It’s a Friday afternoon and J. R. Fields is preparing to close Truck Stop Clothing Co. for the night. Fields owns and operates the store on Magazine Street, where he has created a southern blues rock atmosphere. Vintage denim, leather, boots, trucker caps and belt buckles are scattered throughout, all complemented by a Kegerator tucked [...]
Tag Archives: Hurricane Katrina
C. Ray Nagin Makes the Rounds
June 21, 2011 – 10:35 am
Yesterday, former Mayor Ray Nagin was on television promoting his book, Katrina’s Secrets, which was self-published through CreateSpace, as Jon Stewart noticed on The Daily Show. Nagin did this, he said, for fear that his voice would be “toned down.” “Once you turn a manuscript over to a publisher, you never know what happens,” he [...]
New Atlantis Author John Swenson on TV
May 31, 2011 – 1:47 pm
OffBeat consulting editor John Swenson recently came out with his first book about New Orleans music, New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans. Friday, Swenson made an appearance on New York news television channel NY1′s “Inside City Hall” to discuss the book and the role musicians played in the post-Katrina recovery, including [...]
YouTube du Jour: The Iguanas
May 18, 2011 – 9:11 am
Tonight, the Iguanas and Los Po-Boy-Citos play Wednesday in the Square at Lafayette Square, with the show starting at 5 p.m. Here’s footage of the Iguanas performing in Texas September 24, 2005, less than a month after the storm.
Lolis Eric Elie Returns …
April 11, 2011 – 2:18 pm
…to opinion writing with “Fact and Fiction in Treme,” the debut post in HBO’s new Inside Treme blog. For those of us who’ve been covering Treme since the start, the fact/fiction line is one we’ve all spent some time on already, but Elie—part of the writing team for the show—adds some gravity to the discussion [...]
Nine Lives: A Chorus Second Line
February 1, 2011 – 12:10 am
“I’m going to Bing it up,” Harry Shearer says. He’s in a vocal booth at Piety Street Recording as his voice drops into a fruity, Crosby-esque baritone: Here comes old Cedric. He’s had a fabulous year. A hush fills the room as his young wife draws near. He pimps her out freely to advance his [...]
The Writing in the Wall: Chinese Drywall in the Musicians’ Village
January 1, 2011 – 12:10 am
Anything that starts with the corrosion of copper wire and wall outlets can’t end well for homeowners, and the discovery of tainted Chinese drywall in Habitat for Humanity’s Musician’s Village certainly bears that out for some of the city’s working musicians. Of the 319 homes built by the New Orleans chapter of Habitat for Humanity [...]
Elizabeth Kleinveld (ed.), Before During After (UNO Press)
September 1, 2010 – 12:20 am
[UPDATED] Before During After speaks to the power of Hurricane Katrina, though not in the way it intends. Photographer Elizabeth Kleinveld had the provocative idea to document how Katrina affected people—in this case, photographers—by looking at the work they did before, during and after it. That means that there are only two or three Katrina-related [...]
The Lessons Not Learned
August 29, 2010 – 11:19 am
To his credit, NBC’s Brian Williams on Meet the Press asked Wendell Pierce if racism and classicism played a role in the slow governmental response to the post-Katrina flooding, and pointed out that NBC was able to get supplies to him and the NBC crew covering the aftermath. Pierce answered tactfully but pointedly—less interested in [...]
