Author Archive
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If you’re planning on hitting Frenchmen Street (and surrounding venues) this weekend for the inaugural foburg Music Festival, the fest has supplied these handy daily schedules and a map. Today’s schedule is below. Hit the jump for the rest of the weekend’s lineup (and map).
To the NOIRC’s credit, they wrangled a pretty impressive lineup for a freshman festival — in New Orleans, the week before Austin’s South By Southwest, no less. Among national artists at the fest, highlights include Yardwork and Hope for a Golden Summer (Saturday at d.b.a.), Signals and The Show is the Rainbow (Sunday at Blue Nile), and JEFF the Brotherhood (Sunday at Maison).
As for locals? There are tons, and all worth checking out. Keep an extra eye on Jean-Eric, the Bellys, Caddywhompus, Sun Hotel, Giant Cloud and Givers.
Visit foburg’s Web site for ticket information ($25 for a weekend pass to all shows) and more.
(Click for a larger version.)
Read the rest of this entry »
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Speaking of Google, New Orleans might have an opportunity to participate in a trial of the search provider’s/Internet overlord’s anticipated high-speed fiber-optic broadband Internet connection. Google has ambitions of speeds of 1Gb per second in open-access networks, and if city officials and community members tell ‘em to bring it here, they just might. Check out the video (and Googleman’s awesome voice):
From Google:
We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000, and potentially up to 500,000 people.
As a first step, we’re putting out a Request for Information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public.
Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better, and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:
Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine.
New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks; to help inform, and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world.
Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory, and transparent way.
Local governments and ordinary folks can submit nominations for their communities for the trial. There’s also a Facebook group. The deadline for nominations is 4 p.m. (central) March 26, and Google will announce the Chosen Ones later this year.
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With the help of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Google Maps now offers biking directions on its maps. The mapping and directions functions follow the same process one would enter for walking or driving — but now users can choose biking from the drop-down menu and get the best or suggested routes.
The directions feature provides step-by-step, bike-specific routing suggestions — similar to the directions provided by our driving, walking, or public transit modes. Simply enter a start point and destination and select “Bicycling” from the drop-down menu. You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible. Just like Google pioneered with driving directions, you can click-and-drag your route to customize it as you’d like. You can also access the other features in Google Maps, such as Street View, so you can tell exactly where you might need to turn on your route or preview how wide a bike lane is, and Local Search, so you know where you can take a water break or where the bike shops are along your route. Biking directions provides time estimates for routes based on an algorithm that takes into account the length of the route, the number of hills, fatigue over time, and other variables.
The new bicycling layer for Google Maps, accessible via the “More…” drop down menu at the top of the map, will display an overlay of the various bike-friendly roads and trails around town. The layer is color-coded to show three different types of paths:
- Dark green indicates a trail;
- Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
- Dotted green indicates roads without bike lanes but are more appropriate for biking, based on factors such as terrain, traffic, and intersections.
The RTC, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit working to transform abandoned rail lines into community-accessible biking and walking trails, has offered Google use of its 1,600 rail-trails, with information for more than 12,000 miles of trails. The group visited New Orleans last month to workshop the Lafitte Greenway, a three-mile linear greenspace linking Treme to Lakeview.
The only color-coded layers available to the New Orleans maps are the established trails in Audubon Park and along the River Road levee. You can, however, still get a pretty decent suggested route. For example, here’s the suggested route from Gambit to the French Quarter.
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Just one of those things to add the the “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” pile:
(via Michael G.’s Twitter)
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A run-down facility, leaked radioactive materials and untrustworthy executives persuaded the Vermont senate to vote to close the Vermont Yankee power plant, run by New Orleans-based Entergy Corporation.
What does this mean for Louisiana? Well, Entergy fed Vermont misinformation about known faults in the plant’s piping — or, as the Alliance for Affordable Energy states, Entergy showed “at least, profound ignorance of the design of this plant.” What does that say about Entergy Louisiana’s Waterford 3 nuclear facility in St. Charles Parish, or the Entergy Gulf States River Bend facility in St. Francisville? The Louisiana Public Service Commission’s latest renewable portfolio standard strawman proposal suggests nuclear power as a “renewable” source that utilities companies include in Louisiana’s future.
The Alliance issued a statement earlier this week before the Vermont ruling:
Entergy Corporation has shown that it cannot be trusted to safely operate these facilities or to provide honest, accurate information about the risks involved.
This disaster clearly demonstrates the risks associated with nuclear generation. Nuclear power is not clean, not safe, and not renewable, and it has no place in policies designed to encourage renewable energy generation. Furthermore, nuclear power is expensive. The potential for disasters such as the one at Vermont Yankee are both a risk for communities and add to the financial burdens that nuclear projects carry, including large sums for decontaminating the sites that house these facilities. Importantly, ratepayers are those who foot the bill for these projects, which endanger their very lives.
Subsidies and other incentives for energy generation should be reserved for clean, safe, renewable energy sources that can create jobs for Louisiana residents. We hope that the Louisiana Public Service Commission sees the risks inherent in these plants and adopts a policy that does not include nuclear power.
If unchallenged, this will be the first time in more than 20 years the public or law closed a reactor. (The last was the 1989 closure of a Sacramento plant with faulty electronics.)
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The past few weeks have been chaos for Roots of Music. The program moved down the street from its comfortable space at the Cabildo to a one-room auditorium at the U.S. Mint, and instructors had to get more than 100 students ready for six parades. Add the usual headaches — arranging transportation, feeding 100-plus mouths, tutoring — and a grim reality: If program directors can’t scrape together funding within the next few weeks, March looks bleak. In this week’s cover story, I followed Roots of Music as its 2010 class prepared for its Mardi Gras debut, and hopefully not its last.
The free program for at-risk students ages 9 to 14 helps low-income families get their children on the right track. Derrick Tabb (Rebirth Brass Band drummer and CNN Hero) and Allison Reinhardt founded Roots of Music in 2007, and it includes (among other things) free transportation from school (and back home), meals, tutoring (required) and a world-class music education from Tabb and New Orleans musicians like Edward Lee from Soul Rebels Brass Band, as well as Allen Dejan Jr., Shoan Ruffin and Lawrence Rawlins. Oh, and Trombone Shorty and Phil Frazier serve on the board.
Gambit photographer Cheryl Gerber documented the band’s three-step parade prep: rehearsal, dress, and the finale — marching and playing in Carnival 2010. (Hit the jump for the photos.)
Read the rest of this entry »
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Goldmine, La.’s Dale Hawkins, the swamp rock pioneer and author of rock ‘n’ roll classic “Susie Q,” died Feb. 13 after a four-year battle with colon cancer. He was 73.
Released on the Chess imprint Checker in 1957, Hawkins’ “Susie Q” went on to become one of the most covered songs in rock music, most famously by Creedence Clearwater Revival on its 1968 debut. He went on to be a record producer, label executive, and everything in between, and in 2007, Hawkins became a Louisiana Music Hall of Fame inductee. His last performance in New Orleans was at last April’s eighth annual Ponderosa Stomp, alongside other Louisiana music greats.
The New York Times has the full story.
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From last night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC. New Orleans Saints running back Pierre Thomas (at 1:18) and safetys Roman Harper and Darren Sharper (at 1:57) explain muffalettas and float riding to a “Who Dah?” chanting Guillermo, Kimmel’s security guy and Mardi Gras correspondent:
More Saints on TV: Thomas and wide receiver Lance Moore will be on BET’s 106 & Park this evening at 5 p.m.
Mardi Gracias, y’all.
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That was the question you’d hear the day after you saw The Kick. Now, you could ask that about every other moment this season, and all the moments in-between.
Sunday night, at 1 a.m., I’m eating a burrito on the corner of Decatur and St. Louis and I’m hearing “Halftime” for the millionth time. In a row.
I started the day celebrating dogs named Barques Colston and Great Danes in Shockey-sized Shockey jerseys with fleur-de-lis stencils on their bellies. I ended it listening to Bobby Hebert make an impossibly long-winded analogy through tears. Callers-in were breathless, exhausted, humbled.
Somewhere in the middle — before the thousands of cars honked at once for hours, before high-fiving and hugging strangers became involuntary and way before cops stopped giving any sizable shit about ghost riding whips down a major thoroughfare — I was standing at the river holding a loaf of French bread and drinking a daiquiri, just hours before I was left speechless from Tracy Porter’s interception and subsequent 70-plus yard touchdown, waiting to count down the final seconds of the game and see the words “Saints” “win” and “Super Bowl” appear together on the screen for the first time ever.
And this was just the beginning.
Last night I sat in traffic, walked from the Marigny to the neutral ground at Canal and Decatur to stand among older fans celebrating with younger fans — 800,000 of them watching the Lombardi trophy make its way through the streets of New Orleans in 33 degree weather.
This time last year I was looking back at an 8-8 season, hoping, again, for a “maybe next year” playoff spot, or at least a winning record. I watched the first game of this season surrounded by friends. I ended it surrounded by new friends and hundreds of total strangers.
So, where were you?
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