Nine thousand men vanished off Brooklyn Heights in a single foggy night in 1776, and we get to the end of that story this issue. Alongside it, a bar with 20,000 dice in the wall and a tequila spot with an endless list has been at it for thirteen years. Somehow that all fits in one newsletter.

Now Open / Coming Soon — Shania's Max Bet opens on 3rd Avenue, plus two curated picks on Smith and Court Streets.

The Big Story — Part Three of the Battle of Brooklyn series: the night crossing that saved Washington's army.

Things to Do — Nine events across Union Hall, Littlefield, iBeam, Public Records, Bell House, and BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn.

The Local — Bar San Miguel, thirteen years of tequila on Smith Street.

Development Watch — Updates at 604 Union Street and 280 Bergen Street.

Quick Hits — The esplanade is taking shape.

Shania's Max Bet Brings Atlantic City to 3rd Avenue
317 3rd Avenue
Now Open
The former Dirty Precious space has new owners and a fully realized vision. Shania's Max Bet comes from Robin Daily, Mike Brown, and Jericho Davidson, three Royal Palms regulars who turned a years-long inside joke into an actual bar. The name comes from their group chat and the crew's annual Friendsgiving trip to Atlantic City, and they built the room to match. Shock pink walls are lined with mirrored tile, murals cover what's left of the surface, and the bar itself is a panel built from 20,000 dice cast in resin, all of it reflected back by a mirrored ceiling overhead. The back room goes even further, styled to feel like the inside of an '80s limo. The drink list keeps things loose: martinis, Midori sours, beer-and-shot combos, the kind of order that makes a Tuesday feel like a weekend.

RUA Thai Turns Smith Street Into a Floating Market
204 Smith Street
RUA Thai built its menu around the floating markets of Ratchaburi, Thailand, where chef Kornpon Theeraumpornkul grew up, and the room delivers on that promise before the food even arrives. Start with the shrimp donuts, then let the kitchen do what it does best with tom yum, curries, and a Pad Thai that earns the hype. The cocktail list leans playful too, including a butterfly pea soda that changes color at the table. Good for a sit-down dinner or a takeout order eaten straight out of the container.

The Best Seat in Carroll Gardens Might Belong to a Dog
556 Court Street
Animal Loving Care has been minding the neighborhood's dogs and cats since 2000, offering cage-free daycare, slumber party-style overnight boarding, dog walking, and in-home pet sitting. Grooming happens a few doors down at their Spaw on Court Street. The team is female-owned and has built the kind of loyalty that keeps clients coming back for close to three decades, which in pet years is basically forever.

In Part Two, we told you about the battle itself. The British column that slipped through Jamaica Pass in the middle of the night. The Hessians hitting the American center at what is now Prospect Park. The Maryland 400 charging the Cortelyou farmhouse six times so their fellow soldiers could cross the Gowanus Creek and reach safety. We left off with Washington's army alive but cornered, nine thousand men packed behind the walls of Smith's Barbette on Brooklyn Heights, their backs to the East River, British General Howe's army in front of them. Read Part Two. And if you want to walk the ground where all of this happened, our self-guided tour starts in Prospect Park and continues at the Old Stone House at battle.thegowanaut.com.

The night after the battle, it rained.

Not a passing summer shower. A cold, driving downpour that turned the ground at Brooklyn Heights to mud and soaked the American soldiers where they stood. They had been awake for most of thirty-six hours. Many had lost friends crossing the creek. They had no tents, little food, and a rowdy British army a few hundred yards away, close enough that they could hear the enemy digging siege trenches in the dark.

Washington had not slept either. He understood the situation precisely. His army was trapped on a peninsula with the East River behind it and no way out. The British warships that had been kept from the river by a strong northeast wind could change position at any moment. If Howe sent his navy up the East River while pressing his army forward from the land side, Washington had nowhere to go. The entire Continental Army, the only army the Revolution had, would be captured or destroyed before the summer was out.

On the afternoon of August 29, as the rain finally began to ease, Washington called his generals together. The army would leave that night. Every boat that could be found in the harbor would be commandeered. The troops were told they were preparing for a night attack. They were not.

What happened next was the most remarkable military operation of the entire war, and it happened on the water between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

A regiment of sailors and fishermen from Marblehead, Massachusetts, under Colonel John Glover, had crossed from Manhattan to Brooklyn the previous morning. These were not soldiers in the conventional sense. They were men who had spent their lives reading tides and weather, men who could handle a boat in the dark without making a sound. Glover's men began moving the army across the mile-wide East River at eight in the evening, muffling their oars with cloth, speaking in whispers. The sick and wounded went first. Then the artillery and horses. Then the soldiers, regiment by regiment, in the dark.

The crossing did not go smoothly. The tide reversed direction around midnight, and the wind picked up hard from the northeast. The sailboats were nearly swept downriver into the waiting British fleet. For three hours, Glover's men rowed against the current with nothing but oars, exhausted, in the dark, ferrying load after load across a mile of black water.

Dawn came, and men were still on the Brooklyn shore. The rear guard under Brigadier General Thomas Mifflin, which had volunteered for the most dangerous assignment, was still holding the line. If the British discovered the evacuation before the last men crossed, the rear guard would be captured or killed. There was no escape plan for them.

Then the fog came.

It rolled in so thick that one soldier later said you could scarcely discern a man at six yards distance. On the Manhattan side, there was no fog at all. The Americans loaded the final boats in near-total darkness, invisible to the British sentries a few hundred yards away. Mifflin's rear guard slipped away from the line they had held all night without a sound, walked to the shore, and got into boats.

Washington was the last man off. Eyewitnesses reported that he was the last Continental to leave. He stepped into the final boat as the fog began to thin behind him.

When the fog finally lifted, the British found the American fortifications empty. Nine thousand men. Every cannon, every horse, every sack of supplies. The British failed to notice until it was too late. Not a single life lost in the crossing.

Howe had held his army back for two days, certain the Americans would have to surrender. In those two days, Washington had moved an entire army across a river under his nose. The war would continue for seven more years.

What Howe found when the fog lifted was not just an empty fort. It was the end of Britain's best chance to end the Revolution in a single blow. None of it happens without the Maryland soldiers who died in the fields above the Gowanus Creek two days earlier. The fog was luck. The heroism of the Marylanders was not.

Next time, we cover what the battle left behind: the occupation, the burned mills, and what happened to the families who had farmed this land for five generations. Coming next time.

Walk the ground where all of this happened. Our self-guided Battle of Brooklyn walking tour covers sites in the Gowanus area, starting in Prospect Park and heading to the Old Stone House to the corner where Washington watched. It takes about 90 minutes and starts whenever you're ready. battle.thegowanaut.com

Ramy Youssef at Union Hall
702 Union Street
Sat Aug 2
The Emmy-nominated comedian and creator of his own show swings through the small room. No opener listed, no theme, just Ramy and a mic. Get there early, this is the kind of show that fills up on word of mouth alone.

SORRY with Rachel Coster and Zach Schiffman at Union Hall
702 Union Street
Sun Aug 2 · 5pm
Every comedian has something to apologize for, and this show hands them the mic to do it. At Union Hall this week, that means a stacked lineup of guests and presumably a stacked list of apologies.

Alphabet Mafia Fundraiser Show at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Sat Aug 1 · 7:30pm
Comedians, music, and raffle prizes for a cause: a fundraiser night for Alphabet Mafia, a queer mob story looking for its next chapter. Come for the raffle, stay because you already bought a ticket.

Swafford/Michaels/Swanson + Karlson/Wallace/Neuberg at iBeam Brooklyn
168 7th Street
Sat Aug 1 · 7:30pm
Two improvising trios play separate sets, then merge into a sextet for the finale. If that sentence made sense to you without an explanation, this is your night.

The Nursery: Soul Summit All Day Long at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Sun Aug 2 · 4pm
Public Records turns its open-air plant nursery into a dance floor for the day. No real end time, so plan your exit before the second wind hits.

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Tue Aug 4 · 7pm
The public radio interview show comes to Littlefield with comedian Jordan Carlos as the guest and singer-songwriter Taylor Ashton on music. Lower stakes than the format suggests, in a good way.

Jerrod Carmichael at Bell House
149 7th Street
Fri Aug 7
The Emmy winner takes a small stage for a night, which is not something that happens often anymore. Expect this one to move fast.

The Good Liars, Live at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Fri Aug 7 · 8pm
Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler have spent years embedded in America's political circus, mostly by crashing it uninvited. Expect stories, not a debate.

globalFEST at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn
Lena Horne Bandshell, Prospect Park
Fri Aug 7 · free
DakhaBrakha headlines a night of international sounds at the bandshell, free like always. Bring a blanket and get there early if sitting matters to you.

Bar San Miguel
307 Smith Street

Bar San Miguel opened on Smith Street in 2012, borrowing its name and a little of its soul from a bar in San Miguel de Allende, and thirteen years later it's still doing exactly what it set out to do. The tequila list runs past a hundred bottles, organized by region and production method, and the bartenders will happily walk you through a highland blanco versus a valley reposado if you ask. If you don't ask, they leave you alone, which might be the more impressive skill.

The food doesn't coast on the drink menu's reputation. Tacos, ceviches, and a guacamole made tableside have been drawing regulars back since the doors opened. The margaritas are built to let the tequila do the talking rather than burying it under syrup, which is rarer than it should be on a strip with this many happy hours.

Warm weather is when the place really earns its keep. The back patio, strung with lights and usually a few degrees cooler than the sidewalk out front, fills up on the first genuinely warm Friday of spring and doesn't slow down until the leaves turn. Inside, the tile work and carved wood nod at the restaurant's Mexican namesake without turning the room into a theme park.

Here's the detail that tends to surprise people: CNBC's Jim Cramer is a co-owner. He is not, as far as anyone can tell, in the kitchen. The food is good anyway, which suggests the actual cooking is being handled by people who know what they're doing, leaving Cramer free to do whatever it is Cramer does when he's not yelling about stocks. Thirteen years in, that's the whole pitch: good tequila, a patio worth waiting for, and a bar that never needed the celebrity owner to make the case for itself.

604 Union Street Sells for $11 Million
The former Dinosaur Bar-B-Que building has sold to developer Zelig Weiss, with demolition permits filed by partner Hershy Silberstein. Plans call for a nine-story mixed-use building with 85 units and nearly 50,000 square feet of commercial space. Weiss has two more projects in the pipeline nearby, at 224 3rd Avenue and 444 Carroll Street.

Excavation Begins at 280 Bergen Street
Goose Property Management has started excavation on a four-building, 302,000 square foot complex at the corner of Bergen Street and 3rd Avenue. The project will bring 367 rental units and about 9,700 square feet of ground-floor retail, backed by a $166 million construction loan. Completion is targeted for winter 2028

The Canal's Two New Esplanades Are Taking Shape
Behind the Westmark, crews are laying the walkways and garden beds for the public path that will run between Carroll and Union Streets along the canal. On the other side, Nevins Landing's esplanade, designed by James Corner Field Operations, is forming along the water on both towers. Neither is finished, but for the first time in a while there’s real progress.

Go count the dice at Shania's for us; we lost track around fifteen thousand.

If something's happening out there, we want to know about it. Email, photo, neighborhood gossip — we'll take it.
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Exploring Gowanus · Every Saturday