A strange thing happened this week. I was walking the pup across the canal one morning and I was cold! The kids are out walking and scooting to school, it gets darker earlier every day, the line at Brooklyn Habit is a bit longer every morning-how can it be fall already?!
Summer is definitively over but there’s still plenty of things to do on the calendar and new places and old favorites to visit. Get out there!

Now Open / Coming Soon — A Guatemalan coffee shop, chouquettes, and a Smith Street wine shop worth knowing

The Big Story — Brooklyn Public Library confirms the Carroll Gardens branch will reopen by year's end and gives us a sneak peek inside.

Things to Do — Comedy tapings, a DJ set past midnight, a spelling bee, and five more picks through the end of the month

The Local — A climbing gym that was betting on Gowanus seventeen years before anyone else was

Development Watch — A buyer revealed and new retail on 3rd Street

Quick Hits — BID formation, Make & Meet, and a Bash!

Guatemala's Best Coffee Shop Is Coming to Park Slope
El Gran Café
162 5th Avenue
Dan Griffin spent years in the coffee industry before he and Josué Morales set out to bring what's one of the best coffee shops in Antigua, Guatemala to Brooklyn. They're taking over the old Everyman Espresso space on 5th Avenue, which Everyman vacated after about nine years there. No open date yet. Thanks for the heads up to The Park Slope Walk.

The Croissant Line That Starts Before the Doors Open
La Bicyclette Bakery
305 Court Street
Florent Andreytchenko started his baking apprenticeship in France's Champagne region at eleven years old, and it shows. The case runs classic French: croissants, baguettes, chouquettes, all made in house, with regulars calling it the most authentic boulangerie they've found in the city. This is the third of what's now four Brooklyn locations, alongside Williamsburg, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 8am to 1pm, closed Mondays, and worth planning around.

The Wine Shop That Talks You Down From the $50 Bottle
Smith & Vine
317 Smith Street
An eclectic, well-curated shop built around small producers and organic and biodynamic wines, with a staff that asks what you're cooking before they ask what you want to spend. Ranked among the top wine and spirits shops in the city by Grub Street and Time Out New York.

Carroll Gardens Library
396 Clinton Street

Carroll Gardens Library is getting close to reopening, and we got a look inside to see how it's coming along. The historic building at 396 Clinton Street has been under renovation since 2023, and Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) now tells us the doors should open by year's end.

It took Andrew Carnegie exactly one day to go from steel baron to library patron. In 1901, he sold his steel company to J.P. Morgan for $480 million, making him one of the richest men in the world. The very next day, he offered New York City $5.2 million to build 65 branch libraries across the boroughs, the largest library gift the city had ever received. Brooklyn's share came to $1.6 million, enough to build 21 branches over the following two decades. Carnegie had immigrated from Scotland as a boy and grew up poor in Pittsburgh, where he later credited a local library with much of his own education, which shaped how he gave the money away. The city had to supply the land and pay for the books and staff.

Carroll Gardens Library opened in 1905, designed by Brooklyn architect William Bunker Tubby, and it's one of 18 of those original 21 Brooklyn branches still standing. In its day it was considered a model of what a Carnegie library should be, with a spacious symmetrical layout, vaulted ceilings held up by ornate columns, and a generous children's room. Carnegie himself wasn't especially interested in grand architecture, he actually thought some early Carnegie libraries were too extravagant and had his secretary put together a pamphlet of standard floor plans to keep costs down. Carroll Gardens turned out handsome anyway.A cardboard model of the building was even sent to an architecture conference in Leipzig in 1914, then to the Panama exhibition in San Francisco the following year, as an example of the form done right.

We got a sneak peek inside recently. The old HVAC units had been mounted right into the vaulted ceiling, so removing them meant the entire ceiling had to come down too. What's going back up is a faithful replica, and the original columns underneath were protected and restored, along with the building's steel shelving, stripped of decades of old paint and repainted, original woodwork under the windows, and the original fireplace surround. New lighting on the main floor comes from Domingo González, a lighting designer known for work on spaces like Washington Square Arch and Moynihan Train Hall. The mezzanine is becoming a dedicated teen space, with new furniture and sound barriers to keep the noise level down. The elevator is the last major piece left, and it's being installed now. Once it clears inspection, BPL says, "we can begin the final work which includes bringing in new furniture and shelving, setting up technology, and of course, getting many thousands of books back on the shelves." That part of the process is expected to take about another month, with an official reopening date likely to be announced within the next couple of months.

We'll be back with photos and an exact date as soon as BPL has them to share.

Carroll Gardens isn't the only branch that's been missed. Red Hook's library, closed since 2023 as well, was also once a Carnegie building, though the original 1915 structure burned down in 1946 and was later rebuilt. It's now undergoing its own renovation, with BPL telling us to expect it back in early 2027.

We're looking forward to walking back through both sets of doors once they reopen, library cards ready.

Carroll Park Fall Fair at Carroll Park
Sat Sep 19 · 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Clothes, art and crafts, music, toys, a full day of it, and every dollar goes back into the park you're standing in. Vendor spots already sold out, which tells you something about how this has grown.

Sam Taggart: Special Taping at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sat Sep 19 · 7:00 PM · Two shows
Sam Taggart, who you'd recognize from Fantasmas or Los Espookys, is taping a comedy special at Bell House and doing it twice in one night, in case the first crowd doesn't laugh hard enough.

Gangstagrass at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Sat Sep 19 · Doors 6:30 PM · Show 7:00 PM · 21+
A bluegrass band and a hip-hop band decided to just be one band instead, and somehow it works. Expect banjos doing things banjos don't normally do.

Bradley Zero, Tornado Wallace, Stones Taro, Yibing at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Sat Sep 19 · 11:00 PM
Four names, one very late start time (for me at least), this crowd doesn't show up until the hour most nights are winding down. This is not the "home by midnight" Saturday, and Public Records isn't going to pretend otherwise.

Spell Checc: A Spelling Bee Gameshow at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Sun Sep 20 · Doors 6:30 PM · Show 7:30 PM · 21+
Local comedians attempt to spell words correctly while everyone around them tries to make that as hard as possible. Sunday plans, solved.

Climate Town & Amy Westervelt Live at Bell House
149 7th Street
Mon Sep 21
A climate podcast doing a live show is either exactly your kind of Monday or the opposite of what you want after a Monday. Either way, it's funnier than the subject matter has any right to be.

Let's Not Die at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Tue Sep 22 · 8:00 PM
A comedy variety show that occasionally pauses for actual climate science, with Julio Torres on the lineup. Somehow that combination works better than it sounds.

We the Gleaners: Album Release Concert + Hompulon at iBeam
168 7th Street
Fri Sep 25
Folk album release, the kind of show iBeam does well and nobody outside the neighborhood hears about. Which is sort of the whole appeal of iBeam, honestly.

NORMAL BEHAVIOR with Chine Ikoro at Union Hall
702 Union Street
Mon Sep 28
Respected, not mainstream, which around here is usually the better ticket anyway. Union Hall's basement room has a way of making a show feel like a favor someone did you.

Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Elliott Smith Benefit Concert at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Mon Sep 28
A benefit concert built around Elliott Smith's catalog. Bring tissues, bring a donation, and don't expect to want to talk much on the walk home.

Jimmy Chin: Rules to Live By at Bell House
149 7th Street
Mon Sep 28
Yes, that Jimmy Chin, the mountaineer and filmmaker. Talking, not climbing anything in the room, though given his resume he'd probably make the ceiling beams look easy anyway.

Hot Butter Train at Bell House October 5.
149 7th Street
Mon Oct 5
Hosted by Kurt Braunohler, Jo Firestone, and Wyatt Cenac, with Aparna Nancherla, Jean Grae, Hari Kondabolu, Roy Wood Jr, and Sabrina Wu on the bill. Expect this to sell out, full listing closer to the date.

Bouldering Project
575 Degraw Street

Walk in on a weeknight and the walls are the first thing you notice, angled overhangs and squat traverses in every color a route setter could dream up, climbers three deep waiting on the good problems. Past the bouldering floor there's a heated yoga studio, a cold plunge, a weight room, and a co-working corner where somebody always has a laptop open between sets. The 2023 renovation added sixty percent more terrain and none of it feels tacked on.

The building itself is a converted Daily News delivery garage, eighteen thousand square feet of it, the kind of ceiling height you only get from a place that used to move trucks and not people. Members compare notes on route setters the way regulars compare bartenders. Weekends skew toward kids and families. Weeknights belong to the after-work crowd working off a day spent in front of their screens.

None of this looked inevitable in 2009. Three friends from Babson College built the original Brooklyn Boulders here from scratch, in a warehouse nobody else wanted, years before a single crane showed up on the canal. It was the largest climbing gym in the city when it opened and one of the only reasons to walk down this part of Degraw Street at all. The founders sold in 2022, the walls got a new owner and a new name, Bouldering Project, and the terrain got a serious upgrade. The address never moved. Seventeen years later it's still the original bet on this stretch of Gowanus, just with better yoga.

Buyer of Carroll Gardens Rite Aid Site Revealed
320 Smith Street
An entity tied to Manhattan developer Dawson Stellberger paid $21.5 million for the full block on the west side of Smith Street between President and Union, opposite Carroll Park. The deal closed in August, deed filed September 1. Stellberger's other projects run toward nightlife and members' clubs, not groceries, so what replaces the old Rite Aid is genuinely open. We will keep you posted.

Retail Space Now Leasing at 129 3rd Street
129 3rd Street
Leasing signage is up at the 11-story, 132-unit building that sold for $105 million in January. About 2,439 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, ready to be filled.

Gowanus BID Formation Effort Moves Toward a Vote
Three public meetings are on the calendar this fall as organizers push for the 51 percent support needed from businesses and property owners to formally establish a Business Improvement District. The steering committee includes Arts Gowanus, Forth on Fourth Avenue, Friends of Thomas Greene Park, and Old Stone House.

Every Body Therapy and Still Life Cafe are teaming up for Make & Meet on Saturday, September 26, a beginner pottery afternoon built around making friends, not just vases. Fifteen spots, connection cards included, vase and flowers to follow. Register at everybodytherapyny.com/events.

The Badass Bash turns 15. Badass Animal Rescue's annual fundraiser hits its 15th year Thursday, October 8, at 501 Union Street, with Broadway's Ellen Harvey as honorary host. Tickets are on sale.

Between the fair, the bakery, and the bands, this weekend doesn't leave much room for staying in.

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