We told you about the biscone in Issue 5 even though we hadn’t all tried it. That situation has been corrected.

We went on Tuesday, partly to check on Trudie's in the old Buttermilk Channel space nearby. (Still dark, nothing going on at 2 in the afternoon.) But Brooklyn Granary was a block away, and we had no excuse. Sam, behind the counter, was genuinely enthusiastic about what they were doing there and so are we. The biscone arrived with butter and pear compote. That and a bite of their delicious chocolate chip cookie made for a terrific afternoon!

They also do baking classes, which we did not know until Tuesday.

The neighborhood rewards a walk. A few more reasons to take one this week.

Now Open / Coming Soon — A second-act restaurant on Atlantic, a dance school on Huntington, indoor pickleball on 4th Street, and a South Asian café on Court

The Big Story — Every new building in Gowanus is exactly 99 units. That's not an accident.

Things to Do — Jerrod Carmichael tonight, free jazz at iBeam, Punderdome next week, and the Print Fair is coming

The Local — The Brooklyn Inn has been on Hoyt Street since 1885. It has no plans to change.

Development Watch — Luxury condos, a mystery construction site, and a summer target on 4th Ave

Quick Hits — Saunas, Guitars, Makerspace, and Handmade Dolls, All on the Same Block

Confidant Finds Its Footing on Atlantic Avenue
127 Atlantic Avenue, at Henry St
Now Open · Wed–Sun 5–10 PM
Brendan Kelley and Daniel Grossman launched Confidant at Industry City last March, closed it eight months later, and moved the whole operation here. The former Colonie space on Atlantic suits them better: a room with a chef's counter, a seasonally rotating menu built around dry-aged fish (the technique that made them a name to know the first time around), and the prawn pot pie everyone is ordering. Reservations on Resy.

Cobble Hill Ballet Has a New Flagship on Huntington Street
240 Huntington Street, Suite 501, between Columbia and Henry
Now Open
Colette Linton-Meyer founded Cobble Hill Ballet in 2003 and ran it on Carroll Street for over two decades. The new Huntington space is nearly 6,000 square feet across three studios — their most ambitious space yet — at the 300 Huntington complex. Classes from 18 months through adult. For the families moving into the new buildings along the canal, there's now a serious dance school a short walk from the water.

PKLYN Pickleball Club Is Hiding on 4th Street
80 4th Street, between Hoyt and Bond
Open · Courts from $99/hr (members) / $110/hr (non-members)
Eighteen thousand square feet of indoor pickleball on a block that gives nothing away from the outside. Five courts plus a dink court, 23-foot ceilings with 20 skylights, a full bar, Alidoro sandwiches, Threes Brewing on tap. David Friedman opened this in October 2024. It has been flying quietly under the radar ever since. Now you know.

Bolo Bolo Is Already a Court Street Staple
196 Court Street, at Atlantic Ave
Open Daily 8 AM–6 PM · Closed Wednesday
Isha Koya built this café around South Asian baking traditions — ras malai lattes, black sesame rose lattes, chai olive oil cake, pistachio baklava. Nothing else on this stretch of Court Street looks like it. Worth knowing about.

Gowanus, Brooklyn
An invisible rule shaping the skyline
Walk the canal corridor and look at the recent development filings. 99 units. 99 units. 99 units. It's not a coincidence. It's arithmetic.

In 2022, New York State's 421-a housing tax break expired. Two years later, Albany passed a replacement called 485-x. The math it created for developers is blunt: any building claiming the exemption at 100 or more units must pay construction workers the prevailing wage, roughly $40 an hour. Buildings under 100 units face no such requirement. The wage floor adds an estimated 15 to 20 percent to construction costs on larger buildings. According to data from the Real Estate Board of New York, not a single building in New York City has filed for 100 or more units under the 485-x program.

The pattern is visible from any sidewalk in Gowanus. Last month, developer Zelig Weiss paid $19 million for a parcel at 444 Carroll Street and filed permits for a 99-unit building. His neighbors to the north: a 99-unit project under active construction. The lot across the street, filed last fall: 99 units.

The result is that every new building entering the pipeline today is shaped less by architecture than by a line in a wage law that almost nobody outside the industry talks about. Whether that's a reasonable market response to imperfect policy or something worth a harder look is a question for people smarter than us. What we can tell you is this: every new filing going up around the canal is the product of dozens of decisions made in spreadsheets, long before the first shovel hits the ground.

Ninety-nine. Every time.

Jerrod Carmichael at Bell House
149 7th Street
Saturday, Mar 14 · 8:00 PM
The Emmy-winning comedian and writer plays one night. This is a big get for a 450-capacity room. Act accordingly.

Instrumental Underground at iBeam Brooklyn
168 7th Street
Saturday, Mar 14 · 7:30 PM · $20
Three acts in one night: Ghost Accelerator Ensemble performs Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music, then the Pearring/Parker/Filiano/Sakai quartet, then the Lena Bloch Quartet closes it out. Runs through 11 PM. If you've been meaning to check this place out, Saturday is a good night to start.

Ceramics Pop-Up Sale at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue, at 2nd St
Fri–Sun, Mar 13–15 · 10 AM–6 PM · Free
The "What is Lost, What is Held" residency exhibition is still on view through April 1. This weekend, the ceramics studio runs its member pop-up sale alongside it. Art and pottery in the same trip.

Punderdome at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Wednesday, Mar 18 · 8:00 PM · 21+
NYC's cult pun competition returns, with former Dome champions competing for bragging rights. Come to watch. Come to compete. Come to witness grown adults take wordplay very seriously.

The Sporkful Live with Dan Pashman, Kenji López-Alt & Judy Gold at Bell House
149 7th Street
Thursday, Mar 19 · 7:30 PM
Dan Pashman, the food podcast host who invented a pasta shape (yes, really!), on stage with Kenji López-Alt, the food scientist who wrote a 900-page cookbook, and comedian Judy Gold. If any of those names mean something to you, this is your night.

148 Hoyt Street, at Bergen St
Mon–Sun 3 PM–2 AM

There is a bar on Hoyt Street that has been serving drinks since 1885. It has no website. It has no televisions. It does not have a cocktail menu, a DJ, or probably a QR code anywhere on the premises. What it has is a carved wood bar that runs most of the length of the room, a pressed tin ceiling, stained glass windows that let in a warm amber light in the afternoon, and a pool table in the back that has been in continuous use for as long as anyone can remember.

Anton Zeiner, a German immigrant, converted the building, originally a house, into a bar in 1885, with backing from the Otto Huber Brewery. When he died, his wife Marie expanded it: the back room and the woodwork followed. She eventually sold it to the brewery, and from there, a succession of German-American families ran it through the following decades. During Prohibition, it operated as the Exchange Cafe, which fooled nobody in the neighborhood and was probably not intended to. It was once caught selling alcohol and shut down for eight months. It reopened.

The current owners, who also run The Magician on the Lower East Side and Tile Bar in the East Village, acquired it in 2007 and have kept their hands off most of it. The bar's history has been documented by local historian Joel Shifflet in a book available at the bar itself. The place has appeared in the film Smoke, a Spike Lee Budweiser commercial, and scenes from the Batman series Gotham.

The crowd on any given night is a mix of people who have been coming for 20 years and people who walked in because they were curious about the history. Both groups fit in just right.

There’s no place more local than this.

110 Boerum Place Is Delivering This Fall
110 Boerum Place, Boerum Hill
Completion targeted September 2026
A 21-unit luxury condo on Boerum Place, with prices starting at $2.975 million and a September 2026 delivery target. Small building, high-end finishes. While the canal fills with 99-unit rentals, the streets to the north are getting boutique ownership product aimed at buyers with different math entirely.

415 Smith Street: Something Is Going Up
415 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens
Active construction · Developer TBD
Active construction observed on the east side of Smith Street between 4th and 5th Streets. Prior listings show this as a split-zoned warehouse parcel with roughly 14,000 buildable square feet, but no developer has been publicly identified, and no permits have surfaced. If you walk past and see anything on the fence, reply to this email. We're watching.

85 Fourth Avenue Is Targeting Summer 2026
85 4th Avenue, at Atlantic Ave
Under Construction · Summer 2026 target
The 193-unit mixed-use building at the northern end of the 4th Avenue corridor, with 5,415 square feet of ground-floor retail, is targeting a summer completion.

300 Huntington is quietly becoming a destination block. The Monadnock Development headquarters at the Smith-9th Street F/G stop now has Breuckelen Athletic on site: a 9,000-square-foot strength and recovery gym with saunas, cold plunges, and a training floor. Add School of Rock (nine lesson rooms, three rehearsal studios), MakeInspires (a STEAM makerspace for kids), and Hazel Village (a Gowanus-based toymaker doing 5,000 square feet of handmade doll manufacturing on-site), and you have one of the more interesting single-block clusters in the neighborhood. Brooklyn Granary, also here, ran in Issue 5. You already know about the biscone.

The Brooklyn Inn has been here for 140 years without a website or a television. Gowanus is changing fast, while some things stay exactly as they are and as they should be.

Got a tip? Spotted something new? Reply to this email or drop us a line at [email protected]. And forward this to a neighbor: the best stories come from the people who walk these streets.

See you out there.
The Gowanaut