I found the town I have been looking for, and I will reveal it here, but first let me tell you what the search was all about.
This being the week of St. Joseph Day brings to mind two trips I have made to Sicily. I am neither Sicilian nor Italian, but I have long been fascinated by the Sicilian cultural contribution to New Orleans. This town experienced the largest Sicilian migration in the nation. One especially colorful and meaningful contribution was St. Joseph Day altars. I remember visiting my first altar as kid, where I heard an old Sicilian grandma explain that she began building the food altars after a tiny saint appeared in her room and told her to do so. That was a hard command to turn down.
This has got to be the best time ever to be a dog. City Bark, the dog park, is about to open –– and just in time. People are walking dogs all around town and not just one at a time. Increasingly, there might be two or three connected to a leash.
What has really changed, though, are the dogs. It used to be that people had Lassie-like collies or cocker spaniels and mutts. Now the dogs look like coconut cakes on four legs. These are not the dogs I grew up with. They are not the kinds that would happily fetch a stick, bring it back and ask only that the stick be thrown again. These little dogs can barely carry a stick and wouldn’t understand why they should even if they could. They just don’t know that stick fetching is supposed to be a dog thing.
I spent part of the afternoon yesterday with a journalist from Toronto who was anxious to watch the Olympic gold medal hockey match between Canada and the United States later that day. Several times during the pregame hours, he mentioned that he was uncertain whom to root for. He had lived in Toronto many years, he explained, but he was raised in the United States.
After hearing his quandary voiced again, I answered: “Pull for Canada; they need it more than the United States does. It’s like us in New Orleans: We really needed to win the Super Bowl more than Indianapolis did.”
He conceded that I was right, so I assumed once the puck was dropped, he was cheering for the Northerners. Perhaps deep down inside I...
This will forever be remembered as the Super Bowl Mardi Gras. It was the Carnival in which black and gold overtook purple, green and gold and in which “Stand Up and Get Crunk” was heard more often than “Mardi Gras Mambo.” There must have been a run on silver aluminum foil because on Mardi Gras, the most common object carried by maskers was likenesses of the Lombardi Trophy.
Our Carnival heritage certainly played a role in the Super Bowl celebrations. Local police have lots of experience managing crowds, so on the night of the Super Bowl victory, the celebration was peaceful. Locals also have plenty of experience partying, so they know it is not necessary to set a car on fire to have a good time. And what other city can have a dozen or so...
At 7:14 p.m. Marty’s arm acted as a pivot, sending a stash of throws from his spot on the float toward the crowd standing along the St. Charles Avenue sidewalk. An instantaneous jerk of the float caused the throw to be erratic. From his bag Marty had pulled five pairs of beads and two doubloons. By 7:14:01 the stash was ascending toward the apex of its arch before beginning its descent. The jerking motion had caused the different items to take varying directions so that one doubloon’s course was toward a storm drain at the curb. The other doubloon gained a bit more trajectory and was heading toward a crash landing on the sidewalk.
For the beads the aerodynamics were different so that by 7:14:02 three pairs seemed to briefly hover over the crowds as hands...
Since the founding of New Orleans by Jean Baptiste La Moyne Sieur de Bienville in 1718, the city has experienced approximately 15,184 weekends. Of those, this past weekend was surely the best. During a 48-hour period, New Orleanians elected a new mayor and then watched their Saints win the Super Bowl, all happening with the backdrop of Carnival.
Most significant about Mitch Landrieu’s overwhelming mayoral election is that it showed a city that is politically united. Despite the ministers, commentators and old-school politicians who have tried to stir up race as a means of clinging to power, the voters knew better. This weekend black voters and white voters were united behind common issues. They settled for the same candidate whose win was so lopsided that it...
I’ve long wondered how I would want to spend the day if the Saints would ever be in the Super Bowl. For most of the seasons that the Saints have been around, that question rarely had relevance past mid-October, but I would wonder anyway.
I used to think that when the big day came, I would want to sit in front of the TV from morning on and watch every bit of the pre-game programming. I would hear the talking heads give their assessments; listen to the features about our town; and hear again the sagas of players, especially those with stories to tell, all leading to some sort of feeding-and-boozing frenzy once the game began. That would be followed by appropriate (depending on the results) boozing once the game was over.
Leaving the Superdome last night I thought about another game earlier in the season: As I was leaving my seat after that big Monday night game between the Saints and the New England Patriots, I happened to come face to face with a couple who, as I could tell by their jerseys, were from Boston. We stared at each other for a moment, sending nonverbal communication that had to do with their feeling hurt, and then I said: “Look at it this way. Y’all have the Red Sox. That’s priceless. And y’all have the Celtics.” “We have the Bruins, too,” the female of the couple added in reference the Boston hockey team. Then I concluded, “We have never had a championship at all.” The male companion nodded, smiled and said, “I think your time...
Dave Dixon still breaks out in a laugh every time he tells the story that happened 44 years ago. Dixon has plenty of reasons to smile these days. For all the hero worship and accolades showered on men dressed in black and gold, at some point there needs to be an ovation for Dixon. Without his tenacity all those years ago, there would be no Superdome; without the Dome, New Orleans would have never been given an NFL team.
Dixon has plenty stories to tell on the way to his favorite one. There was the time, for instance, he had to convince the NFL lords that New Orleans was interested in pro football. With the support of George Halas, the then-owner of the Chicago Bears, a rare preseason double header, featuring four teams, was arranged to be played at Tulane University....
OK, so we have been experiencing freezing weather, but anyone who has been around New Orleans long enough has other stories to tell.
It froze so hard in New Orleans once that in order to shave I had to warm the washrag in the microwave. It was the Christmas freeze of 1989, a chill that blasted in from Texas pulling a white sheet across Louisiana. Old houses, such as...
Errol Laborde holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of New Orleans and is the Editor in Chief of Renaissance Publishing. In that capacity he serves as Editor/Associate Publisher of New Orleans Magazine and Editor/ Publisher of Louisiana Life Magazine.
Errol is also a producer and a regular panelist on Informed Sources, a weekly news discussion program broadcast on public television station WYES-TV, Channel 12. Errol is a three-time winner of the Alex Waller Award, the highest award given in print journalism by the New Orleans Press Club.
Errol’s most recent books are Krewe: The Early Carnival from Comus to Zulu and Marched the Day God. a history of the Rex organization. In his free time he enjoys playing tennis and traveling with his wife Peggy to anywhere they can get away to, but some of his favorite spots are the Caribbean and historic locations around Louisiana. You can reach Errol at (504) 830-7235 or errol@renpubllc.com.
Click HERE to listen to Errol's radio show, or tune in Fridays 6-7 p.m., Saturdays 8-9 a.m. and 2-3 p.m., and Sundays 4-5 p.m.
Errol Laborde holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of New Orleans and is the Editor in Chief of Renaissance Publishing. In that capacity he serves as Editor/Associate Publisher of New Orleans Magazine and Editor/ Publisher of Louisiana Life Magazine. 
