We've walked past Shelby and Pebbles every morning this week and still cannot remember which one is which. On a Tuesday night, doggo in tow, the good people at Finback let us in for one last pint at closing time. Caught the opening of Conductor at Powerhouse Arts and saw some great art, spicy margarita in hand.

Now Open / Coming Soon — Café Mars goes full itameshi for the month of May, and Sam's Restaurant changes hands

The Big Story — Caputo's Bake Shop closed Monday after 124 years. The owner says it's time. The pattern on Court Street is harder to argue with.

Things to Do — Andrew Bujalski's free installation at the Can Factory, Long Play's final day, the Tower Show's last weekends, Questlove DJs Gowanus Blooms, and Jenny Slate at the Bell House

The Local — One Caputo's closed this week. The other has been on Court Street for 53 years and isn't going anywhere.

Development Watch — Two Trees just bought three acres on 9th Street, Douglass Port is pre-leasing, and Smith Street is filling in

Quick Hits — A preschool signs on at Baltic and Nevins

Café Mars trades its Italian identity for a Japanese one, all month
272 3rd Avenue, Gowanus
Special menu begins Wed May 6  ·  Wed–Sat dinner service
For the entire month of May, Café Mars is going full itameshi (the Japanese-Italian hybrid genre that took root in 1980s Tokyo: Japanese technique meeting Italian ingredients, the collision of both). The menu includes fluke cured in parmesan and white miso, pan-fried tortellini-gyoza with bergamot ponzu (a citrus-soy sauce made here with Italian bergamot in place of the usual yuzu), and a pepperonigiri that is exactly what it sounds like. Neon katakana signage goes up. A Suntory draft system replaces the bar. This isn't a one-night pop-up. It's a full month-long takeover from one of the more interesting kitchens in the neighborhood. Reservations via OpenTable.

Sam's Restaurant Is Changing Hands. Carefully.
238 Court Street, Cobble Hill
Coming Soon  ·  Reopening this spring
After 96 years on Court Street, Sam's Restaurant is changing hands. The new owner is Georgia Fulton, a 12-year veteran of the Long Island Bar in Boerum Hill, with backing from Long Island Bar co-owner Joel Tompkins and a longtime Sam's regular. Fulton has spent six months working alongside Louis Migliaccio, the second-generation owner, and renovations are now in their final stages. The plan is preservation. The brick oven, vintage murals, and wooden telephone booths stay. The space gets brightened, the menu pared down. We will have more to say about this one soon.

Caputo's Bake Shop
329 Court Street, Carroll Gardens
Closed Monday April 27

Monday morning, there was a handwritten sign in the window. People walked by, stopped to read, and some cried.

Caputo's Bake Shop, the Carroll Gardens bread bakery that had been at 329 Court Street since 1904, closed Monday after 124 years and five generations of the same family at the ovens. The gates came down. The oven went cold. There was no last-call sale and no warning. Just the sign.

Owner James Caputo told News 12 it was a hard call to make. "It was a very tough decision, but I think it's time for a new chapter in my life." He has run the bakery himself for about 25 years, working nearly every day, often missing family events. The bakery is closing on his terms. The Caputo family owns the building, so this isn't a rent story or an eviction story. It is a retirement, and a difficult one.

That doesn't soften the loss. For generations in Carroll Gardens, Caputo's was foundational. The lard bread was the calling card. Dense, salty, studded with prosciutto and provolone, the kind of loaf that turned an ordinary afternoon sandwich into something else. Restaurants up and down Court and Smith ordered it by the case. If you walked past 329 Court most mornings, you could see a white van parked at the curb, packed wall-to-wall with Italian loaves bound for kitchens across the neighborhood. Flour came in the other direction, in hundred-pound bags wheeled through the door. That kind of operation does not happen by accident. It takes five generations of knowing what you are doing.

The closing is the latest in a pattern anyone paying attention to Court Street already knows. Esposito & Sons Jersey Pork Store closed in April 2023 after 100 years, just south at 357 Court. Sal's slice shop went the same week. Mazzola Bakery, the other pillar of the old Italian shopping corridor, is reportedly on the market. Each closure has its own reason: a retirement, a lease, a family ready for their next adventure. None of them is, on its own, a crisis. Together, they are a generation.

There's no villain here, exactly. There's just the math of what happens when the families who built a neighborhood reach the end of their working lives, and the neighborhood that they built is no longer the neighborhood that needs them in quite the same way. The new restaurants on Court Street are genuinely good. None of them is 124 years old. If you had ever gotten bread there, you know the neighborhood will never be the same.

THERE THERE: Free Multi-Screen Installation at the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, Gowanus
Sat May 2  ·  2–6pm  ·  Free w/ RSVP
Independent filmmaker Andrew Bujalski (Support the Girls, Funny Ha Ha) makes his debut as an installation artist with a three-screen video work spread across a long corridor at the Can Factory. The non-linear structure is designed to be entered and exited at will. You're in the middle of the movie, physically navigating the scenes around you. Free with RSVP. This afternoon.

Long Play Festival's Final Day at Public Records
233 Butler Street, Gowanus
Sun May 3  ·  Day pass from $95
Bang on a Can's four-day Long Play Festival wraps Sunday with concerts at Public Records, BAM, Roulette, Pioneer Works, and a half-dozen other venues across downtown Brooklyn. The Sunday lineup includes the Bang on a Can All-Stars performing a brand new arrangement of Philip Glass's Glassworks in full, Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer-winning Anthracite Fields with the Trinity Choir, and Steve Reich's Sextet. Day passes are still available. The festival has been called the most important classical music festival in New York.

Tower Show: Two Weekends Left at Arts Gowanus
Union Channel, 240 3rd Avenue, Gowanus
Weekends through Sun May 17  ·  12–6pm  ·  Free
The 5th Annual Tower Show wraps May 17. Three hundred-plus local artists filling the Union Channel space with work. Two weekends left. Free. No excuse not to go.

Pioneer Works' Village Fête, with the Sun Ra Arkestra and James Murphy DJing
20 Pioneer Street, Red Hook
Tue May 5
Pioneer Works hosts its annual benefit Tuesday night. The lineup includes the Sun Ra Arkestra, guitarist Yasmin Williams, and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem DJing. Worth the trip to Red Hook.

Gowanus Blooms: GCC's 20th Anniversary Benefit at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue, Gowanus
Thu May 7  ·  6:30pm  ·  $95 + fees
The Gowanus Canal Conservancy celebrates 20 years of community organizing, canal cleanup, and neighborhood advocacy with Gowanus Blooms, their annual spring benefit, this year held in the Grand Hall at Powerhouse Arts. Questlove is DJing. Slavic Soul Party is playing. Food comes from a roster of local restaurants. The Conservancy is honoring Rep. Nydia Velázquez for her contributions to a greener Gowanus.

Jenny Slate Solo Headline at The Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Fri May 8  ·  7:30pm  ·  Tickets at thebellhouseny.com
Jenny Slate, solo headline. You probably know her work-Marcel the Shell, Obvious Child, Mona-Lisa Saperstein on Parks and Rec. Just announced, so the public listings haven't caught up.

BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Lineup Drops, Season Opens July 18 at the Lena Horne Bandshell
Prospect Park West & 9th Street, Park Slope
Season runs July 18 through August  ·  Most shows free
Tickets just went on sale for the 2026 season at the bandshell. Australian indie pop duo Royel Otis headlines the opening benefit concert on July 18. The free outdoor series follows. The Bandshell remains the most reliable summer cultural anchor on this side of the borough, and getting events on your home calendar early matters. The benefit shows fund the rest of the season.

Caputo's Fine Foods
460 Court Street, Carroll Gardens
Tue–Fri 9am–6pm  ·  Sat 9am–5pm  ·  Sun 9am–2:30pm  ·  Closed Mon

Six blocks south of the bakery that just closed, there is another Caputo's on Court Street. And it’s still open. It’s been there for 53 years, and that is not an accident.

Giuseppe Caputo opened Caputo's Fine Foods at 460 Court Street in 1973, the year after he and his wife Flora moved to Brooklyn from Mola di Bari, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. He had run a similar shop back home. He started this one with cheese and canned tomatoes and grew it into the kind of place a Carroll Gardens that was still mostly Italian could rely on-olives, oils, cured meats, fresh pasta, mozzarella made by hand. Giuseppe ran the shop for nearly three decades. His son Frank took over in 2001. Frank's sons Joseph and Franco are in the shop now too, the third generation pulling curds, weighing the orders, calling people sweetheart at the counter.

Here is the part that catches almost everyone off guard. The two Caputo's on Court Street are not related. Both named Caputo. Both in the food business. Both on the same street. Different families, different parts of Italy, different waves of immigration. James Caputo's family came from Sicily and opened the Bake Shop in 1904. Giuseppe Caputo's family came from Mola di Bari and opened Fine Foods in 1973. Two completely independent answers to the same question of what a Brooklyn Italian family was supposed to do. They lived alongside each other on the same street for 53 years.

Frank could have done something else with his life. He went to college for computer programming and had a job lined up at Chase Bank. Two weeks before he was supposed to start, he called and changed his mind. He went back to the shop. That was over twenty years ago. The mozzarella is still made by hand in small batches every morning. The pasta is still rolled in the back. People still linger to talk.

If you have not been, this is the week to go. The Bake Shop is closed. Caputo's Fine Foods is still here, and it is still here for the same reason a place stays open for 53 years on a street that has changed around it more than once-because the family craft is so good.

The Developer Who Made DUMBO Bought Three Acres on 9th Street
In mid-March, Two Trees Management quietly closed on a three-acre stretch of industrial land along 9th Street between Smith Street and 2nd Avenue. The parcel runs from 37 to 124 9th Street, straddling both sides of the canal. It houses seven buildings totaling roughly 118,000 square feet, including the historic Roulston grocery warehouse and buildings tucked under the Smith–9th elevated train. Price: $37.5 million. The seller was local investor Aaron Berger. The deal was recorded on March 23 and got almost no local coverage.

Two Trees is Jed Walentas's company, best known for spending decades turning DUMBO from a neglected industrial waterfront into one of Brooklyn's most desirable neighborhoods. Domino Park. The Domino Sugar refinery. River Ring. Their method is patient-buy land, hold it, build when the conditions are right. They already own 5 to 10 acres in Gowanus, most of which is within the 2021 rezoning.

This acquisition is different. The 9th Street parcel sits outside the rezoning area, which means it's not part of the residential pipeline. Two Trees appears to be buying industrial land for commercial redevelopment, up to 252,000 buildable square feet, according to Newmark's marketing materials. Current tenants include a Tesla dealership at 94–124 9th Street, plus grocery delivery service Save A Lot and shipping company Fabric. None of them is going anywhere soon.

No public plans have been announced. No renderings, no timeline. But the company doesn't buy three-acre parcels in neighborhoods it isn't serious about. The 9th Street corridor, running west toward the canal and outside the residential boom, just got a very consequential new owner.

Douglass Port Is Now Pre-Leasing
The next residential building at Gowanus Wharf, Douglass Port at 251 Douglass Street, is now accepting pre-lease applications for market-rate units. Shared amenities include a basketball court. The affordable housing lottery for the same building closed in March. Details at gowanuswharf.com.

Two Condos Rising at 5th and Smith
Two new residential buildings are going up one block apart on Smith Street, both designed by DXA Studio. At the corner of 5th and Smith, a five-story condo is rising at 9 5th Street. One block north, between 4th and 5th Streets, demolition is underway at 415 Smith Street for another residential building from the same firm. Different developers, same architect, same stretch. The Smith Street corridor between 2nd and 5th Streets is being rebuilt parcel by parcel.

A preschool is signing on at Baltic and Nevins. Erudite Preschool has signed a 4,000-square-foot lease at 526 Baltic Street. Another data point on who is moving into all the new buildings.

Court Street lost a bakery this week and kept its mozzarella.
Two Caputos became one.
See you next Saturday.
The Gowanaut
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