If ever there was an automobile in need of help, this baby is it. This old soul of a Cadillac sits in front of this shop on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg (or, at least, has sat for many, many weeks). Each time we see it, it appears that the diagnostic and repair process is taking […]

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Gowanus Lounge is busy, busy, busy, typing and pointing and clicking our little fingers off. We also spend a lot of time producing items over in Curbed’s part of the world and the vast majority of those items never make it over to GL. And so, we present below a few samples of the fruits […]

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We shot photos of a lot of these “Googly Eye Cru” vinyl stickers around in Billyburg over the last few weeks. Some disappared as fast as they went up. Others are still around. What building or sign can’t use a couple of googly eyes to take it up a notch?

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Leave it to the long-awaited Gowanus Whole Foods on Third Street and Third Avenue in Gowanus to be one of the only supermarkets in the country that sells customers on wholesome goodness while having an environmental remediation plan. Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (FROGG) conveyed some interesting information in comments left on the blog […]

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Okay, so it doesn’t have the cool Holiday Inn Express signage yet, but you can still clearly feel the Holiday Inn vibe that the new Gowanus Holiday Inn Express on Union Street between Fourth and Third avenues is exuding nonetheless. (What is it about budget hotels all having to have that utilitarian, boxy design? Is […]

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Seems like Clovis Press, the cool used bookstore on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg closed only yesterday (well, more than a month ago), and now Bedford Cheese, currently located across the street in the mini-mall, is moving into the space. The good news is that a local business is going into the storefront rather than a […]

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what is wrong with this picture, originally uploaded by e-liz. Gowanus Lounge is tempted to say that Gowanus is a state of mind, given the sometimes fluid nature of its borders and the fact that establishments that are clearly in the nabe sometimes call themselves “Park Slope.” Photographer Elizabeth Weinberg, who posts ast e-liz on […]

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Brownstoner poses another question about the nature of the development at the corner of 13th Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope where the Salvation Army Thrift Store once stood. At one point, word was that a Baby Gap was going in on the corner, at least as street level retail. (For reaction, see photo […]

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Given the controversy surrounding it, the plywood construction wall around the highrise Finger Building on North Seventh Street in Williamsburg has remained relatively graffiti-free. But, now, “Gentrify Brooklyn” posters containing the stenciled words and a silhouette of a Kalashnikov rifle have shown up at the site. Meanwhile, the on-and-off construction at the building may be […]

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This didn’t take long at all. Over the last couple of weeks we have been searching for renderings of plans for the Greenpoint Terminal Market site. In today’s package of coverage about the homeless alcoholic Polish immigrant said to have started the conflagration, the NY Times reports that: “The owner [Josh Guttman] is now free […]

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In case you didn’t catch our item about this over at Curbed, we’re going to recap here because it’s very much the interesting news and has otherwise gotten zero coverage: Work on East River State Park in Williamsburg on Kent Avenue between North 7th and North 9th Street is speeding along, and the park could […]

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Interesting news from Miami about our favorite Gowanus developer, Leviev Boymelgreen (of Gowanus Village fame, among other projects). Seems the firm, which, in which Tel Aviv firm Africa Israel holds a majority share, is selling off about half its holdings in South Florida. Boymelgreen is one of the biggest private landowners in Miami. This interesting […]

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We captured this latest van in our Vans of Brooklyn series parked on some vacant land (probably won’t stay that way for long) between two buildings on Wythe Avenue in Billburg. It is one of our favorites. A very tall guy with long dreads was talking on cell phone and watching us shoot pictures. When […]

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No, we did not cease posting today. Some sort of major blogger.com meltdown kept Gowanus Lounge–and everyone else–from posting for most of the day. So, we missed our chance to relate or opine upon a number of stories, among them the arrest of the alleged Greenpoint Terminal Market arsonist, Kuczera Leszek. Described as “a homeless […]

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Some of the help that was promised as part of last year’s rezoning of the Williamsburg-Greenpoint waterfront to allow development of luxury highrises of up to 40 stories on the East River is, apparently, nowhere to be found. At least, that’s what community representatives are telling AM New York. Among the rezoning promises was an […]

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A lot of people probably know about the humongous drug bust in Red Hook last month–and we knew something interesting was up when the Brooklyn DA produced an intricate color-coded map of the 30 buildings of the Red Hook Houses showing how drug gangs had divided them up–but Gowanus Lounge almost choked when we noticed […]

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We captured this bit of exterior painting on Smith Street where the transition has been swift from outpost of Baluchi’s, the NYC Indian chain, to a new French bistro on Smith Street, Provence en Boite, which is actually a branch of a well-regarded Bay Ridge bistro that is run by a husband and wife team. […]

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This entry in our Vans of Brooklyn series comes from North Fourth Street in Williamsburg. Its most distinctive feature is graffiti on a window that says “Never trust a big butt and a smile.” It also has some stencil art and stickers, plus tagging. This one has been around for a while. We recognize it […]

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Between Brownstoner’s awesome garden and A Brooklyn Life’s beautiful backyard, Gowanus Lounge is developing a very, very serious case of garden envy that window boxes just won’t cure. There, we said it. We only have window ledges. Brownstoner has been chronicling the transformation of his backyard and, we gladly note, went shopping at Gowanus Nursery […]

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Photographer and nouveau blogger Sonja Shield–who reports her Brooklyn Ramblings blog was just released from “Blogger Robot Prison” on the same site that hosts Gowanus Lounge–digs into the Gowanus Whole Foods site and offers a thoroughly researched and sobering analysis of just what is inside the oozing hole in the ground at Third Street and […]

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By today, the mini-tempest in a teapot over the statement quoted in yesterday’s Daily News that was made by Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s Daniel Goldstein may already have blown over. (Or, maybe not.) Goldstein was quoted in a News column referring to “wealthy white masters” of Atlantic Yards supporters. Goldstein immediately apologized, saying the statement was […]

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If you live in Brooklyn, chances are that at some point you have seen the “Original Mike’s” grinding truck. Time was, a lot of trucks that did grinding and sharpening were on the street, with their bells ringing to get everyone’s attention. Now, there aren’t so many of them. We caught up with “Original Mike’s” […]

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The weekly email update from the Empty Vessel Project, a World War II Navy rescue boat being painstakingly rehabilitated in the Gowanus Canal and used as a community performance and learning space, had some interesting hurricane-related historical info. The writer culled it from Brooklyn Public Library‘s online archive of the Brooklyn Eagle. Gowanus Lounge figures […]

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Over at Curbed, Lockhart Steele dug around the newly-launched One Brooklyn Bridge Park website and found a wealth of new images and renderings. (One Brooklyn Bridge Park is the Jehovah’s Witness building at Fuhrman Street now surrounded by scaffolding at street level.) Last week, of course, the Port Authority turned over most of the property […]

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We stray from heavy items about neighborhood development and such for a moment to note that there have been a couple of recent posts over at Daily Heights and Daily Slope about gross and nasty conditions at a Key Food and at the Pavillion Park Slope movie theater (which is rumored again to possibly be […]

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