This wonderful specimen comes to us from Grand Street, just a few steps from Berry, in Williamsburg. It was parked outside the new Passout Record Store, at 131 Berry, which opened this weekend. There was a pretty rocking Sunday afternoon party going on with World War IV and other bands. We’re guessing the van belonged […]

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cartier-bresson anyone? HA, originally uploaded by e-liz. This isn’t a Brooklyn photo, per se, but an honorary one, because it’s right at the L Train stop in the East Village. This superb photo was shot by Elizabeth Weinberg, who posts on flickr as e-liz, during one of the deluges on Friday. (Check out her excellent […]

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With the Fairway in Red Hook now open, you can finally get up close to the trolleys that have been sitting at the end of Van Brunt Street for years. (At least, depending on what sort of mood Fairway and New York Water Taxi employees are in. Both tend to be a bit mercurial in […]

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We captured this image on Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg in a window of a building that is currently without Andres Escobar designer kitchens and signs outside proclaiming it the cutting edge of hip luxury and urban serenity. We doubt that people putting down $1 million for a condo would put up with a drawing of […]

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The Red Hook Waterfront Festival yesterday absorbed much rain, but Officially Hip Red Hook drew a crowd on a Saturday that featured the Waterfront Festival, the ongoing BWAC Art Show, the Red Hook-Carroll Gardens artists’ studio tour and, of course, Brooklyn’s new favorite weekend activity, shopping at the Red Hook Fairway. The Waterfront Fest, though […]

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There’s a new effort to try to tame the Brooklyn no-man’s land known as Grand Army Plaza. Perhaps, at some point, you’ve noticed the wonderfully restored fountain behind Brooklyn’s Arc de Triomphe? Or, maybe, you haven’t, because few people bother trying to cross GAP on foot to get there. Well, the Prospect Park Alliance spent […]

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Union Street, Gowanus, Between Third and Fourth Avenues.

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Okay, so we’re crossing Newtown Creek into Hunter‘s Point, but GL can’t pass up a show called “Real Art=Real Estate.” It’s happening at a collaborative gallery-shop called Art-O-Mat at 46-46 Vernon Boulevard within site of the huge dust clouds emanating from the huge Queens West development in Long Island City. We stumbled into Art-O-Mat, which […]

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Carroll Gardens residents are getting a little bit more testy about the pace of development and change in their community if recent events are any indication. First, there is rapid turnover on Restaurant Row on Smith Street, and continuing gentrification that forcing out both some of the business that originally gentrified the strip and some […]

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The War for the Hearts and Minds of Brooklynites vis a vis Atlantic Yards, Ratnerville and Miss Brooklyn opens on a new front on Saturday (6/3) with an oh-so-fun benefit concert for Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn with Dan Zanes and Brooklyn Friends. Time and place is 11 AM at the Hanson Place United Methodist Church at […]

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With Red Hook being called the next big thing so often that it’s becoming tiresome, and the new Fairway continuing to beckon shopping-starved Brooklynites, the issue of how one gets to Red Hook without an automobile is bubbling to the surface. We noted with interest yesterday that Time Out New York said Red Hook would […]

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The East River may not be pristine (far from it), but it’s a lot better than it used to be. The evidence is all the bird life that has returned and is being shown off by the Audubon Society and New York Water Taxi. Among the birds seen during a preview tour attended by the […]

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From time to time Gowanus Lounge will be posting some of our photos of vans that we encounter in Brooklyn. We found this one, “Jesus is All You Need,” on Brooklyn’s Restaurant Row, Smith Street. We regret that a photo cannot convey the sound of the preacher on the radio that was emanating from within.

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Yes, we have beaten this drum several times during the short life of Gowanus Lounge, but since today is the official start of hurricane season (seems like last year’s ended only yesterday), why not do it a bit more? Especially since the consequences of a hurricane scoring a direct hit on, or even come close […]

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Of all of the monstrous developments going up or about to break ground in Brooklyn — particularly on the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfronts — Gowanus Lounge admits to being nearly obsessed with the horror called Williamsburgh Square. The project (to the right) has been proposed by a politically-connected firm called Quadriad Realty. Quadriad has several […]

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With all the Red Hook publicity in recent weeks, we were still surprised to find the nabe on the cover of this week’s Time Out New York, along with the blazing headline, Red Hook Has Arrived. First, the Washington Post deemed it so. Then, the NY Post proclaimed it. And, now, the Bible of entertainment […]

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Some stories are so foul and awful that they transcend Brooklyn and shift attention from all the sewerage that Atlantic Yards and other developments threaten to let loose into the Gowanus Canal. Today’s Daily News item about efforts to get the City Council to ban “candy cigarettes” is one of them. Candy cigarettes? WTF are […]

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If the world can have an Axis of Evil, then the Big G deserves an Axis of Cool. These Axis members–three of them right on shores of the Gowanus, and numbers four through seven nearby–define subtle, low-key, cutting edge cool goodness: Empty Vessel Project–This WWII Navy rescue boat undergoing rehabiltation while moored on the Gowanus […]

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