New Orleans Magazine August 2006

IN COLD CREAM – A case in which cross-dressers are accused of robbing nursing homes.

She was a black woman who appeared to be in her 20s. She was dressed in low-rise jeans – low enough to reveal an animal-print G-string sticking out the top. She was of average height, about 5 feet 5 inches or 5 feet 6 inches tall. She wore a long, reddish-brown wig. These are some […]

History

NEWSBEAT: Union bankrolls renovations

The announcement that the national labor group ALF-CIO will invest $700 million in the rebuilding of New Orleans already has developers, nonprofits and other organizations lining up with redevelopment plans to put that money to use. In June, when the Nagin administration invited bids to redevelop 2,500 blighted houses the city owns due to unpaid […]

History

LOCAL COLOR: “This Sugar Doesn’t Melt:” A day in the life of Pastor “Sugar” Lauricella.

“For God loves the person who gives cheerfully…” – 2 Corinthians 9:7 Saturday 11:35 a.m. Some 20,000 pounds of rice is on its way to a backwater of the world Pastor Marion “Sugar” Lauricella can’t even begin to pronounce, and all would agree that the little man with the perpetual smile on his face has […]

WINDOWS

New Orleans provided a window to the world last August, and what the world saw was not a pretty sight. Away from the television cameras, other windows provided different perspectives. To the trapped peering from the back of their house at the suddenly rising water, there can be no more beautiful sight than a arriving […]

History

SPECIAL COMMENTARY: Press of Time

For Bruce Katz the biggest moment of his career was also one of the worst of his personal like. Katz is the chief meteorologist for WGNO, Channel 26, the local ABC affiliate. For reasons having everything to do with position on the dial and nothing to do with program quality, the station’s news generally runs […]

History

CHRONICLES OF RECENT HISTORY:

That steady hum in the August air in New Orleans may not be summer insects – it could be the whirr of countless sewing machines as seamstresses of the city get ready for another formal social season. Debutante gowns, Mardi Gras finery and those special outfits needed for very special occasions don’t always come ready-made […]

Personalities

MODINE’s NEW ORLEANS: “Larda’s Gas Surplus” – is it a problem or the solution?

My mother-in-law, Ms. Larda, says all this hurricane stress has given her nerves and prostration, and worse. She also got gastronomical problems. “Hurricanes can cause more than one kind of wind, if you know what I mean,” she says to me, out the side of her mouth. She has had this problem before, and she […]

Restaurants

RESTAURANT INSIDER: Shula’s, sous chefs, decadent cuisine and more!

It seems hard to believe that we’re near the one-year mark following Hurricane Katrina. Nonetheless, life in the restaurant industry, as in our City, continues to be an ever-growing, shape-shifting, work in progress. Here’s the latest … Meat a Friend for Dinner Coach Don Shula’s namesake steakhouse, above, is open in the JW Marriott on […]

Restaurants

TABLE TALK: New restaurants along and near the Avenue.

We came back to New Orleans last fall, after months away, ready for a table at Galatoire’s, a dozen raw oysters at Casamento’s and a snowball at Hansen’s. While we longed for old favorites, a few brave restaurateurs opened ambitious places that steered clear of the familiar. If we’re ever forced to take another extended […]

Recipes

RECIPE OF THE WEEK: Chill out with cool dishes for a hot month.

August has many childhood memories for me, and all of them are hot. It was the month my mother and I came down on the train from Memphis every year to visit my grandmother in Good Hope. The oil industry has long since chased out the residents, but for many years, about 200 people inhabited […]

History

ERROL LABORDE: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE GREAT POLITICAL SPEECH?

Crises and decades pass and our lore still hasn’t drifted too far from Evangeline and Huey Long, especially from the day that the two entwined. Long’s 1928 gubernatorial campaign speech, delivered beneath the spread of the Evangeline Oak in St. Martinville, still stands out, to me, as the best Louisiana political speech ever. A year […]

Home + Design

HOME: COMING BACK BETTER

Hurricane Katrina was not kind to the Lakefront home of Char and Mark Schroeder. Like so many others in the area, the once pristine home ended up as part of Lake Katrina when the levees failed. For days, three feet of water covered everything in the one-story house. Mark, (Mark Schroeder Architect, AIA) admits to […]

Food + Drink

3090: BE NEAR THY BEER – A guide to where to do the brew

Hurricane Katrina’s storm winds peeled back the siding on Elizabeth’s Restaurant, a corner café in the Bywater near the river levee, and revealed an artifact of New Orleans history. Beneath the modern siding on the second floor of the old Creole townhouse was a mural painted on the original weatherboards advertising Regal Beer, a long-gone […]

Music + Festivals

MUSIC: Norwegian Seamen’s Church … and jazz

On a steamy May morning (before coffee) my phone delivered a producer from CNN: Can you do a satellite interview about the priest in Rome the pope just removed? My last book exposed that reprobate priest. You bet I said yes. We need you downtown in forty-five minutes. I, uh, have to take a bath. […]

History

STREETCAR: BETWEEN PIETY AND DESIRE

Piety and Desire run parallel but do not intersect. That is true in life and it is true in the Ninth Ward where the two streets stretch from the river, cross St. Claude Avenue and then head to the now ruined neighborhoods on the other side. To have piety is to reject desire, at least […]

SPEAKING OUT

We are a different people now than we were a year ago. Sure, except for a few Katrina pounds and hair spots that are graying or thinning, we still look pretty much the same. We still believe that this can be the breakout season for the Saints; still relish a dripping poor boy; still know […]

NEWSBEAT – Charter schools – the future is here

Of all the changes that swept into New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, one of the most significant in the realm of education has been the surge in charter schools. Most of the public schools to reopen since the storm have followed this model – which use public funds but center governance at the school level […]

Wellness

HEALTH: On their feet all day long, physicians explain why they wear the shoes they do.

Physicians universally believe that their profession is tough on the feet – long hours, bounding from exam room to exam room, making hospital rounds and rummaging through radiology departments for images without reports. Actually chefs, waiters, clerks, policemen and many others are on their feet more than most physicians I know, but physicians are adamant […]

Things To Do

MARQUEE – places to go, people to see, things to do

Full of Hot Air Around the world in 80 days doesn’t seem so far fetched after you see what balloons can do at the Pennington National Hot Air Balloon Championship, Aug. 2 to 6, and the Louisiana State Championship, Aug. 4 to 6, in Baton Rouge. Top pilots from around the country will be scored […]