Best Of New Orleans Blog

Details are still surfacing from two seemingly isolated incidents last week in New Orleans that authorities now believe might be related.

At 8:17 a.m. Monday, Feb. 11, two streetcars collided near the corner of Canal and North Gayoso streets, leaving 22 passengers with non-life-threatening injuries. Around that same time, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation were surrounding the house of Daniel Fox, a local musician and magazine editor whose roommate, Yu Xin Kang, has since been charged as an accomplice to international espionage.

“Yeah, I’m surprised our roommate was a Chinese spy,” Fox told the Times-Picayune.

Even more surprising is the newly revealed purpose for Kang’s residence in New Orleans. According to unnamed sources, the 33-year-old spent the past four months researching streetcar schedules and passing her findings on to high-ranking Chinese intelligence officials. Exactly what the operatives had planned to do with the hijacked streetcar is still unknown, but according to the same sources, certain designs are believed to have included  “a catastrophic event” at the downtown Riverwalk’s critically maligned (but popular among tourists) pan-Asian eatery, the Bambu Asian Grille and Sushi Bar.

Check back for more on this developing story as information arrives.

Gambit contributor and New Orleans native Vi Landry passed away in a car accident on Monday. She was driving in Mississippi and got hit in a head on collision. She died instantly. Vi had been living in New York for a couple of years, studying journalism at NYU and interning with Harper’s. She recently returned to New Orleans. Vi is survived by her mom, sister and brother, and a heap of friends who loved her and miss her. There are more photos of her at http://angeliska.livejournal.com/79498.html and her writing can be read in the Gambit archive. The funeral is on Saturday at Jacob Schoen funeral home, 1-4pm. There will be a second line parade for her on Sunday, beginning at Dauphine and Press in the Bywater at 3:00.

A trailerpark is an unlikely setting for a Musical. But for director Sean Patterson, a trailerpark is an all-too familiar setting, having spent the last 2 years with his now-wife, Cammie West, in a FEMA trailer. With toxic trailers currently in the headlines, The Great American Trailer Park Musical is both timely and wildly high-larious. The Jefferson Performing Arts Society presents The Great American Trailer Park Musical at their Westwego Performing Arts Theatre, a surprisingly nice venue that underwent a facelift just prior to Katrina. Thankfully, the same contractor returned to fix it after the storm. (more…)