Last December, Avenue U turned into a red carpet. The cast of "Gravesend," the Amazon Prime crime drama named after the neighborhood, packed into Downtown Clothing, a longtime mom-and-pop shop on the strip, for a holiday party that doubled as a fan meet-and-greet with a DJ and a crowd that spilled into the aisles. Nine months later, on Avenue X, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and School Construction Authority President Celeste A. Ramirez cut a ribbon on a $77.71 million middle school built to hold 553 students who have never heard of a stunt coordinator. They just needed a seat that didn't exist yet.
Both of these are genuinely Gravesend, September 2026. Only one of them is fiction, and they are not describing the same neighborhood.
The Version That Streams
"Gravesend" started as "The Neighborhood" and premiered on Amazon Prime in April 2020, the brainchild of Gravesend native William DeMeo, who writes it, directs it, and stars in it as Benny Zerletta, a soldier in a fictional 1980s crime family. Season 2 wrapped in July 2023. Season 3 got its first public look on June 10, 2026, when DeMeo brought cast, crew, and investors to the Bellmore Theatre for a screening of the first two episodes, ahead of a staggered rollout on Amazon Prime this summer and into fall.
As Brooklyn Paper reported, the new season leans harder into star power than either of its predecessors. Shaquille O'Neal makes his debut in the series as Mustafa, a Bed-Stuy boss. Talia Shire, known for the Rocky and Godfather films, and Tony Danza join a cast that already included Chazz Palminteri, Vince Curatola, Chuck Zito, and Bo Dietl. Sid Rosenberg reprises his role as Dave Busco. DeMeo also told the paper the show and the place it depicts are inseparable to him: "The neighborhood and the show mean equally the same to me."
The show's local production locations include a handful of storefronts and businesses. Season 3 filmed at Brennan & Carr, Villabate Bakery, L&B Spumoni Gardens, Luigi's Pizza in Park Slope, Krispy Pizza, and Da Vinci's Pizza. Earlier seasons used Lenny's Pizza, John's Deli on Stillwell Avenue, Joe's Bar on Avenue U, and Our Lady of Grace Church, which DeMeo has called his own parish. If you want to spot the show without leaving your usual errands, you are already passing its set list on a normal week.
The season also arrives carrying a real loss. Vincent Pastore, who played Donnie "Glasses" Sisto, died in early August at 80, while the season's staggered rollout on Amazon Prime was already underway. DeMeo told Brooklyn Paper that Pastore was one of his closest friends, and that losing him has been difficult to process even as the season they made together reaches viewers.
The Version That Got Built
None of that is what changed daily life for a Gravesend family this month. What changed it sits at 106 Avenue X, where the John Dewey Annex held its ribbon-cutting on September 8 and welcomed its first 553 students, grades six through eight, on September 10. The building is a three-story, fully electric, fully ADA-compliant structure with two science labs, art and music rooms, a gymatorium, guidance and medical suites, an exercise room, a library, and an outdoor playground. It functions as a feeder school for the adjacent John Dewey High School, which opened in 1969 as New York City's first "educational option" high school.
The annex broke ground in late May 2024 and took roughly two years to complete, built entirely with union labor by Technico Construction Services. As Brooklyn Paper reported, Mamdani framed the opening in plain terms at the ceremony: "This new annex is an investment in Brooklyn's children and in the future of this community." As Brooklyn Eagle reported, Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said that the building "will create access to high-quality instructional spaces for over 550 students while helping us meet class size requirements."
That framing matters because District 21, which covers Gravesend, has been one of the more overcrowded school districts in the borough for years. The John Dewey Annex is not a one-off. It is one piece of a wider buildout aimed at the same problem:
- A 391-seat addition at P.S. 253 on Ocean View Avenue
- A 640-seat educational campus on 60th Street
- A 517-seat addition at P.S. 206, at 2224 E. 23rd Street
- A 487-seat intermediate school, K004, at 4012 Fort Hamilton Parkway
- A 96-seat addition at the K280 Educational Campus on 19th Street
Citywide, the John Dewey Annex was one of ten new school buildings that opened for the 2026-27 year, adding 4,656 seats between them, with another 384 seats coming from room conversions at existing schools. None of that made a trailer. All of it is why a Gravesend sixth grader has a locker this month that didn't exist last spring.
Two Timelines Sharing One Zip Code
Here is the part worth sitting with. The show trades on Gravesend's staying power, the fact that L&B Spumoni Gardens has been serving square slices since 1939, that Brennan & Carr and Villabate Bakery are old enough to look authentically 1980s without a set dresser touching them. Nostalgia is the entire business model. The school addition trades on the opposite instinct: Gravesend is growing right now, today, fast enough that a vacant lot on Avenue X needed to become a $77.71 million building over roughly two years just to keep up with the kids already living on these blocks.
| On Amazon Prime | On Avenue X | |
|---|---|---|
| Time period | 1980s Brooklyn crime families | 2026-27 school year |
| Signature landmark | L&B Spumoni Gardens, open since 1939 | John Dewey Annex, opened September 8, 2026 |
| Headline number | Three seasons since 2020 | 553 new seats, $77.71 million |
| Built on | Storefronts that survived decades unchanged | A vacant lot turned into a three-story building over roughly two years |
| Who it's for | Streaming subscribers revisiting a version of the past | Sixth through eighth graders who started class September 10 |
Both versions are true. Gravesend really is the place where a Christmas party in a decades-old clothing store can pull in a cast that includes an NBA legend, because DeMeo has said that supporting long-running local businesses was central to why he staged the event there in the first place. Gravesend is also the place where the state's class-size mandate turned into an actual building fast enough that a mayor showed up to cut the ribbon in person. The neighborhood is being remembered and being built for at the same time, on the same streets, in the same year.
If you live here, you already knew both halves separately. What might be new is realizing they are running on opposite clocks, one looking backward at what made the neighborhood recognizable, one looking forward at who is going to fill it next.
That second clock is the one that tends to matter most when people start asking what a neighborhood is actually like to live in day to day, not just visit for a slice. GAMA Team works these same South Brooklyn blocks and pays attention to both versions of Gravesend, the landmarks that gave it a name and the investment that's shaping what comes next. If you're curious what either one means for your own corner of the neighborhood, reach out and we'll talk it through.
