with the dog for a walk around the canal, a cortado at Cafecito, and possibly Public Records in the afternoon if we haven't completely run out of steam by then (we probably will have). A lot is happening out there.

Now Open / Coming Soon —  Reformer pilates arrives on Atlantic Avenue, and the 121-year-old Ferdinando's space on Union reopens its doors

The Big Story — A construction update across the rezoning zone, from the buildings finishing now to the ones just breaking ground

Things to Do — Print fair at Powerhouse Arts, two nights of Reggie Watts, an iBeam triple bill, and a farewell concert worth planning for

The Local — The Smith Street bookstore that rose from its neighborhood's heartbreak

Development Watch — A topped-out tower on Sackett and the vacancy rate drops

Quick Hits — Hungry Thirsty lands in the Michelin Guide, and the bookstore owner we profile this week has a new novel out

Reformer Pilates Lands on Atlantic
JETSET Pilates
476 Atlantic Avenue, Boerum Hill
Now Open · Opened February 27
The Miami-born reformer chain picked Boerum Hill for its first Brooklyn outpost, taking a street-level space on the busy stretch of Atlantic between Nevins and Third. The format is a 50-minute class on JETSET's custom reformers, set to a DJ playlist, billed as low-impact but high-tension. Drop-ins run $45, and the studio is offering intro packs for newcomers who want to test the waters before committing.

The Focacceria Gets a New Chapter
Bar Ferdinando
151 Union Street, Carroll Gardens
Coming Soon · Opening April 15
Restaurateur Sal Lamboglia and the team behind Cafe Spaghetti, Sal Tang, and Swoony's, are taking over the historic Ferdinando's Focacceria space at 151 Union. The 121-year-old institution closed last spring; Lamboglia is reviving it as an all-day Italian cafe, anchored by Sicilian classics like panelle and arancini alongside Radio Bakery-inspired pastries and an amaro-forward cocktail program. The original artwork and fixtures are here to stay.

Gowanus is loud right now. Neighborhood-wide loud. Concrete saws on 3rd, trucks backing up beeping on Bond, and somewhere near the canal, a pile driver sending shockwaves through the ground that rattle windows, shift foundations, and slowly, quietly knock your interior doors off kilter. Long-timers know the feeling. You open a door one morning, and it sticks in a way it didn't before. The neighborhood is being rebuilt from the ground up, and you can feel it from the inside. This has been going on for years. It is nowhere near finished.

If you already live here, you have company. Several thousand people have moved into new Gowanus buildings in the past year alone. Society Brooklyn's complex on Sackett Street is open and welcoming residents. Union Channel on Third Avenue, the first building in the Gowanus Wharf campus, has been home to residents since last year. 420 Carroll, right on the canal at Nevins, has been leasing since early 2025. The taller Westmark tower at 395 Carroll is leasing studios through two-bedrooms along the canal, with its second tower at 325 Bond still finishing up. Maison Bond at 335 Bond, which we covered in February, is seeing tenants move in. The neighborhood has crossed a line; it isn't crossing back.

If you're looking to join us in Gowanus, you have plenty of options right now. 655 Union, at the corner of 4th Avenue and Union Street, is actively leasing. So is 499 President Street, 350 units at Nevins and President. Society Brooklyn has a second tower at 498 Sackett now taking applications. And if affordable housing is what you need, keep an eye on NYC Housing Connect, where new Gowanus lotteries have been appearing regularly.

And then there's what's still coming. The pile driver working overtime on Third Street belongs to a 22-story building going up at 3rd along the canal, targeting a late 2027 opening. Excavation is imminent at 491 Baltic Street, and fresh permits were filed this week for a 15-story building near the F/G/R on 7th Street. And across from Whole Foods, the largest project Gowanus will ever see breaks ground this summer: two towers, roughly 1,000 apartments, a public waterfront esplanade designed by the team behind the High Line. The noise is not stopping anytime soon. But what's coming next is a neighborhood worth waiting for.

Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue, Gowanus
Sat–Sun Apr 11–12 · 11am–6pm · $15/day
The second edition. Over 45 galleries and print publishers in the Grand Hall, national academic programs in the Loft, and four days of talks, demos, and printshop tours. Last year drew 7,500 people. There's a conversation with Glenn Ligon and master printer Luther Davis today at 4 pm if you want a reason to buy the VIP ticket. Free for students, EBT recipients, and anyone under 18. Do not miss this.

Reggie Watts at The Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Sat Apr 11 + Sun Apr 12 · 7:30pm · from $63
Comedian-musician-beatboxer-improviser. Need I say more? Reggie does something each night that's hard to describe and easier to just see for yourself. Two nights. 

Triple Bill at iBeam Brooklyn
168 7th Street, Gowanus
Sat Apr 11 · 6pm, 7pm, 8pm · Suggested donation
Three sets of avant-garde improvised music. iBeam is a member-run listening room on 7th Street. Not a bar show. Bring good ears.

Eli Escobar at Public Records
233 Butler Street, Gowanus
Sun Apr 12 · 4pm
The Sound Room on a Sunday afternoon. Eli Escobar has been a fixture of the New York dance music scene for the better part of two decades. It's the kind of set that turns a Sunday into something other than Sunday.

ALOK: Hairy Situation at The Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Mon Apr 13 · 7pm / Tue Apr 14 · 7pm + 9:30pm
ALOK's comedy show runs four nights this week. Wednesday is already sold out. Monday and Tuesday still have seats.

2/3rds of a Threesome at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street, Gowanus
Mon Apr 13 · 8pm · Doors 7pm · 21+
AJ Holmes and Caitlin Cook host a variety show featuring Atsuko Okatsuka (The Tonight Show, Comedy Central special), Gianmarco Soresi, and others. Also a Monday. Also worth it.

Buke and Gase: New York Farewell at Public Records
233 Butler Street, Gowanus
Wed Apr 15 · 7pm · ~$32  /  Thu Apr 16 · 7pm · Sold Out
The Brooklyn experimental duo, who built their own instruments and spent nearly 20 years making some of the most rigorous independent music in the city, are calling it. Arone Dyer announced the breakup in February, citing streaming economics, AI, and a pregnancy. Thursday tickets are already gone. Wednesday’s are not.

Books Are Magic
225 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens
Daily · 10am–8pm

In December 2016, BookCourt, the beloved Cobble Hill bookstore that had anchored Court Street for decades, announced it was closing for good on New Year's Eve. The owners, Henry Zook and Mary Gannett, were retiring. They had sold the building. That was it.

Emma Straub, a novelist who had worked at BookCourt years earlier, lived nearby. She heard the news the same day the rest of the neighborhood did. She wrote on her blog that same evening: "A neighborhood without an independent bookstore is a body without a heart. And so we're building a new heart."

She and her husband, graphic designer Michael Fusco-Straub, had no business experience and no business plan. They had two young kids, a writing deadline, and a lot of bookseller friends. They called in every favor they had, consulted every independent bookseller they knew, and found a corner space on Smith Street with a skylight and brick walls. They opened Books Are Magic on May 1, 2017, with roughly 10,000 titles and a pink mural on the outside wall that was added almost on a whim and became one of the most photographed spots in Brooklyn.

The store sells books. That's the point. No coffee, no Wi-Fi, no co-working vibes. Just shelves, a staff with good opinions, a changing table in the bathroom, and author events almost every night. Tables rotate through anti-racist reading, banned books, queer storytelling, and whatever else needs a dedicated section at any given moment. Morning storytimes draw regulars every week. The margins, Straub has said openly, are hilariously slim. The store works anyway.

A second location opened in Brooklyn Heights in 2022, on Montague Street. Straub has said publicly, more than once, that there will only ever be two. Do we believe her?

Gowanus retail vacancy has dropped
A decade ago, it was nearly 27% and is not down to 17%, according to a Crain's New York Business report published this week. About half of the 8,000 residential units planned under the rezoning have now been built. The storefronts are catching up, just not at the same pace as the apartments.

579 Sackett Street Tops Out
The 11-story, 64-unit rental at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Sackett Street reached its full height in mid-March. Developed by BlueSky Developers and designed by Kao Hwa Lee Architects, the building includes 3,348 square feet of ground-floor retail. Year-end delivery is the current target, though the construction board originally listed April. Either way, it's the newest addition to a corner that didn't have much on it two years ago.

Hungry Thirsty makes the Michelin Guide. The southern Thai restaurant at 407 Smith Street, which took over the former Ugly Baby space in Carroll Gardens, posted the news this week. Chef Kanghae's curries, stir-fries, and fried branzino have caught Michelin's attention. Reservations are about to get harder.

Emma Straub's new novel came out Tuesday. Straub’s (see The Local section above) seventh book, American Fantasy, follows a recently divorced woman who boards a '90s boy band cruise and finds herself remembering who she used to be. You know where to get a copy.

See you next Saturday. If you know someone in Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, or Boerum Hill who'd want this in their inbox, send it their way.
And if you spot something worth covering, a sign in a window, a new door going in, a rumor about that empty storefront, send us an email. We read everything.
The Gowanaut
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