It sounds like a late-night talk show joke (”How bad is the economy? So bad that…”) but it’s not:

99 Cents Only Stores announced price increases Monday — by almost a penny an item. The chain’s new top price: 99.99 cents, or essentially $1 at the cash register most of the time.

The price increases take effect later this month, and the City of Commerce chain has no plans to change its name or logo at its 277 stores….

“We’ve absorbed it for as long as we can and as hard as we can, but we’ve reached a point where we can’t absorb it anymore, and we have to do something,” said Chief Executive Eric Schiffer. “This will give us plenty of breathing room.”

Based on last year’s sales, Schiffer estimated that the chain would take in an extra $12 million at the cash register.

Will the 99 Cent Only store’s New Orleans competitor, Dollar Tree, follow suit? A much more difficult proposition…because their items are already a dollar. Though when I passed by my neighborhood Dollar Tree today, I saw that they already had Christmas items on the sidewalk next to the Halloween stuff.

Shop often. Shop early. Shop cheap.

Back Story

Uptown is home to a pair of restaurants that trace their roots from Cartegena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast to New Orleans, via Kenner.

Baru Bistro & Tapas is run by Edgar Caro while the other, West Indies, is run by his uncle, Hernan Caro. Both men worked together at their original family restaurant, Baru Café, which was open in Kenner from 2006 until late last year. Edgar left the business and opened his own restaurant on Magazine Street in April 2007, using the Baru name and a menu that was initially very similar to the Kenner restaurant. The original Baru is now closed and Hernan also moved Uptown, opening West Indies on St. Charles Avenue.

For diners, this family business rift translates as two restaurants serving Colombian Caribbean cuisine within two miles of each other. Baru was reviewed in Gambit’s Sept. 2 issue and West Indies is reviewed in this week’s issue. What follows is a head-to-head breakdown of how these two rival Colombian restaurants compare.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gambit Weekly and the Blog of New Orleans have steadily remained on record as being on the cheering squad for our rather wayward Louisiana native daughter. In fact, as I drove into town post-Gustav on I-55, I couldn’t help looking wistfully up at the Kentwood water tower and hoping that Brit was finally back on track for her comeback. It’d be a ray of sunshine poking through our storm-darkened skies.Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but besides British host Russell Brand’s taunting of the Jonas Brothers for their promise rings and repeated mispronunciation of the word “precipice,” Britney’s hat trick at the MTV Video Music Awards last night was the awesomest thing I’ve seen on cable TV since I watched the Industrial Canal levee wall hold strong last week. (Brand, an admitted sex addict, got a lot of mileage out of the JBs’ abstinence in the first part of the show… then, we can only guess he was spanked backstage - not in the good way - by MTV brass, because he made a point of apologizing several times. The 18-year-old American Idol R&B baby-diva and avowed virgin Jordin Sparks also responded on the mic to Brand’s jibes about promise rings, saying “Not everybody wants to be a slut.” Zing! ) Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Motorists of the Greater New Orleans Metro Region, Including But Not Limited To Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, and St. Tammany Parishes:

Gustav could’ve done a lot worse in our area, as he did do in the coastal parishes. He was scary and he was stressful. He was also last week.

Your right to drive in a dazed, confused, and shell-shocked fashion has (unlike the curfew) been revoked.

This is not to say that the metro region expects you to suddenly learn to drive well, or even carefully and competently — just that driving habits must now assume pre-Gustav levels and stay there. More to the point, this means:

- No more wobbling about in the left lane, left blinker on, before you suddenly and unexpectedly pull right across lanes of traffic.

- No more blocking two lanes of cars perpendicularly to make a left turn because you could not wait 45 seconds for a break in the traffic.

- No more stopping directly in front of your destination with your blinkers on when there are parking spots 25 feet away.

- And most of all — no more whatever it is you did that resulted in a Talladega-style pileup outside the McDonald’s down the street from me, where weeping children were standing in the rain while fire trucks and ambulances were screaming up to the scene.

If you live in an unaffected community, the Gustav Driving Excuse has been revoked; you are out of the Cone of Uncertain Motoring. Click it or ticket. Thank you.

Ike hasn’t even confirmed his arrival yet and already, you can buy the T-shirt. (Note: some proceeds from hurricane T-shirt sales on this site, at least,  will go to recovery efforts wherever -hopefully nowhere - the storm hits.) 

As Clancy wrote yesterday (augmented with lots of links to the bloggers and community activists who are on the ground in the wetlands), the United Houma Nation and their neighbors were severely damaged by Gustav, and people are looking for ways to provide immediate help.

Trinity Christian Community in Broadmoor (3908 Joliet St.) has established itself as a dropoff point for much-needed donations:

Supplies needed to address the immediate recovery include the following: non-perishable food,
 water, 
flashlights & 
batteries, gloves, boots, shovels, large garbage bags, cleaning supplies, fans, tarps, tree and debris removal equipment & supplies, personal hygiene items, ice chests, First Aid kits, gas gift cards, Walmart gift cards, and generators. Elderly needs include Depends and Ensure products. Baby needs include formula, diapers, and baby wipes.

See Clancy’s post for other ways to donate.

On Friday night I arrived home to some neighbors socializing on the stoop and a motionless body lying in the street.

   The former hadn’t seen the latter. “Hey, there’s a guy face down in the sidewalk.” One girl hurried over.

   “See if he’s breathing,” she said. More people circled around.

   “Hey, buddy?” The girl nudged the guy, a twentysomething kid in typical college garb. He didn’t budge. “Hey! You OK?” 

   Gingerly, we rolled him onto his side. His chest was moving.

   “Mmmph.” Relief. He was drunk.

   The girl who was first to arrive bent down to check his pulse. Startled by something, she looked up, looked the man over again and laughed.

   Then: “Mike?”