The dump trucks were lined up on 3rd Street again this week, waiting their turn for canal pick-ups. The near-constant din of idling and beeping continues, as does the progress building in this neighborhood. Meanwhile, the first signs of Spring are filling the neighborhood.

Now Open / Coming Soon — Gowanus gets its running headquarters, Liar Liar turns one, and a Belle Époque cocktail bar worth knowing about

The Big Story — The first building from the rezoning is turning into exactly the kind of Saturday the neighborhood has been building toward

Things to Do — The Parent Trap drinking game tonight, DJ Sprinkles at Public Records, Desi comedy Sunday, and a full week ahead

The Local — 97 years on one Carroll Gardens corner

Development Watch — Society Brooklyn refinances at $370M, and Nevins Landing is almost here

Quick Hits — Cars or no cars??

Bakline Running Has Been on 3rd Avenue Since October. You Should Know About It.
424a 3rd Avenue, between 8th and 9th Streets
Now Open
Spring is almost here, which means it's time to remember you are a person who sometimes runs. Bakline, a Brooklyn-based performance apparel brand, opened its first flagship on 3rd Avenue last fall: a retail shop stocked with technical gear alongside The Press Room, an in-house screen-printing studio where custom apparel gets made on-site. For the few chilly days still left on the calendar, there is always steak frites and red wine just two blocks at…

Liar Liar Turns One. Still the Best Table on the Canal.
285 Nevins Street, at Sackett Street
Open One Year · Daily 4pm–12am
From the team behind Bed-Stuy's Bad Luck Bar, Liar Liar opened at the corner of Nevins and Sackett last January and has quietly become one of the neighborhood's best hangs. Long bar, intimate booths, vinyl on the turntable, and a long natural wine list. The food is serious: steak frites in a peppery au poivre, a fried chicken sandwich drenched in sweet-and-sour sauce. A bottle of red and the steak frites will run you $69. In a city of $26 glasses of wine and $100 steaks, that's a room worth finding. Happy birthday!

Bar Rêve Is the Cocktail Bar from Another Time Right on Smith Street
222 Smith Street, at Butler Street
Open Since October · Tue–Thu 5pm–12am, Fri–Sat 5pm–1am
Opened last fall by two hospitality veterans who live in the neighborhood, Bar Rêve is the kind of place that makes you forget you're in Brooklyn: red velvet curtains, Murano chandeliers, and a cocktail menu presented as a bound book with every drink named after an Impressionist painting. The Blue Night is a Manhattan. The Aurore is a Pornstar Martini. It's a little theatrical and completely on purpose. Great for date night!

420 Carroll Street, Gowanus

When the Domain Companies opened 420 Carroll Street in late 2023, it was a milestone that felt more symbolic than practical. The first building completed under the 2021 Gowanus rezoning, a 360-unit mixed-income rental on the canal, with a row of ground-floor storefronts that looked out over the water and waited for tenants.

The waiting is ending. This week, Domain announced three new leases totaling 7,500 square feet on the building's ground floor, and the lineup is worth paying attention to.

Focal Point Beer Co. is coming from Long Island City, where it has built a real following with its taproom and small-batch beers. The Gowanus location will be a full-service restaurant with outdoor waterfront seating. A brewery with canal views and a kitchen is not a small thing. That's an afternoon destination.

Joining it: BYOB Naturale Wine & Spirits, a natural wine and Italian spirits shop led by restaurateur Alessandro Trezza, whose years running Brooklyn restaurants give him real standing in the natural wine world. And Brooklyn Builders Studio, founded by local residents Brooke Hoiliday and Benjain Hollberg, which will run hands-on design and building workshops for kids and families.

They will join Gowanus Marketplace and Hey Clay pottery studio, both already open on the ground floor. That is a brewery, a natural wine shop, a grocery, a pottery studio, and a kids workshop on a single waterfront block.

Think about what that actually looks like on a Saturday: a bacon egg and cheese at the Marketplace, a ceramics class at Hey Clay, a beer along the canal at Focal Point. That kind of afternoon didn't exist in Gowanus two years ago. The canal-side is slowly coming to life.

A Drinking Game NYC: The Parent Trap at Bell House
149 7th Street
Saturday, Mar 21 · Doors 6pm, show 7pm
Someone decided the best thing to do with a LiLo movie is to turn it into a drinking game. They were right.

Sundays In The Atrium: Frank & Tony + DJ Sprinkles at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Sunday, Mar 22 · 4pm.
DJ Sprinkles flies stateside only a handful of times a year. If you don't have tickets, get them now.

Desi Comedy Fest at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sunday, Mar 22 · 7:30pm.
South Asian stand-up, Bell House, Sunday night. There are worse ways to end the weekend.

The Moth StorySLAM at Bell House
149 7th Street
Wednesday, Mar 25 · 8pm. You know how this goes.

Kyle Kinane at Bell House
149 7th Street
Friday, Mar 27 · Two shows: 7:30pm and 10pm. Pick the late show if you want to feel like you're getting away with something.

Mazzola Bakery
192 Union Street, at Henry Street, Carroll Gardens
Mon–Sat 6am–8pm, Sun 7am–6pm · Cash Only

At the corner of Union and Henry Streets in Carroll Gardens, there is a bakery that has been open since 1928. It opens at six in the morning, takes only cash, and on weekend mornings draws a line out onto the sidewalk. It has been this way, more or less, for 97 years.

Nicolo Mazzola founded it after bringing his recipes from Palermo, and he and his four sons ran the business for more than 50 years before selling it in 1980 to Francesco Caravello, a former barber who had never worked in a bakery. His three children (Josephine, Frank, and Anthony) run it today alongside Anthony Ilardi, a childhood friend of the family who grew up around the corner and has been the chief baker for nearly two decades, arriving before dawn to pull the first loaves from the oven.

The thing people come for is the lard bread. Genoa salami, provolone, black pepper, and lard, kneaded together by hand from a recipe that hasn't changed since Nicolo first made it. Around the holidays alone, they sell close to 3,000 loaves. The almond croissants sell out. So do the ham and cheese. People who moved out of the neighborhood years ago still make the trip back.

Last fall, the Caravellos listed the building for the first time in decades: two adjoining properties on Union Street, asking just under $10 million combined, with one BIG condition. Whoever buys it has to keep the bakery running. The lard bread is tied to the sale. As long as there's a Mazzola, Gowanus still gets its lard bread.

Society Brooklyn Closes a $370M Refinancing
267 Bond Street / 498 Sackett Street, Gowanus
Residential: Open · Retail: Coming
JLL arranged a $370 million refinancing for PMG's two-tower, 517-unit complex on the Gowanus Canal this week. The deal signals that the residential towers have stabilized since opening last May. The 57,000-square-foot retail floor is still filling in. Watch this space.

Nevins Landing Is Almost Here
310–340 Nevins Street, Gowanus
Spring 2026 Target
The twin towers at 310 and 340 Nevins are targeting a spring completion, and the signage on site says they mean it. Designed by Fogarty Finger and developed by Charney Companies and Tavros Capital, Nevins Landing will add 654 rental units to the eastern spine of the canal corridor, with 225 feet of ground-floor retail frontage on both towers and a waterfront esplanade by James Corner Field Operations. When this opens, the Nevins Street corridor changes overnight.

The oldest retractable bridge in the US has been closed since 2021 and is targeting a spring reopening. Now, a community push is asking DOT to reopen it to pedestrians and cyclists only and leave the cars out. Community Board 6 passed a resolution in November supporting the idea. Still TBD with the DOT.

Fresh local bread for ninety-seven years, a brewery coming to the canal, and the first flowers are pushing up on Carroll Street. Not a bad week.

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See you out there.
The Gowanaut