First the Knicks brought such a joyous celebration to New York, then it was the World Cup. So what’s next? For now, the World Cup's after party has officially ended, and Gowanus is back to our regular July. We're fine with that. There's plenty happening close to home this week.

Now Open / Coming Soon — A Park Slope restaurant opens beside its owners' other place, which has been there for two decades, plus two curated picks

The Big Story — Part 2 of our Battle of Brooklyn 250th anniversary series

Things to Do — Jazz at the bandshell, a night of free improvisation, and Union Hall turns 20

The Local — The Carroll Gardens bar that trained half of Brooklyn's bartenders

Development Watch — Excavation is about to start on Baltic Street

Quick Hits — DId a longtime Smith Street seafood spot quietly close?

Kings Co Imperial Opens Beside Its Owners' Stone Park Cafe
357 3rd St
Opens Sunday, July 27
Josh Grinker and Tracy Jane Young have been running Stone Park Cafe right here since 2004, so this isn't really a comeback. It's their Williamsburg restaurant, over a decade old, finally getting a Park Slope address of its own. Expect mapo tofu, beef chow fun, and sesame shrimp toast next door to the place that started it all.

Rue Saint Paul Is a Boutique Built Around Not Buying Anything New
313 Court St
Curated Pick
Kelly Wang left a finance career in 2018 to open a shop named for the street she used to live on in Paris's Le Marais. Six years into the Court Street storefront, Rue Saint Paul runs three ways at once-new pieces from sustainably minded designers, pre-loved pieces on consignment, and a rotating rental rack at $50 a week. It's less a store than a case for treating your closet like a subscription.

Bijan's Has Been Boerum Hill's Best Kept Secret Since 2011
81 Hoyt St
Curated Pick
A wood-burning fireplace, a menu that's been quietly excellent since before this stretch of Hoyt Street had much else going on, and a regulars list that's been building the entire time. The Bijan Mary gets the most attention. We'd start with the spiced chicken wings.

In Part One, we told you what was here in Gowanus before the battle. The Dutch farms, the tidal creek, the dinner-plate oysters, the families who had worked this land for four and five generations. We left off the moment British troops landed at Gravesend, five miles to the south. The farms were still standing. The mill was still running. Five days remained. Read Part One at thegowanaut.com/p/issue-22-july-4-2026. If you want to walk the battlefield yourself before reading on, we built a self-guided tour of the sites. It starts in Prospect Park, continues at the Old Stone House, and ends at the corner of Court and Atlantic. Find it at battle.thegowanaut.com.

They came in the middle of the night.

In the early hours of August 27, a British column of 10,000 soldiers under Generals Cornwallis and Clinton slipped quietly through Jamaica Pass, a gap in the ridge of hills on the far eastern edge of Long Island, near what is now the intersection of Jamaica Avenue and Broadway in East New York, close to the Broadway Junction subway station. That is roughly four miles east of Gowanus, well beyond where any serious attack was expected. The Americans had left the pass almost completely unguarded, watched by just five mounted militia officers. Three loyalist farmers who knew the terrain guided the column through the darkness. They moved slowly, stopping every few yards to stay quiet, the line stretching nine miles back into the night.

The American defensive line ran along the ridge of hills that today runs through Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery, with three passes cutting through it. The British were expected to come through those passes from the south. Instead, Clinton’s column went around the entire eastern end of the ridge, marching north through what is now Bedford-Stuyvesant, then turning west to come down behind the American line from the rear. By the time the sun came up, the Americans were caught between the British at their back and Hessian forces hitting them from the south. The American Battlefield Trust has an excellent map of exactly how the trap closed at battlefields.org/learn/maps/brooklyn-aug-27-1776.

When the British signal guns fired at nine in the morning, the attack came from three directions at once. Hessian mercenaries hit the American center head-on at Battle Pass, in what is now Prospect Park. British forces under General Grant pressed from the west, up the old Gowanus Road along the shore, near what is now Fourth Avenue and Third Street. And Clinton’s column came crashing in from behind. The lines broke. Soldiers fled north toward Brooklyn Heights in a rout.

It was on that western flank, along the fields above the creek, that the day’s most consequential fighting took place.

General William Alexander, a New Jersey nobleman who insisted on the title Lord Stirling, commanded roughly 1,600 American troops on that side of the line. He had been holding Grant’s larger force at bay since three in the morning, trading fire across orchards and fields in the darkness. When he learned that Clinton had broken through behind him, the escape route to Brooklyn Heights was already cut off. Cornwallis and a full British division had positioned themselves squarely across it. The only way out was across the Gowanus Creek, eighty yards of tidal marsh. The Americans had burned the wooden bridge over the creek themselves weeks earlier to slow any British advance. Now that decision trapped their own men on the wrong side.

Stirling made a calculation that probably saved the American Revolution. He ordered most of his men to cross the creek immediately, however they could. Swim it, wade it, struggle through the mud under fire. Some drowned. Then he turned to Major Mordecai Gist and roughly 260 Maryland soldiers, and gave them a different order. They were to charge the British.

Not once. Six times.

Gist and the Marylanders formed up and drove straight at Cornwallis’s position, anchored in and around the Cortelyou farmhouse in Washington Park on Third Street. The building that stands there today as the Old Stone House is a 1933 reconstruction using some of the original materials, but this is the exact ground where they fought. They were repulsed each time. They reformed and charged again. Musket fire tore through their ranks. They kept going. From the high ground at Smith’s Barbette, the Corkscrew Fort that stood where the Trader Joe’s on Court Street sits today, Washington watched through his spyglass and exclaimed: “Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.”

What the Marylanders bought with those charges was time. Time for Stirling’s remaining men to cross the creek. Time for the bulk of the army to reach the fortifications at Brooklyn Heights. Stirling himself, surrounded and unable to reach the American lines, broke through the British cordon and surrendered personally to the Hessian commander, preferring that to yielding to the British. The regiment that made those charges has been known ever since as the Maryland 400, named for the full strength of the First Maryland Regiment that day. Of the roughly 260 who charged the Cortelyou house, somewhere between 256 and 259 were killed, wounded, or captured. A marker at American Legion Post 1636 on 9th Street, a few blocks from where they fell, reads: “In Honored Memory of Maryland’s 400. Forever Remembered.” Their bodies are believed to lie in the ground nearby, in a location that has never been conclusively identified.

By nightfall on August 27, Washington’s army was alive but cornered. Nine thousand men were packed behind the walls of Smith’s Barbette and the surrounding fortifications on Brooklyn Heights, their backs to the East River, British General Howe’s army in front of them. Howe, confident the Americans would have to surrender in the morning, declined to press the attack and ordered his men to dig in for a siege. It was the decision that kept the Revolution alive.

Next time: nine thousand men, every cannon, every horse, every sack of supplies, and not a single boat to spare.

You can walk the ground where all of this happened. Our self-guided Battle of Brooklyn walking tour covers four sites in the Gowanus area, from the Old Stone House to the corner where Washington watched. It takes about 90 minutes and starts whenever you’re ready. battle.thegowanaut.com

Bell House Stand Up Showcase at Bell House
149 7th St
Sat Jul 25 · 8pm
Adam Gilbert, Brittany Carney, Dvontre Coleman, Emily Wilson, and Michael Good, lineup subject to change per the venue. A solid enough bill that the caveat barely matters.

Unscripted Soundscapes at iBeam Brooklyn
168 7th St
Sat Jul 25 · 7pm to 10pm · $20 suggested
Three hours of free improvisation across three rotating trios, no setlists, no safety net. Elliott Sharp closes it out at 9, which alone is worth the suggested donation.

Dancehall Forever at Littlefield
635 Sackett St
Sat Jul 25 · 11pm
Dancehall is Jamaica's high-energy answer to hip-hop: heavy bass, sound system culture, call and response. This one leans into the throwbacks rather than whatever's currently charting. Come dressed for it; the crowd here does not do casual.

Ali Berger, Ciel, and Jerome Derradji at Public Records Sound Room
233 Butler St
Sat Jul 25
Live set, two DJs, one sound system built specifically to make your home speakers feel inadequate. Ali Berger's live sets tend to run warm and analog, which is a good match for the room.

The Camille Harris Show: 40th Birthday Edition at Littlefield
635 Sackett St
Sun Jul 26 · 7pm
Subtitled "I'm a Woman Now," which tells you most of what you need to know about the tone. Expect the birthday material to double as the actual set.

The Nursery: Patrice Bäumel at Public Records
233 Butler St
Sun Jul 26 · 4pm
All day, outdoors, in the garden, which stays shaded most of the afternoon, a rare mercy in late July. Runs into the evening, so pace yourself.

Clash Talk: A Competitive Talk Show at Union Hall
702 Union St
Sun Jul 26 · 7:30pm
Part of Union Hall's summer series, a talk show format where the guests are also somehow competing against each other. We don't fully understand the rules either.

Friendlyjordies Presents: Alien Hunter at Bell House
149 7th St
Tue Jul 28 · 7:30pm
Australian YouTuber, live show, apparently involves aliens. We're as unclear on the premise as you are and going anyway.

Bushwick News Network Pilot Screening at Littlefield
635 Sackett St
Wed Jul 29 · 8pm
A fake local news pilot gets a real screening, with all the deadpan commitment that implies. Early word is it plays like a straight-faced parody of your group chat's most confident poster.

Union Hall's 20th Anniversary Party
702 Union St
Thu Jul 30 · 4pm to close
Twenty years of the bar that's hosted half the borough's comedy scene at one point or another. There's a bocce tournament with live accompaniment from the Brooklyn Brass All-Stars, 2006 beer prices, and new merch. This is the one to actually show up for.

About Last Night: Dating Disaster Stories NYC at Littlefield
635 Sackett St
Thu Jul 30 · 8pm
Worst-date storytelling, bring your own material if you dare. The good ones always start with someone saying "so this is going to sound insane."

The Ark at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue
Through August 30 · Wed–Thu 12–7pm, Fri 12–8pm, Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–5pm · Adults $18 · Students/Seniors $10–12 · Kids $5
Powerhouse Arts just launched its first major public exhibition. The Ark brings together 90 animal sculptures and installations by Kiki Smith, Maurizio Cattelan, Wangechi Mutu, and dozens of others, curated by Eric Fischl. The canal context makes it land differently here. A serious show in a neighborhood that's earned it.

Clover Club
210 Smith St
Mon–Thu 4pm–12am, Fri 4pm–2am, Sat 12pm–2am, Sun 12pm–12am
cloverclubny.com

In 2008, "craft cocktail bar" wasn't really a category yet. Julie Reiner, who'd already built Manhattan's Flatiron Lounge and co-founded Pegu Club, moved to Park Slope and found nowhere nearby worth drinking at. So she opened one.

The space used to be a shoe store called Johnnie's Bootery, you can still make out the old signage if you know where to look. Reiner gutted it and built the room around a mahogany bar dating to 1897, salvaged from a former dance hall in a Pennsylvania mining town. Tin ceiling, tile floor, a curtained back parlor with its own fireplace for private events. It's a real curated room, worn in rather than dressed up, which is more than you can say for most bars trying this hard.

Before opening, Reiner asked cocktail historian David Wondrich for his take. He told her to do it, he lived two blocks away and wanted somewhere decent to drink. That's the kind of neighborhood Clover Club was built for, one where the bar down the street from you is also the best bar in the city. In 2009, Tales of the Cocktail named it Best New Cocktail Lounge in the World. By 2013, Reiner had Best Mentor to go with it, which tells you something about how she ran the place. Half the good bartenders working in Brooklyn today did a shift here first.

One of the chefs running the kitchen in the bar's early years described the Sunday brunch crowd as its own kind of institution, regulars rolling in around 2 or 3pm straight off a closing shift somewhere else the night before, ordering the hardest drinks on the menu. Oysters, anything briny, nothing sweet. Less a brunch service than a second act.

Seventeen years in, Clover Club hasn't needed to reinvent itself once. That's not a lack of ambition; it's the whole point. The bar Reiner opened to fill a gap in her own neighborhood is still doing exactly that.

Excavation Is About to Start at 491 Baltic Street
Crews are preparing to break ground at 491 Baltic Street, at the corner of Baltic and Nevins. The 14-story, 79-unit project comes from Isaac & Stern Architects and Two Kings Real Estate, with 25 percent of units set aside as affordable. Completion is targeted for summer 2028, though projects like this one tend to run long.

Kittery of Brooklyn appears to have closed. The Smith Street seafood spot, known for lobster rolls and clam chowder under chef Josh Moulton, is listed as closed on Yelp as of this month, and neighbors have been asking on Facebook what happened. Nothing official from ownership yet; worth a follow-up before we say more.

Kings Co Imperial opens Sunday, so that's where we'll be if the mapo tofu is anywhere near as good as advertised. See you next week.

If something's happening out there, we want to know about it. Email, photo, neighborhood gossip — we'll take it.
[email protected].

Exploring Gowanus · Every Saturday