By Kathy Price-Robinson, Reporting from New Orleans

I drive alongside the grassy slope of the Mississippi River levee and turn east at Magazine Street, traveling past Audubon Zoo toward downtown. It’s a narrow, bumpy street shaded by giant oaks, their roots upending great chunks of sidewalk. But nobody seems to mind. This is New Orleans.

I’m on a quest to find the best snowball in a city filled with stands. Don’t mistake a snowball for a snow cone. The former is soft like powder snow, the latter crunchy like hard pack. Fluffy snowballs are served with a straw and a spoon and brim with vividly flavored syrups with names such as wedding cake, hurricane and nectar. Each stand has dozens to choose from. Another difference: With a snow cone, you can suck the flavor right out of the mouthful of ice. Not so with a snowball. The flavor and snow become one indivisible creation.

The first thing you do when handed your snowball is scoop out a spoonful or bite off the peaked top. Hang out at any stand and watch the next 20 people who receive their cup or carton, and 19 of them will, before getting two steps away, have the first bite in their mouth

SnoWizard,
4001 Magazine St., (504) 899-8758
(Garden District)
A Tuesday in June, 2 p.m.
Temperature: 96 degrees

As I head for this iconic snowball stand, operated by the local makers of the SnoWizard ice-shaving machine, I worry about parking. You don’t use the über-hip Magazine Street as a thoroughfare to get anywhere fast. It’s its own destination. And because the street didn’t flood during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it never lost the chic momentum that’s been years in the making. You’ll find yoga studios, spas, ethnic restaurants, coffeehouses, pubs, European furniture shops and wallet-draining boutiques along with such staples as an auto mechanic, Laundromat, a Baptist church, stately houses, rundown Creole cottages and a big, gleaming Whole Foods Market.

So it is with joy that I discover that the Sno- Wizard stand on the corner of Constantinople has its own parking lot out front. The blue-gray brick building has a narrow white trellis providing a shady place to sit. Out near the street, a sign in the shape of a snow-topped cup says: “60 Fabulous Flavors” and “The Original New Orleans SnoBall Since 1937.”

(There is a longtime controversy about who invented the first snowball machine, and there is a lawsuit pending about the copyrighted names of various snowball flavors. And few agree on the spelling — “snowball,” “snoball,” “sno-ball” or “snow-ball”? Like sausage-making and politics, the process of snowball creation might best remain a mystery.)

The flavor choices are daunting: almond, amaretto, banana, Cajun red hot, cotton candy, lemon-lime, dreamsicle cream, pralines and cream, mango and dozens more. New flavors include mudslide, cherimoya, mojito and cake batter cream. I choose a medium Granny Smith apple and ice cream. With some added condensed milk (50 cents), this might taste like frosty pie à la mode. Cost: $2.75. I’m served my concoction in a tub that resembles a Chinese-food container. It’s a messy brew and seems too slushy and heavy at first. But the blend satisfies. When I’m finished, I look into my empty container and wonder: Why didn’t I order a large?

Sal’s Sno-Balls,
1823 Metairie Ave., (504) 666-1823 (Metairie)
A Tuesday in June, 8 p.m.
Temperature: 92 degrees

I’m partial to afternoon snowballs, but a lively culture of after-dinner snowballers is evident at Sal’s Sno-Balls, which is open till 11 every night in Old Metairie, a suburb northwest of New Orleans. Real estate ads in Old Metairie, which had minimal Katrina flooding, may include this enticement: “Walk to Sal’s Sno-Balls.”

Sal’s, which has been around 49 years, has a roomy gravel parking lot. On a patio out front, patrons spoon from their cups and sit on fake but comfortable logs. This isn’t the kind of snowball stand where you grab the goods and run. You want to linger, socialize and share tastes.

A board lists 52 flavors, three sugar-free: strawberry, grape and wedding cake. The child-size strawberry I order with added condensed milk (called “can cream”) is a vibrant pick-me-up in the evening’s heated air and costs less than $2. The snow is crunchier than at SnoWizard. I’m told this sometimes happens when the ice-shaving blade is not sharp. The texture also depends on the temperature of the ice and the pressure with which it’s fed through the machine.

On the other hand, readers’ comments in the local newspaper state that Sal’s has the softest, fluffiest, most-powder-snow-like ice around. And the place is packed. An article on the website of SnoWizard, where Sal’s gets its syrup, says the stand can use 1,000 pounds of ice per night.

Plum Street Snowballs,
1300 Burdette St., (504) 866-7996 (Riverbend/Carrollton)
A Wednesday in June, 3 p.m.
Temperature: 96 degrees

I first encountered Plum Street Snowballs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April, where I had looked forward to a frosty delight during this annual music orgy. I bought a snowball from a stand there, eager to share with my companion the magic of snowballs. But I bit into the crunchy ice of a snow cone in a cup. Later, as we waited for Etta James to appear onstage, I set off in search of a real snowball, and I found it, with sugar-free lemonade syrup, at the Plum Street Snowballs stand. That’s what I was talking about.

The main stand, established in 1945, sits in the middle of a relaxed, unpretentious residential neighborhood at Plum and Burdette streets, three blocks off the Carrollton Avenue streetcar line. Outside, there is a funky two-sided wooden bench under an umbrella and a stack of plastic chairs.

As usual, the choices are immense. Even though sugar is not my friend, today I must try the nectar, one of the most popular flavors. It’s served up in a Chinese-food container lined with a plastic bag so it doesn’t leak. The machine must have been perfectly tuned and the blade sharpened because the snow is exceedingly fluffy. The nectar is like creamy vanilla with peach and nectarine overtones. I think: If this is what hummingbirds are after, I understand the flutter of the wings.

Hansen’s Sno-Bliz,
4801 Tchoupitoulas St., (504) 891-9788 (Uptown/Garden District)
A Thursday in June, 2 p.m.
Temperature: 94 degrees

Yes, I say. I am. 

From the LA Times

JOHN McCUSKER / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE ARCHIVE
A young Louis Armstrong thrilled the music of King Oliver and Bunk Johnson at the old Eagle Saloon building at Rampart and Perdido streets, which has now fallen into disrepair.

Read more on Satchmo Summerfest 

It’s been 87 years since Louis Armstrong packed his bags and caught a train out of New Orleans to his new home in Chicago. He left the city to join the band of his idol, trumpeter Joe “King” Oliver. A year later, in 1923, Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band made a series of recordings that elevated jazz from a way of playing music to an art form.

Each summer, Satchmo Summerfest turns a spotlight on New Orleans’ still-vibrant jazz scene with lectures, films and performances that pay tribute to Armstrong at the Old U.S. Mint and throughout the French Quarter. 

Despite occasional reports of its demise, jazz in New Orleans — traditional and modern — thrives at Snug Harbor, Sweet Lorraine’s, Preservation Hall, the Palm Court Cafe, Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse, the Ritz-Carlton, Donna’s and elsewhere.

But in the decades since Satchmo lived here, the city’s connection with the early days of jazz in general, and Armstrong in particular, has faded. This vanishing history can be appreciated as it manifests itself — or doesn’t — across the cityscape.

The city saluted its most famous son by naming the airport and a downtown park after him and by erecting two statues. Satchmo Summerfest, as well as the artifacts housed in the Old U.S. Mint’s collection, also honor his legacy.

But the New Orleans of Louis Armstrong’s day has been all but obliterated. Gone are his birthplace on Jane Alley as well as his childhood home at Liberty and Perdido streets. Gone too is the Colored Waif’s Home, where he received his first formal instruction on the cornet.

Three buildings in the 400 block of South Rampart Street, however, go to the root of Louis Armstrong’s life in New Orleans. The Karnofsky Tailor Shop, at 427 S. Rampart, was run by a family that employed Armstrong as a pre-teen. The family gave him an advance on his wages to buy a cornet around 1912.

There’s also the Iroquois vaudeville and movie theater, at 413 S. Rampart, where Armstrong won a talent contest while still a boy. And the Eagle Saloon at 401 S. Rampart was a favorite stomping ground of King Oliver, where Armstrong no doubt listened to the man he called “Papa Joe.”

Years of neglect have left all these buildings in deplorable condition. To date, no initiative to preserve them has been successful.

Continue reading at the TP

NEW ORLEANS – The ninth annual celebration of the life and music of one of New Orleans’ most famous musicians — jazz trumpeter Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong — kicks off Thursday.

The four-day Satchmo Summerfest begins with a keynote address by Robert O’Meally, founder and former director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University in New York. He also serves on the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation board of directors.

A jazz photo exhibit on loan from the Meridian Center in Washington, D.C., will be on display all weekend at the Old U.S. Mint in the French Quarter, and there will be a host of free music performances by such artists as jazz clarinetist Tim Laughlin, jazz singer Leah Chase and trumpeters Kermit Ruffins and Shamarr Allen.

From the Baltimore Sun

Thursday, July 30, 2009 By Lynne Jensen
Nola.com

As a contingent of Lutheran youth and a group representing Volunteers of America brushed silver paint on a rusted chain-link fence at St. Roch playground last week, a handful of hip-hop artists helped to refurbish a baseball field and cut grass at nearby Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic church and school.

“They call me the Mother of Southern Hip Hop,” said singer Mia X, wielding a push broom. “My family has been in this community for over 140 years … I’m here to give a little elbow grease.”

Mia X joined members of local hip-hop collectives Soundclash, ICU and Large Marge Music Group to refurbish the Katrina-flooded playground, recently cleared of FEMA trailers. The artists said they hope the recreation spot will re-emerge as a community landmark, and they hope more people will become aware of the positive efforts of a new generation of New Orleans hip-hop performers.

“If you judge a lot of our artists by their hearts, you’re going to be very impressed,” Mia X said. “A lot of times we get a bad rap for the rap.”

“We’re not sitting back and watching,” said ICU member E.D. Nix, from the 7th Ward.

“We’re coming out to give back,” said fellow hip-hopper Mac Niffy, from the 9th Ward.

Chuck Jones of Sound Clash said he came to New Orleans from northern Louisiana in 1998 to study at Dillard University. After graduating in 2002, he decided to call the city home.

“We’re trying to clean up the neighborhood and this won’t be the last time,” Jones said. “It’s the start of something. We’re creating a vision that will help people come out and take pride.”

Wearing a blue Superman-like T-shirt with a fleur de lis instead of an “S,” Gert Town resident Lance Crowley of Fylm Junkes is about to release his video “Murder Cap,” which addresses social issues in the Crescent City.

“More of our people need to be out here representing our community,” said Crowley, a John F. Kennedy High School graduate who studied filmmaking in Los Angeles.

Mia X, whose new CD “Do Wop Hip Hop” will blend “malt shop” tunes with street rap, said she hopes St. Roch’s playground will be a safe zone for children.

“A lot of us come from broken homes,” said Mia X, staring out at a neighborhood pock-marked with empty lots and boarded or burned houses. “Since Katrina, the stress level has been unbelievable.”

IT has been a long time since the word “optimism” was spoken in the same sentence as “New Orleans.”

But a small group of entrepreneurs has been using that word lately to describe their efforts to attract small businesses to New Orleans. For now, their enthusiasm may be greater than their results. But they say the city’s low rents and business tax incentives along with its music and culture have proved to be powerful lures, despite the still-halting efforts to get past the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“We’re seeing the exact same thing here that we saw in the Bay Area in the mid ’90s,” said Michael Hecht, 38, president of Greater New Orleans Inc., a nonprofit economic development agency. He moved to New Orleans in early 2006 after time in both San Francisco and New York. “There’s a sense of opportunity and possibility, combined with people who have the horsepower to actualize those possibilities.”

Since Hurricane Katrina, at least four formal entrepreneurial hubs have been established in New Orleans: Entrepreneur’s Row, the Icehouse, the I.P., (an acronym for Intellectual Property) and the Entergy Innovation Center. While they all hope to help nurture individual businesses, they are not technically incubators. Instead, they house start-ups and established companies while focusing on “clustering like-minded entrepreneurs to build their businesses together,” said Tim Williamson, 44, the co-founder and chief executive of the Idea Village, a nonprofit group founded in 2000 that helped created the I.P.

So far, they seem to be doing something right. According to the Louisiana Workforce Commission, the New Orleans metropolitan area reported an increase of nearly 100,000 nonfarm jobs from October 2005 — soon after Katrina — to June 2009. By 2016, the commission expects New Orleans area employment to grow 24 percent from 2006 levels, or to 98.8 percent of pre-Katrina levels.

“There has never been a better time in Louisiana for the creative class to thrive,” said Mitchell J. Landrieu, the state’s lieutenant governor.

Continue reading at the NY Times

New Orleans artist Jim Richard’s Inman Gallery exhibition of six tiny collages, one gouache painting on paper and one large oil on linen is so quiet and unassuming it’s been easy to overlook during a summer filled with bigger, flashier shows.

But it deserves the beeline I hope you’ll make to Inman by Saturday to spend time with Richard’s wonderfully eccentric work.

Richard’s strange, crowded interiors bear a family resemblance to English artist Richard Hamilton’s collage Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956), perhaps the first truly iconic pop artwork. It combined imagery from an Armstrong Floors ad in Ladies Home Journal with cutout photos taken from bodybuilding and pinup magazines and from ads for such then-current domestic appliances as a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a black-and-white TV and a long-reach vacuum cleaner.

But while art historian John-Paul Stonard wrote in 2007 that Hamilton’s crowded interior hinted at “an anxiety that this new cultural order could not be sustained,” Richard’s versions conjure up anxiety about a cultural order that can’t be escaped.

While Hamilton’s classic is populated with a couple — a burlesque woman and a male bodybuilder holding a Tootsie Roll Pop — and a maid, there’s no room for people in Richard’s interiors, which are also cut from home-design magazines.

The closest you get to a human presence is Men Wrestling, in which the grapplers are figures in a sculpture that shares space on a coffee table with a book and, yes, a cup of coffee.

Similarly, in Sticks, the dominant element resembles an African antelopelike sculpture that you might see at the Menil Collection, but it stands precariously on a glass table, surrounded by bric-a-brac.

Art further dominates interiors in works such as Thin Slice and Art in Room. In both collages, a huge abstract painting doesn’t hang but stands at a diagonal, hogging as much floor space as possible. Paintings, sculptures and knickknacks jockey for position in Art and Decor II, and the busy, clashing patterns of upholstery and wallpaper further intensify the claustrophobia.

Continue reading at the Houston Chronicle

Jim Richard’s official site

NEW ORLEANS — It’s been a tough week for porn actress Stormy Daniels — complete with a domestic violence charge and a car explosion — as she continues to mull a U.S. Senate bid that could make life uncomfortable for incumbent first-term Louisiana Republican David Vitter, still recovering from a sex scandal.

Daniels was arrested Saturday on a domestic violence battery charge after she allegedly hit her husband at their home in Tampa, Fla., during a dispute about laundry and unpaid bills.

Her arrest came two days after her political adviser in Louisiana, Brian Welsh, said his parked 1996 Audi may have been blown up by someone on July 23 outside his apartment in an upscale downtown area of New Orleans.

“It’s something out of The Sopranos,” said Edward E. Chervenak, a professor of politics at the University of New Orleans. “Very weird.”

In May, Daniels announced that she was interested in a 2010 run for the Senate seat held by Vitter, whose family-values reputation was marred in 2007 when his name was linked to a Washington prostitution ring.

Continue reading at the AP

NEW ORLEANS — A film studio executive who never repaid $1.9 million he took from New Orleans Saints players and others paid $452,000 to settle a dispute over another failed investment, court records show.

Wayne Read, chief executive of Louisiana Film Studios LLC, paid Dr. Spiro Gerolimatos on Jan. 21 — nearly three weeks after he raised $1.9 million for a Louisiana movie tax credit deal. Gerolimatos, a radiologist, won a summary judgment in Illinois state court over a $400,000 loan he made to Read for Mardi Gras Studios, which was to be built in New Orleans.

The judgment was made in May 2008 against Read because he never responded to the lawsuit. He also paid $52,000 in court fees and interest, documents show.

Continue reading at the AP