As a follow-up to my previous blog entry, analyzing how Baton Rouge seemed to be trumping NOLA for large commercial retail spaces, The Advocate announced today plans for Louisiana’s first Apple Store at a new extension of the Mall of Louisiana.  Apple filed a permit to build a 5,500 square foot store.  If you haven’t been to an Apple Store-it is a holy experience for any MAC lover and if your like the PC guy, you might be converted.

Sephora must not have heard my pleas to open in New Orleans, as they have plans to open a 6,000 square foot space near the new Apple Store as well.

In other Baton Rouge shopping news, Anthropologie officially opened this past weekend at Perkins Rowe. 

And if the Sex and the City movie buzz, gets you craving Sarah Jessica’s adorable and affordable line-BITTEN.  Well, you’ll have to hit up Steve and Barry’s at the Mall of  Cortana, in sigh, B.R.

 by Sam Winston

The past four months I’ve sporadically mentioned the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s red-light/party district(pictured), as a world example of what happens when forbidden fruit is no longer forbidden. I may have spoken too soon.

Come January 1st, the place where prostitutes work corners across the street from one of the city’s major police stations (fully approved and regulated by law), where you can drink a beer in a glass on the street, on the train, or in a movie theater, where marijuana is “tolerated to personal use”, is getting a tightening of the rules. Stores will stop selling alcohol earlier, bars will be “encouraged” to close earlier, and stricter zoning laws, included increased penalties and “spot searches” against weapons, will take effect in the district.

That’s the trial period, after which it will go into law if all goes as planned. It’s an attempt to get a handle what the city perceives a growing violence problem (perspective, I guess).

It made me think about what would happen if New Orleans ever Read the rest of this entry »