Last weekend, before the rain, we finally made it to Untable. The food was incredible, the presentation amazing, and the staff so friendly. We finished the evening with a coconut banana cream pie and a beautiful fall sunset-the kind that people stop on the sidewalk for.
I won’t mention the rain. Now onto this week’s issue.

Now Open / Coming Soon — Cardamom buns on Court, the deepest wine list in Gowanus, Egyptian cotton from Toronto

The Big Story — Who's filling 420 Carroll and what’s coming to the Majestic

Things to Do — Molly Kearney, The George Lucas Talk Show, Banda de los Muertos, and more

The Local — Twenty-four years of Barbès, where the band still passes the hat

Development Watch — The esplanade opens this month(?), bears and stained glass included

Quick Hits — Pop-up tunnel books!

New in Carroll Gardens, a Danish Bakery with a Cult Following
Smør
361 Court Street
Smør opened its Carroll Gardens location this past Thursday, at the corner of Court and President, with a to-go window in addition to full cafe seating. The Nordic bakery built its following in the East Village and Williamsburg on cardamom buns, sourdough, and a breakfast burrito regulars keep coming back for.

The Deepest Wine List in Gowanus
Liar Liar
285 Nevins Street
Four friends with backgrounds at other Brooklyn bars run Liar Liar on Nevins Street in an exposed-brick space with original detailing throughout. The wine list is the deepest we've found in the neighborhood, and the vibe is cool and casual without trying too hard. The chicken sandwich or the steak frites with peppercorn sauce is the way to go.

A Toronto Cotton Label Lands on Court Street
Kotn
223 Court Street
Kotn is the Toronto label built on Egyptian cotton, and the Court Street shop keeps the racks deliberately short. Soft tees and sweaters in a handful of plain colors up front, bedding and duvets toward the back. Staff will make repeat trips to the stockroom to find your size, which is a great argument for a small shop over a website.

Last issue we told you who's deciding what goes into Gowanus's new ground floors. This week, we have the specifics on 420 Carroll and what we know so far about what's next.

420 Carroll. Construction on the building's retail spaces wraps up by the end of this year, according to Igloo. From there, tenants take over for their own build-outs, with most expected to open or hold grand openings into early spring 2027.

The lineup so far. Hey Clay Pottery Studio and Gowanus Marketplace are already open, along with The Shop, the building's coworking space. Hey Clay owner Cauvery Patel says no other space she looked at came close to 420 Carroll. "It felt expansive and bright, and I knew it would inspire people to do their best work," she told us. "I hear that from members all the time." The ground floor location, the natural light, and the plaza outside with its native plantings all played a part, she said.

The Shop is on the building's second floor and is run by director Anne Olson and general manager Meghan Sclafani. It mixes coworking offices and common areas with private offices. It also includes seven subsidized artist studios, known as the Gowanus Arts Mix Studios, tied to Arts Gowanus and aimed at artists displaced by development elsewhere in the borough.

Soon to join the existing tenants is BYOB Natural Wine and Spirits, a dedicated importer of Italian natural wines, an offshoot of Park Slope's Terre. Also coming is Focal Point Brewing Co., a Long Island City brewery known for its arts, music, and sports-viewing crowd, a relationship Igloo says goes back seven or eight years, long before the brewery even considered a second location.

Brooklyn Builders Studio is the other homegrown addition. Founders Brooke Holiday and Benjamin Hollberg live a few blocks away and had been walking their dog past 420 Carroll as it went up for years. More recently, Hollberg, an architect, has worked out of a studio upstairs at The Shop, and a passing conversation with The Shop's Meghan Sclafani connected him to Igloo. The program currently runs project-based architecture sessions for kids, summer camps, and after-school programming, with family and adult programming planned for later. It's operating out of a temporary space above Still Life Cafe on Sackett Street for now, and the move to 420 Carroll will add a small art and design bookshop up front alongside the studio space in back. "It seemed like one of those things where the stars aligned," Holiday told us.

The final ground floor space, the corner right at the bridge, is far along in lease negotiations with what Igloo describes as a fresh food concept. No name yet, but they're expecting an announcement in the coming weeks.

The Majestic. Domain, the developer behind 420 Carroll, is also building on Sackett Street, across from Thomas Greene Park. Igloo will place anchor restaurants there, with plans for art studio space and early conversations about fitness and lifestyle tenants to round out the mix, aimed at complementing the park next door. Igloo says conversations with other local businesses are ongoing too.

That's the roster so far. Who gets picked next, at 420 Carroll's last open corner or wherever Igloo lands at the Majestic, is the same question Part 1 opened with. We'll keep watching.

Masterpieces: A Virtual Experience of the Museo del Prado at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue
Saturday, October 3 · opening celebration, exact time not yet announced
Powerhouse Arts premieres a 30 minute immersive VR exhibit made with Madrid's Museo del Prado, narrated by a fictional security guard on his last shift as he walks through five paintings, including Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. It is the US premiere and currently the only American stop. The exhibit runs through December 20, and opening weekend kicks off with a DJ set from April Hunt.

Eli Winter at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Saturday, October 3 · 7:00 PM
A self-taught instrumental guitarist whose records land in the American primitive tradition. Worth sitting still for.

Banda de los Muertos at Barbès
376 9th Street
Saturday, October 3 · 10:00 PM
Led by longtime jazz scene players Oscar Noriega and Jacob Garchik, this Brooklyn ten-piece plays traditional Sinaloa-style Mexican brass music in Barbès' usual cozy back room.

Atlantic Antic at Atlantic Avenue LDC
Atlantic Avenue, from 4th Avenue to Hicks Street
Sunday, October 4 · 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Brooklyn's largest street festival got pushed back a week by last weekend's storm and lands on Sunday instead. Expect over a mile of food, crafts, and live music along Atlantic Avenue, plus the return of the Antic Sing competition.

Daylighters at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Sunday, October 4 · 3:00 PM
A comedy show billed as safe for kids, hosted by Kurt Braunohler. Whether that is a relief or a warning is up to you.

Comedy Girl Autumn at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sunday, October 4 · 6:00 PM
A live comedy show hosted by Larry Owens, closing out the weekend.

Hot Butter Train at Bell House
149 7th Street
Monday, October 5 · 7:30 PM
Thirteen years of open mics, book clubs, and whatever else Kurt Braunohler, Wyatt Cenac, and Jo Firestone have cooked up in Gowanus, all crammed into one night.

Hear Me Out at Union Hall
702 Union Street
Tuesday, October 6 · 7:30 PM
A monthly stand-up show hosted by Nick Smith, with a rotating cast of guest comics. New lineup every time, same host.

Heel Toe Rodeo at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Tuesday, October 6 · 7:30 PM
Beginner-friendly line dancing hosted by Juliet Hartz, with a lesson up front and open floor dancing after. Brand new boots will not help.

Hana Stretton, Jana Horn at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Wednesday, October 7 · 7:00 PM
Hana Stretton, the Australian folk songwriter behind this year's tiarn, shares the bill with Jana Horn, the Brooklyn based songwriter whose self titled third album came out in January.

Molly Kearney at Bell House
149 7th Street
Thursday, October 8 · 7:30 PM
Molly Kearney spent two seasons on Saturday Night Live doing impressions of everyone from Guy Fieri to an Irish nun, and opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on tour before landing the lead role in CBS's DMV.

The George Lucas Talk Show with Special Guests at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Thursday, October 8 · 8:00 PM
A talk show built around Star Wars trivia and tangents, hosted by comedian Connor Ratliff of the podcast Dead Eyes. Fans and skeptics both welcome.

Pretty Girl (DJ Set) at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Thursday, October 8 · 10:30 PM
Pretty Girl is the house and garage-leaning DJ project of Melbourne-born producer Emilia Predebon, who has toured clubs and festivals across the UK, Europe, and Australia. A late one.

The Bechdel Cast: 10 Year Anniversary Tour at Bell House
149 7th Street
Monday, October 12 · 7:30 PM
The pop culture podcast The Bechdel Cast marks ten years on the road, live and in person.

The Central Park Five Album Release at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Monday, October 12 · 7:00 PM
An album release for The Central Park Five, the Anthony Davis opera that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music, presented by Long Beach Opera.

Barbès
376 9th Street

Walk into Barbès on any given night, and you might catch a Haitian band, a jazz trio, or a set built around French musette or West African funk. The range is wide enough that Playboy once named it one of the ten best jazz clubs in the country, and any single genre is only part of what happens there in a given week.

There is no cover at the door. Instead, they collect a suggested donation for the band during the set, usually between 5 and 20 dollars, and that money goes straight to the musicians. It's genuinely rare to find a room in New York still running on pass the hat instead of a box office, and the back room is tight enough that you end up standing just a few feet from whoever is playing. Most nights run two sets starting around 8 or 9pm, and performers get at least 90 minutes each to stretch out and try new material instead of rushing through a tight set. The room itself is small, a bar up front and a back room where the music happens, and the crowd tends to be a mix of neighborhood regulars, tourists who found it on a list somewhere, and people who came specifically for that night's band.

Barbès opened on May 1, 2002, started by two French musicians, Olivier Conan and Vincent Douglas, who had both lived in the neighborhood for years and wanted a place for the kind of international, non-commercial programming nobody else in the city was doing. They built it themselves with no investors, mostly on credit cards. Conan named the club after the Barbès neighborhood in Paris where he discovered music as a teenager, and in 2004 he started Barbès Records to release albums by regulars like Slavic Soul Party, still playing there most weeks more than two decades later. In 2017, rising rent nearly forced the club to close, and the neighborhood raised enough to keep it open. It has since spun off its own outdoor festival, Barbès in the Woods, now heading into its third year. Conan eventually moved back to France, where he runs his own production company helping other venues book the same kind of music. If you have not been, go.

The Esplanade Opening Soon??
The public walkway along the Gowanus Canal is nearing completion on both banks. On the west side, the stretch running between The Westmark at Carroll Street and Anagram Gowanus at Union has its plantings in and a children's play area built, with pavers looking like the last major piece. The Westmark is a two-tower, 603-unit rental from Rabsky Group that wraps the block from Carroll Street on the water to President and Bond. Anagram is Tankhouse's 20-story building at the Union Street Bridge, with 158 units, roughly half below market rate.

Across the water below Nevins Landing, one of the Gowanus Wharf buildings, the elevated walkway looks nearly finished, and the art is steadily going in. Jen Lewin's Ursas arrived in August, the 26-foot Ursa Major built from reclaimed ocean plastic and the 13-foot Ursa Minor from infinity mirrors and programmable light. Tom Fruin has since installed a new piece there as part of Gowanus Wharf, visible now from the Union Street Bridge and set to be lit when the space opens to the public this month. Fruin is the artist behind the stained glass water towers on rooftops around Brooklyn, and he has worked out of a Gowanus studio since 2019.

Crafternoons returns Saturday at 1pm with a Masterpieces tie-in, building pop-up tunnel books inspired by Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights at Powerhouse Arts, free and drop-in.

We will be at the back of the room, pretending we know the band.

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

Exploring Gowanus · Every Saturday