Gambit: Feb.16, 2021

Febru

me 42 // 2021 // Volu ary 16-22,

Number 7

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FEB. 16 – FEB. 22 , 2021 VOLUME 42 || NUMBER 7

MAKE BIRTHDAYS

Send s Flower SPECIAL

NEWS

OPENING GAMBIT

6

COMMENTARY 10 BLAKE PONTCHARTRAIN 10 CLANCY DUBOS

ARRANGEMENTS STARTING AT $40

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THE GAMBIT INTERVIEW

AUTHOR DANIEL JOSE OLDER

17

FEATURES

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT 5 EAT + DRINK

22

MUSIC 29 FILM 30

Get your

SE AFOOEDveFryIdaXy

PUZZLES 31 EXCHANGE 31

@The_Gambit P H O T O B Y S A R A H R AV I T S

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@GambitNewOrleans

The battle to protect the homeless from COVID

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CONTENTS

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT For the hometown

Side show THE NEW ORLEANS KLEZMER ALL STARS PERFORM AT SCATTERGRAS. The improvisational music series Scatterjazz, which calls the SideBar home, presents the Fat Tuesday show at 4 p.m. at 425 S. White St.

BY JAKE CLAPP THERE ARE A LOT OF VOICES FEATURED AND HANDS IN THE MIX on

GLBL WRMNG’s “Vol. 1,” and the intention is clear: Pay attention, this is New Orleans hip-hop today, and if the mainstream music industry doesn’t elevate the city’s musicians, they’ll do it themselves.

The first line on “Vol. 1,” spoken by LaPrincia Lolly Myles, can’t be any clearer when she says, “Fucking tired of the world taking New Orleans’ sound and not giving New Orleans their fucking credit.”

GLBL WRMNG, a new collective of more than 30 New Orleans-centric musicians and industry professionals will release its 16-track debut album on Friday, Feb. 19.

“Lolly’s poignant words definitely set a tone,” says Nate Cameron, a music professional and the tour and production manager for Tank and the Bangas. “It’s no secret that our Black artists and the culture here has been exploited over the years in a lot of different ways. We not only want to fight against it, but also equip our artists and culture bearers to be in a position to be owners of their art and work.”

Cameron and hip-hop artist Pell — both New Orleans natives who spent time on the West Coast before returning to their hometown — spearheaded GLBL WRMNG, and among the hefty list of artists and producers are Kr3wcial, $leazy EZ, Malik Ninety Five, Alfred Banks, Paasky, Nesby Phips, Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph and LeTrainiump.

A few years ago, Pell moved to Los Angeles to further his music career, but he found himself often recording with national musicians from New Orleans, like PJ Morton, and frequently returning to his hometown to work with local musicians. In 2019, he went on tour with Tank and the Bangas and connected with Cameron.

Over time, an idea developed to link up a group of New Orleans artists to regularly work together, and the name GLBL WRMNG — an allusion to the New Orleans music community “heating up” and indirectly to the danger presented to the city by climate change — stuck in Pell’s head.

Whenever he would work with a New Orleans artist, he would mention the project to gauge interest, but 2020 accelerated the process, he says.

Pell — who released his third album, “Gravity” in 2019 — had a few songs

Carnival time KEYBOARDISTS IVAN NEVILLE AND JON CLEARY TEAM UP for a Fat Tuesday livestream from Esplanade Studios. The live show is at 8 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 16, and is available for viewing the following 48 hours. Find the link on eventbrite.com.

Hardy gras he was working on and began to send them back to New Orleans artists. Collaborations built up, more songwriters and producers became involved and GLBL WRMNG started to take shape. Pell recently moved back to New Orleans full-time.

“From my perspective, it’s something the city and culture needed in order to show us that we can work together in the collaborative spirit that is music,” he says. “Music is meant to be communal, it’s meant to be shared.

But I think showing love in real time is by going into business with one another, actually doing songs and going in on a project together.”

GLBL WRMNG has an artistic side, focused on collaboration, publishing music for a national audience and promoting local artists to the world.

The collective’s social media recently rolled a series of “baseball cards,” as Cameron calls them, spotlighting individual artists with their neighborhood, because this is New Orleans. But equally important is a business angle the collective focuses on. There’s a long-term goal of building up New Orleans’ music infrastructure — access to more management teams, business resources, distributors, producers and other industry professionals.

“What I’ve picked up from the industry in Los Angeles is the importance of a delegation,” Pell says.

“There are usually so many people that are a part of a record, from the artist, producers, songwriters, recording engineers … lawyers, publishers, photographers … When people who specialize in even one of those areas are working on enough paid projects, they create an infrastructure that allows the budget for the project to be spent locally. The GLBL WRMNG project has an entire local infrastructure of the aforementioned roles that

S C R E E N S H OT F R O M YO U T U B E

A still from the video for GLBL WRMNG’s debut single ‘504.’ The video was produced by Red Balloon.

made it a no-brainer to executively produce a project of local talent on many levels.”

The collective is already working with musicians through one-on-one music business consultation sessions, Cameron says. They’re focusing on teaching artists how to tap into financial and business educational resources around them — resources that don’t often trickle to the local hip-hop and R&B scenes, he adds.

“There’s just a lot of grounds for misunderstandings,” Cameron says.

“A lot of grounds for exploitation, there’s a lot of grounds for things in the middle that can just come into play that we’ve seen happen to our artists of multiple genres over and over again.”

GLBL WRMNG’S “Vol. 1” is available Friday on all major streaming platforms. The group’s charismatic debut single, “504,” featuring Pell, Kr3wcial and $leazy EZ, was released on Feb. 5 — with a video produced by New Orleans’ Red Balloon — and the group is donating any money made from YouTube streams to Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish.

Along with promoting New Orleans artists to the world, the group is hoping to regularly promote area grassroots organizations, Cameron says.

“Ownership is key,” Pell says. “Black New Orleans creatives deserve to know their value and have it actualized. That’s huge for us. GLBL WRMNG is also inclusive of every color, religion, gender of artist that wants their voice to be heard and recognized as valid.”

L.A. HARDY IS A VETERAN COMIC AND ACTOR who’s hosted the webseries “Meaningless Debate” featuring fellow comics answering mostly embarrassing questions during the pandemic. He’s joined by fellow Floridian Juanita Lolita, who’s stuck to clean comedy. They perform standup at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19, and Saturday, Feb. 20 at the Westwego Performing Arts Theatre. Find tickets at jpas.com.

At the keys PIANIST STEVE DETROY has performed in Walter “Wolfman” Washington’s Roadmasters and in the New Orleans Jazz Vipers. He performs solo in a Piano on a Truck concert at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, at Zony Mash Beer Project.

Big Samiversary BIG SAM WILLIAMS CELEBRATES HIS BIRTHDAY with a live show. Singer Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph joins the party with Big Sam’s Funky Nation.

At 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20. Tickets are at broadsidenola.com.

Funky kit DRUMMER RUSSELL BATISTE JR. is a veteran of the funky Meters, Charmaine Neville’s band and collaborations with Walter “Wolfman” Washington and Joe Krown. He headlines a show with his funk band at the Broadside at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20.

Find tickets at broadsidenola.com.

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OPENING GAMBIT N E W

O R L E A N S

N E W S

+

V I E W S

Start saving bail money for Carnival 2022 now, cause its gonna be wild

# The Count

Thumbs Up/ Thumbs Down

377

Amistad Research Center and Hancock Whitney Bank

The number of days we have to wait between Mardi Gras, 2021 and Fat Tuesday, 2022

have partnered on a virtual exhibition on the history of Black-owned businesses, organizations and institutions in New Orleans. “The Things We Do For Ourselves: African American Leadership in New Orleans,” which is now online through amistadresearchcenter.org, pulls from Amistad’s archives to tell the stories of Black leadership from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s.

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y D E V I N D E W U L F

Artist, activist and krewe founder Devin De Wulf

The Louisiana Office of Tourism on Feb. 3 launched the

Louisiana Civil Rights Trail and its companion website LouisianaCivilRightsTrail.com, documenting the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the state. In upcoming months, markers will be placed around the state to recognize various moments in the history of Black Louisianans fighting for equality, such as the Baton Rouge bus boycott and the lunch counter sit-ins in New Orleans.

The Republican Party of Louisiana last week rebuked Sen. Bill Cassidy for siding with the Constitution and voting to move forward with former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Cassidy broke from most of his fellow Republicans — including Sen. John Neely Kennedy — when he voted with Democrats and five Republicans to allow the trial to proceed.

The state GOP said it is “profoundly disappointed” and that Trump is innocent of all “bogus charges” in the “fake impeachment trial.”

KREWE OF RED BEANS LAUNCHES ‘BEAN COIN’ INITIATIVE TO HELP STRUGGLING BARS

The best day of the year for most New Orleanians will fall on March 1 next year, so you’ll have ample time to plan your costumes for what will inevitably be one of the most cathartic Mardi Gras ever. And because the Carnival season itself starts Jan. 6 — 325 days from now — it’ll be one of the longer seasons, which varies according to the Easter calendar each year. That means next year we can look forward to extra parties and parades to help make up for lost time.

NEW ORLEANS BARS AND THEIR WORKERS HAVE SUFFERED enor-

mously since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a new ambitious Krewe of Red Beans initiative aims to provide them with a temporary lifeline.

The program, which launched Feb. 10, gives people the option to buy Bean Coins — glass beans worth $10 — now through Oct. 31, which they’ll be able to redeem at participating local bars and businesses in 2022.

As money is made from selling the beans, the krewe will distribute the funds to local bars who opt in to cover their monthly costs while they either close completely or serve only to-go drinks.

The funds aren’t a donation but rather a prepaid tab — a way for bars to receive money upfront, keep workers home until more people can get vaccinated and encourage people to support local businesses.

Local bars have long been the main target of citywide restrictions — including those Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced last week closing all bars for the final days of Carnival — but government relief efforts have continually fallen short of their needs, causing several neighborhood staples to close their doors for good.

“Our neighborhood bars are slowly strangling to death, and nobody has a good way to really help them,” said Devin De Wulf, founder of the Krewe of Red Beans. “The city just shut them down for Mardi Gras, and if they don’t have a way to produce revenue, they’re not gonna survive … so we’re just trying to create a lifeline for them.”

Polly Watts, the owner of Avenue Pub, said at her bar gross sales are down 75%, and that she ended 2020 $500,000 in the hole. She said before Covid she had almost 40 employees. Now, she’s down to less than 15.

Watts is one of the bar owners who has already opted into Bean Coin. She said she was hopeful to see a new initiative specifically aimed at helping bars.

PAGE 9

C’est What

?

How do you feel about the city’s decision to shut down bars for Mardi Gras?

51.7%

IT’S THE RIGHT CALL

13.8%

MY PLAN ALL ALONG WAS TO DRINK ON THE PORCH

27.7%

DISAPPOINTED. THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO SHUT DOWN MY NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

6.8%

I’M GOING OUT WITH A FLASK ANYWAY

Vote on “C’est What?” at www.bestofneworleans.com

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“Bars are a part of our culture here,” she said. “I think a lot of people think ‘bar’ and they think place that only serves liquor, and while that’s sometimes the case, it’s frequently not the case. Our neighborhood bars are like community centers almost.”

Watts said she has seen firsthand the domino effect the pandemic and inadequate government relief has had on service industry workers — and, in turn, the local businesses for which they work.

Watts said she had to close Avenue Pub for two weeks after one of her employees caught Covid when their roommate had a coworker over to do laundry because they couldn’t afford to go to a laundromat.

“Those workers are passing it behind the scenes with each other,” she said. “because the Covid financial situation is such that they’ve moved out of bigger apartments into smaller apartments, they’ve taken in roommates who work in multiple places.

That particular instance affected five different businesses.”

After the fundraising period ends on Oct. 31 this year, people will be able to then use their Bean Coins as a sort of local currency from Jan. 6, 2022, through Oct. 31, 2022 — just in time for next year’s Carnival. De Wulf hopes that the beans can become a part of the season, with people turning them into jewelry and handing them out during parades.

De Wulf said if enough people purchase the beans, making and distributing them between Nov. 1 and Jan. 6 could create temporary local jobs. To make the beans, the krewe is partnering with Glass Half Full, a local glass recycling operation started by a trio of Tulane students last year. For distribution, he plans to offer both shipping and local pick up.

“We’re not done dealing with Covid,” De Wulf said. “It’s still here, and it’s gonna be here for a little while. So if we want to save our neighborhood bars or our local restaurants, we need to figure out creative solutions to do that.”

Bean Coins can be purchased at nolabeancoin.com through Oct. 31.

— KAYLEE POCHE

Prospect New Orleans nabs 2.5 million for upcoming arts project Prospect New Orleans, the contemporary art triennial, will receive $2.5 million in grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Open Society Foundation to support work about monuments in its Prospect.5 expo.

“It’s transformative for Prospect,” executive director Nick Stillman said.

The grants will allow the organization to present public art more regularly.

“For Prospect to be successful, it has to be visible and active all the time,” Stillman said.

Prospect.5 originally was slated to open in October 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic. It will open Oct. 23 and run through January 2022.

The Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project is providing $2 million. The Open Society Foundation is providing $500,000.

Mellon announced in October 2020 that the foundation would commit $250 million to its Monuments Project over five years.

Grants support construction of new monuments, memorials and storytelling spaces; contextualizing existing monuments through installations, research and education; and relocation of existing monuments and memorials.

The grants support commissioned work by seven artists in Prospect.5.

New York artist Glenn Ligon is creating neon light installations incorporating the dates of removal of monuments to the Confederacy in New Orleans, Stillman said.

Anastasia Pelias is creating a monument to Greek heritage in a park on Esplanade Avenue near Bayou St. John. Other work being supported by the grant is by Adriana Corral, EJ Hill, Simone Leigh, Dave McKenzie and Nari Ward.

Prospect.5 is curated by Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi and titled “Yesterday We Said Tomorrow.” Its theme is about reconciling history.

The pandemic delayed the opening but there are no changes from the original roster of 51 artists from around the world. Art will be displayed at venues across the city and in public art installations.

The Mellon grant is the single largest grant the arts organization has received in its 13 year history, Stillman said.

The original Prospect New Orleans expo was the brainchild of Dan Cameron, who curated the first iteration as a response to Hurricane Katrina. Prospect.1 opened in fall 2008 and featured more than 80 artists and many site-specific installations and was well reviewed. It spent roughly $4.3 million, but subsequent Prospect expos have been smaller in scale, with fewer artists and locations.

Originally, Prospect was meant to be a biennial, but has adjusted to a triennial schedule. With the new grants, Prospect also will present art in public spaces in 2022 after Prospect.5 closes, Stillman said.

— WILL COVIELO

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COMMENTARY

BLAKE PONTCHARTRAIN™ @GambitBlake | askblake@gambitweekly.com

Jeff Landry is a menace to society LOUISIANA ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF LANDRY recently

sued The Advocate reporter Andrea Gallo for seeking a public record from his office.

The suit represents a brazen attempt to undermine the public’s fundamental right to scrutinize the actions of government officials. Landry must be called out for this, not just by the media but also by every citizen — regardless of political party or persuasion — who cares about the notion of government transparency and holding public officials accountable.

We unequivocally stand with Andrea. She is a tireless, diligent journalist — one of the best in our state and a credit to our profession.

Landry apparently has targeted her for the unpardonable offense of doing her job.

Last year, Gallo filed a public records request with Landry’s office for documents relating to a sexual harassment complaint filed against Pat Magee, who leads the AG’s Criminal Division. Magee was suspended from his job and eventually reprimanded as a result of the complaint.

After initially indicating it would turn the requested documents over once the investigation was complete, the AG’s office later reversed course and claimed that privacy concerns precluded releasing the material. When Gallo and the paper suggested redacting the name of the complainant — a standard practice in such cases — Landry declined. Instead, he sued Gallo and asked a judge to seal the case.

Everyday citizens and journalists use public records requests to learn more about the workings of government and to expose wrongdoing or mismanagement by public officials.

These and other “sunshine” laws are a critical part of the democratic process and a vital mechanism for the public to check graft, incompetence and abuse of power.

You don’t have to go far to see the importance of public records laws. Just last week, Matt Sledge, a reporter at The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, wrote a blockbuster story on NOPD’s gassing of protesters last summer. Sledge’s

Hey Blake, I’ll miss seeing the Zulu parade this Mardi Gras, including the characters like the Witch Doctor and Big Shot. How long have they been a part of the parade?

Dear reader,

A group of Advocate reporters including Andrea Gallo at top right, who love their state and country more than Jeff Landry. Low bar, we know.

story was based on an internal police report, which he obtained via a public records request.

A top official in the AG’s office being accused and eventually reprimanded for job-related sexual harassment (which is illegal under state and federal law) goes beyond the judicially created “privacy” exception to the state Public Records Act. Matters such as this are precisely why we have public records laws. This isn’t a hypothetical issue; decades of litigation by the media and citizens have made this clear.

Normally, it’s easy to write off Landry’s legal antics as simple-minded nonsense. He has already established an incontrovertible record of ill-conceived, poorly crafted, politically motivated lawsuits that have produced far more headlines for him than victories in court.

We suspect the suit against Gallo, like so many others by Landry, won’t succeed. If it does, it will be a disaster for press freedom and individual liberty. More likely, Landry’s latest lawsuit is yet another effort to avoid public scrutiny, this time by punishing a reporter for doing her job.

Landry is a shameless grandstander who delights in abusing his power. At the end of the day, we hope the courts take disciplinary steps against him for this obvious abuse of the legal process.

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, with roots dating to 1909, is known for its hierarchy of characters riding on floats at the head of the parade on Fat Tuesday behind King and Queen Zulu.

The Witch Doctor was one of the first to be introduced, debuting in the 1920s. Following Zulu’s African motif, the Witch Doctor has magical healing powers and is said to pray to the gods for good weather and the safety and health of King Zulu and the club’s members.

According to Zulu historian Clarence Becknell Sr., the Big Shot character was created by Zulu member Paul E. Johnson in the 1930s. He tries to outshine the king for attention — dressing flamboyantly with a large cigar and derby.

Several other Zulu characters were introduced in the 1970s: the Ambassador, Zulu’s ranking diplomat; the Mayor, responsible for the daily affairs of the king; and the Governor, the chief executive who controls political influence in Zululand.

The Province Prince was created

by Zulu member Milton Bienamee.

For many years the character was

F I L E P H OTO

The Zulu Big Shot waves to the crowds.

portrayed by a former king who had reigned more than once, such as Bienamee, who was King Zulu in 1965, 1967 and 1970.

The Mr. Big Stuff character was introduced following the 1971 song “Mr. Big Stuff” by Jean Knight. The character was created by Zulu members James L. Russell and William Poole (also a three-time king). While the Big Shot tries to outshine King Zulu, Mr. Big Stuff tries to outshine the Big Shot.

In recent years, Kern Studios created signature floats featuring a likeness of each of the Zulu characters.

Unlike other Carnival organizations, Zulu’s king and characters are elected by its members, with candidates often mounting vigorous and costly campaigns.

BLAKEVIEW THIS WEEK WE WISH A VERY HAPPY 80TH BIRTHDAY to the Soul Queen of

New Orleans, Irma Thomas. Born Irma Lee on Feb. 18, 1941 in Ponchatoula, she moved to New Orleans with her parents as a child. That’s also when she began singing with her church choir.

By age 19, she had been married twice and given birth to four children.

Thomas was working as a waitress when bandleader and singer Tommy Ridgley helped her land her first record in 1959: “(You Can Have My Husband, But Please) Don’t Mess with My Man.” Soon after, she joined the Minit Records label and teamed with songwriter Allen Toussaint, who wrote many of her best-known songs, including “It’s Raining” and “Ruler of My Heart.” In early 1964, Thomas recorded “Time is On My Side.” The Rolling Stones recorded the song later that same year and it became the band’s first top ten U.S. hit. In 1964, Thomas also wrote and recorded “Wish Someone Would Care,” her biggest national hit.

In the 1970s, Thomas moved to Los Angeles for a few years but soon returned home. She’s played every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival since 1974 and at Audubon Zoo every Mother’s Day since 1983. Until Hurricane Katrina, she and her husband and manager, Emile Jackson, owned and operated The Lion’s Den nightclub on Gravier Street.

A member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame and Blues Hall of Fame, Thomas was nominated for two Grammys before winning the award in 2007 for her album, “After the Rain.”

CLANCY DUBOS

Jeff Landry is an enemy of transparency

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THERE WAS A TIME when

the Louisiana Attorney General’s office championed citizens’ right to know what public officials were up to. I remember as a young reporter in the 1970s calling Kendall Vick, a top assistant under then-AG William Guste Jr., and asking for his help getting a public record from a local official who refused to produce it.

Vick’s response was immediate and unequivocal. He called the recalcitrant official and read him a combination of the Riot Act and the Louisiana Public Records Act. The information I requested quickly followed.

It was common practice in those days for reporters to call the AG’s office when we hit a wall on public records requests. Most of those calls went to Vick, who always obliged.

Back then, the Louisiana AG’s office understood the importance of citizen and media access to public records.

Nowadays, state Attorney General Jeff Landry is more likely to side with secretive politicians up to no good than investigative reporters or vigilant citizens. Case in point: Landry’s petty lawsuit against Andrea Gallo, a reporter for The Advocate. Gallo’s offense: She requested records from Landry’s office about a sexual harassment complaint against one of Landry’s top aides. (See, Commentary, p. 10) Landry’s Criminal Division Chief Pat Magee was suspended and ultimately reprimanded in the wake of the complaint. Landry’s office initially promised to provide the requested documents after the investigation into Magee had concluded. Landry later backtracked, asserting a judicially created “privacy” exception to the state Public Records Act — and suing Gallo for pursuing her records request.

The Louisiana Constitution expressly guarantees both an individual’s right to privacy and a citizens’ right to public records. It’s foreseeable that those two guarantees might one day conflict, but we’re not talking here about someone’s medical records or other private information. This case involves a high-ranking state official who was

FISH FRY EV ERY

S TA F F P H OTO B Y H I L A RY S C H E I N U K

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2020, in Baton Rouge.

suspended for job-related behavior that appears to violate state and federal laws. Moreover, Gallo and the paper offered to redact any information about the complainant, as is customary.

Landry, whose lack of legal acumen is legendary, obviously confuses his desire to keep a lid on embarrassing details about one of his lieutenants with a colorable claim of “privacy” under the law. Hopefully, the courts will see through this charade as quickly as they have dispensed with so many other baseless claims brought by Landry.

This is no trifling matter, however. As the Public Affairs Research Council (PAR) noted in a just-released commentary, Landry’s lawsuit against Gallo “sets an unfortunate example that likely will encourage egregious behavior among state and local government agencies and commissions across Louisiana.”

PAR, a nonpartisan think tank and long-time champion of Louisiana’s sunshine laws, warned the suit will be seen as a SLAPP suit, an acronym for strategic lawsuit against public participation. SLAPPs aim to silence and intimidate critics via costly lawsuits.

Those who file them are enemies of transparency.

In this case, Landry deserves to get slapped right out of court. Again.

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COVER STORY

FUNDING NEEDED for the homeless The pandemic pushes cash-strapped agencies to the brink.

B Y S A R A H R AV I T S

Though it’s obscured by thick fog, the sun’s just come up over Grace at the Greenlight, a social service organization in Central City. Dozens of homeless and low-income New Orleanians are lined up on the sidewalk for breakfast.

Some take their Styrofoam boxes and walk to the nearby park or head back to their encampments.

It’s a familiar sight for Sarah Parks, Greenlight’s executive director, who’s chatty and on a first-name basis with many of those who have been lining up for meals, which include coffee, fruit and grits or oatmeal depending on the day.

One man, 43, who identified himself as Javier but declined to give his last name, said he walks over to the site P H OTO P R OV I D E D B Y J A S M I N E A R A U J O/ S O U T H E R N S O L I DA R I T Y

COVER STORY

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daily from his low-income rental nearby to get meals as well as volunteer to give back to the program.

“I’m grateful for these people,” he says. “So I show my gratitude by helping them out, too.”

By 7:30 a.m., breakfast service has concluded. Parks estimates that she served 70 boxes of food as people begin to disperse. It’s a typical morning for Parks, who, like homeless advocates across the country, has seen a huge spike in people seeking help as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Parks says, “a lot of the agencies had to limit services or reduce services — which caused our organization to want to do more. Normally we only feed breakfast to the homeless, but we decided to do breakfast and lunch for a while.”

At the organization’s busiest, she says, they were handing out as many as 700 meals a day. They relocated to a massive, empty parking lot to accommodate the need for physical distancing among hundreds of people needing food.

The number of those needing meals from her organization have changed throughout the pandemic.

The city’s ongoing meal assistance program, which is funded with FEMA money, and other volunteer organizations have taken off some of the pressure. Still, says Parks, city agencies and nonprofits alike are facing unprecedented stress.

“Everyone is cash-strapped,” she says.

New Orleans Health Department director Dr. Jennifer Avegno says Covid outbreaks among the homeless have been scarce — both in shelters and on the streets. “A few [shelters] had clusters but we were able to go in and do enhanced testing,” she says. And so far the outbreaks that did emerge have been “fairly well controlled,” she says.

As soon as the pandemic started its rapid spread, Avegno led an effort to get testing in place at congregate settings like shelters.

Citywide shelters worked to implement greater sanitation measures, protect vulnerable staffers and volunteers and reduce

P H OTO B Y S A R A H R AV I T S

their populations to allow for social distancing.

UNITY of Greater New Orleans — a nonprofit that oversees a wide network of housing and service groups for the homeless — along with city and state partners moved more than 600 people living on the streets into hotel rooms last spring before securing longer term housing and case workers for them, in addition to reuniting many with family members. “The impetus for this hotel initiative was that I got a call from a medical personnel on March 16, one week after the first COVID-19 case was identified,” recalls Martha Kegel, executive director of UNITY. “Someone said more than a dozen people at [University Medical Center, which treats low-income and homeless patients] had symptoms.”

She never found out if they had tested positive or were officially diagnosed with the virus because testing was sparse and results lagged at the time, but it was a clear indication that public health experts and advocates needed to move quickly to get unhoused people into safer environments.

“It was a hugely successful public-private partnership,” Kegel says. “Homeless in New Orleans would have exploded if not for that

massive effort. We averted a huge crisis, but we need more resources now to help the continuing waves of people who are newly homeless as a result of losing jobs.”

The Louisiana Department of Health reports that of the more than 9,000 Louisianans who have died from COVID-19, just three of them have been identified as homeless. One of the highest risk factors of death from the virus is old age, and Avegno points out that there aren’t many elderly homeless people because they usually succumb to other illnesses or conditions earlier.

Advocacy groups and shelters agree that city and state health departments’ efforts helped save lives and prevent a wave of infections, but they are strained for resources and need continuing outside help in the form of more funding and supplies.

Meanwhile, the federal eviction moratorium — which is in place until March 31 — has also helped prevent a massive spike in homelessness. And the city of New Orleans is this week launching a rental assistance program on Feb. 15 to provide $11.6 million from the U.S. Treasury and an additional $14 million from the state, which could help some families and renters

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cover up to 12 months of back rent and three months of future rent payments.

But Kegel is anxious about what will happen when the moratorium expires and assistance dries up. UNITY is already working to get 300 newly homeless people into housing and shelters, and she says, “the streets are filling up again.”

“It would be our worst fear to see the moratorium end,” she says. “We are bracing for a new wave of homelessness.”

Even though the coronavirus itself doesn’t appear to be tearing through people experiencing homelessness in New Orleans, a slew of other complicated, serious issues have been compounded by the pandemic.

And the city’s health director Avegno points out that homeless people already face pre-existing vulnerabilities. “Any homeless population — particularly our unsheltered — are always at higher risk of having pre-existing conditions, whether it’s mental health, substance abuse or a chronic medical condition,” she says.

Jasmine Araujo, founder of the mutual aid society Southern Solidarity, which provides food, clothing, access to technology and other resources to unsheltered people, says in her daily interactions with people living on the streets she’s noticed increased substance abuse that have led to deaths from overdoses.

Parks, meanwhile, says the people she helps have reported increased domestic violence, a phenomenon she says is worsened by unemployment, anger and fear stemming from the pandemic.

Jeffrey Gray, 61, lives on the streets, and he believes people around him have become paranoid and more anxious, which has led to more drug use and fighting.

Javier, the man who lives in a low-income housing unit near Grace at the Greenlight, says he suffers from several mental illnesses including bipolar disorder, high anxiety and he has bouts of suicidal feelings. For now, his mental health conditions are under control with the help of regular medication and support groups he meets with multiple times a week, but he says it’s a cycle for him to end up back on the streets.

Area nonprofits and shelters have been grateful for widespread cooperation between state and local officials in helping get people off the streets despite limited resources.

“Every city has homeless people, and this is a precarious economic situation,” says Araujo.

But she would also like to see greater resources available, and is also critical of some of the city’s sanitation sweeps, which she says can further traumatize this population — mainly because they are accompanied by a police presence that she says does not

“IT WOULD BE OUR WORST FEAR TO SEE THE [EVICTION] MORATORIUM END. WE ARE BRACING FOR A NEW WAVE OF HOMELESSNESS.” — MARTHA KEGEL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF UNITY

The letter also urged city officials to install more hand-washing stations. Avegno says the city is working on getting more.

Health department officials also say cleaning the encampment areas is a necessary measure because camps can quickly become unsanitary due to the lack of toilets and increased rodent activity that can spread other types of deadly infectious diseases.

Avegno says the goal has never been to throw away

people’s belongings or worsen the conditions.

“Our goal is not to displace anyone; our goal is to not throw away personal property,” she says.

The point of cleaning the city’s encampment areas, she says, is to “move out trash and things that can invite disease, like moldy mattresses and waste ... We have to be mindful of things that can spark really serious outbreaks.”

Hepatitis A outbreaks from increased fecal matter in encampments have also been documented in recent months.

Orleans Parish was doing a “good job of suppressing” outbreaks compared to other parishes, Avegno says, but the numbers are beginning to increase.

She calls this a “canary-in-thecoal mine” situation. “When that number starts to creep up, we know other dangers are also happening,” she says.

Other advocates, like Parks, agree that the lack of clean bathrooms are a major problem. “[Toilets] were a huge issue from the beginning,” says Parks, who praises the city’s overall response but says she wishes they had the resources to set up portable toilets in encampment areas.

“Public libraries and restaurants and other businesses have closed down,” she says. “That’s taking away places people can go to use facilities.”

Some of those without shelter have resorted to using grocery store bathrooms. “They’ll go buy like, one cheap thing at Rouses just so they can use the bathroom,” Parks says.

Homelessness always has been a complicated crisis, and during the pandemic it has forced officials and advocates to navigate new territory.

Katherine Andrinopoulos, an associate professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, has been studying the homeless population during the pandemic and the response by conducting openended interviews with agencies, advocates and unhoused people themselves. She says she’s impressed with the permanent supportive housing solutions that the agencies facilitated quickly after state funding for temporary housing in hotels ran out and hopes to see more of that.

There’s also relief among public health officials as vaccine distribution ramps up and some of the homeless have been eligible to receive them — as well as those who take care of them in shelters.

Last month, more than 150 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were administered at Health Care for

COVER STORY

the Homeless, a New Orleans clinic that provides low or no-cost medical services for some of the elderly homeless residents and at-risk staffers in shelters.

“We’ve been able to vaccinate the providers who work really closely with people on the street,” Avegno says.

Plans to distribute the vaccine among the unhoused have also long been in place — in part because health departments are already familiar with the logistics of coordinating response units known as “strike teams” because they frequently must bring Hepatitis A vaccines into settings with outbreaks that are mitigated through inoculations.

Still, “[homelessness] is a really, really vexing societal issue,” Avegno says. “No city has figured this out. Our ultimate goal is to get folks to a shelter — and one that treats them with dignity — and then using that as a nexus to get them into permanent housing.”

Even the best strategy to address the challenges COVID19 presents for the homeless population are useless without the money and resources necessary to implement it.

And unfortunately for advocates and the people they serve, getting money for homeless programs can be especially difficult as social services agencies across the country have faced increased demand.

P H OTO B Y M A X B E C H E R E R / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E | T H E N E W O R L E A N S A DVO C AT E

The homeless aren’t a major voting bloc in the U.S. and they lack the resources and connections to effectively lobby lawmakers for funding. Recently, Araujo was able to set up a meeting on Zoom with city officials, bringing a few of the city’s unhoused to join her in having their voices heard.

But even if they can find a champion in Congress or state legislature or city council, the issues and solutions are complicated and aren’t often a priority among the many other visible societal and structural problems.

Federal and state funding continues to be inadequate, and while agencies and advocates are doing significant work with what resources and donations they have, they need more.

Gray, who lives in an encampment and has chronic health issues that prevent him from working, puts it bluntly. “The government need to get off their asses,” he says, leaning against a truck outside of Grace at the Greenlight and gesturing at a group walking back to their encampments. “They ought to look around at what’s going on.

They’re blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.”

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treat them with the dignity they deserve. “They treat them like disease carriers and criminals,” Araujo says.

Davida Finger, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans who represents low-income clients, wrote a letter co-signed by housing advocates and the ACLU of Louisiana, to urge Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration — which is dealing with staff shortages — to take more action to protect the unhoused.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Finger wrote, “have provided specific guidance on homeless encampments” that the city is not able to follow exactly. The letter also says the cleaning sweeps, “which confiscate property without due process and notice are unconstitutional.”

“I just talked to a woman who was unhoused, and she was sick and spent a few days in the hospital,” Finger told Gambit in February, weeks after sending the letter to City Hall. “When the woman returned to her encampment, she learned she had lost everything, including personal photographs and important documents.”

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CANON New Orleans author

Daniel Jose Older

brings new blood to an old galaxy far, far away

P H O T O P R OV I D E D B Y JOHN MIDGLEY

BY KERRY SANTA CRUZE | JRNOLA.ORG

WrIter Daniel Jose Older came to New Orleans for good in 2017. He’s the author of novels for adults and young people.

DANIEL JOSE OLDER is an award-winning author, prolific TikTok

got accepted with a book called “Shadowshaper,” which did well.

I kept writing books and here I am 10 years and about 15 books later and writing Star Wars and young adult books, middle-grade books and all kinds of stuff. So it’s a great career. I’m very pleased.

came out in November 2019.

It’s a very personal book. It’s inspired by a lot of family history and Cuban history. It’s about diaspora and history and it’s a very different vibe than anything I’ve tried before. It’s narrated by a spirit who is moving through the world and it explores what it feels like to not have a body.

I also have a book with coming out [this month] called “Flood City.” It’s a book for kids, and it’s about kids fighting off aliens and warlords to try to save the last city on Earth after floods had taken over. That’s a super cool book, too.

What is the best thing you’ve written?

What is the story and message of your books?

Older: That’s a tough one. It’s kind of like having kids: you love them all in different ways.

A book I’m really proud of is “The Book of Lost Saints,” which

Older: I want people to really understand their own power. The young people in “Flood City” all have different skills — some of them are scientists, some are

mad scientist and former paramedic who also happens to be one of the lead architects of Disney’s new “Star Wars: The High Republic” initiative. Older’s latest book, “Flood City,“ was released earlier this year, and the first issue of the “Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures” comic book series was released Feb. 3. Older spoke with Kerry Santa Cruze, a JRNOLA student journalist, to talk about his career, his process and influences.

GAMBIT: How did you

get to this point in your career?

Daniel Jose Older: I’ve always loved storytelling and that’s come through in different aspects of my art. When I was a kid, I loved to draw cartoons, and in my 20s, I played a lot of music.

Eventually that creativity kind of just started making the most sense to write books. So that’s what I started doing when I was 29. And I got rejected a whole bunch of times — like 40 times with my first book. Then finally, I

musicians, and some of them love technology and building things. They all have to join up to put those different powers together to save each other and save the world. I just feel like especially young people have so many different skills and there are so many different ways to survive and to thrive in this world. I want people to really understand that there’s no one way to make art or to organize your community or to help yourself get back.

What are some pieces of literature that inspired you?

Older: One writer that I love and think about a lot is Octavia Butler. She was one of the greatest fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. I started reading her in high school. ... One of my teachers, Mrs. Middleton,

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18 gave me a copy of a Butler book.

And to this day, I don’t even know why she did that. It was so cool — because it wasn’t assigned or anything. She just handed it to me and I still have that copy.

And that was a really powerful experience because I realized it meant she believed in me. It took me a long time to really realize the meaning of that gift. But it’s powerful. ... I put Butler down for a while, but I came back to it after college and I’ve just always loved everything she’s written.

She has a really deep way of thinking about the world and thinking about power. So she’s a really important one. Walter Mosley is another writer. He’s a mystery writer, so he’s definitely an important one.

Was there anyone who inspired you to pursue a career as a writer?

Older: Aside from Mrs. Middleton,

my mom and dad have both been really helpful along the way.

My sister’s a writer, too, so I’ve always looked up to all of them and learned a lot from all of them about storytelling.

As a Star Wars fan, I have to ask — what was it like to dip your toes into that very expansive universe?

Older: It’s really the most fun

thing ever. What I love is creating my own worlds and I’ve been a Star Wars fan since I was 3 years old. It’s my favorite franchise.

They’re really good people to work with. I really just enjoy it.

What was one of the first things you wrote story-wise?

Older: I did a lot of writing in high school and college. A lot of essays ‘cause they assign essays a lot. I remember really liking doing it, even though it was hard work. It was homework. I really did love writing personal essays even back then. I wrote in my journal and that was really helpful to me as a young writer and I still do that. ... I felt like when I wrote I was safe, like I could tell the journal anything and it was just for me and the journal to know and nobody else. So now when I write books, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing homework. It reminds me of being around a really close

friend that I can tell the truth to.

And so, you know, that’s always something that I take with me.

No matter who’s writing it, do you think someone’s always likely to find a way to relate to a story?

Older: Stories tell a lot of truths across humanity and people will see themselves in lots of different kinds of fiction. Even if it’s monsters or aliens — science fiction — there’s truth in there. And that’s what jumps out, that’s what’s important.

Before you were a writer, what were some job experiences you had?

Older: I was a paramedic for 10 years and that was a really formative experience that really taught me a lot about writing about the world — that was in New York City. And when you’re a paramedic, you deal with a lot of problems and find yourself in a lot of weird situations. You learn a lot about humanity. At the same time I worked as a community organizer — working on issues of gender and race and racism. All those things really made me a better writer. I’m glad I did them.

What moments really stand out to you from your time as a paramedic?

Older: Oh my God, shootings. We did a lot of those. But sometimes it’s just the little things that really jump out at you. We had a guy who called 911 because he had a broken heart. He was an old guy and it taught me that people have different understandings of what emergencies are, you know?

Sure, it’s funny and everything, but it’s also saying that’s just the truth about the world. One person’s emergency is another person’s weird thing to happen.

As a 15-year-old aspiring writer, what’s some advice you would give to me along with other writers?

Older: I would say, first of all, it’s really great that you want to write. I wanted to write at 15, too

19

LEFT: The Book of Lost Saint CENTER: ‘Dactyl Hill Squad’ RIGHT: ‘Shadowshaper,’ from the series

— and I did write. But I would say: know that you’re a writer. Like if you want to write, you’re probably writing in university, your journal, even if it’s stuff you don’t share with anybody, or even if it’s stuff that you do, or even if it’s social media posts, you’re still writing.

And that’s important because people will try to tell you, “you’re not a writer.” If you haven’t published or if you don’t write X, Y, Z times a day, or whatever nonsense people make up, all kinds of rules to gatekeeper you. But the truth is: If you write at all, which you do, you’re a writer. You know, this interview, it means you’re writing.

And that’s important.

I would also say to have lots of different experiences in life.

I’ve done tons of different jobs — teaching, paramedic, all that stuff. You could look at your jobs as other stuff to pay the bills. But I learned so much about the world through them. All those experiences made me a better writer.

And so I’m grateful for them even though it was hard. So that’s dope.

Great writers aren’t made out of people who sit around and study and write all day. It’s people who live out in the world and do things and like, you know, deal with their relationships and go through stuff.

And sometimes it’s really hard, but you gotta remember that’s the stuff that makes great books.

Sometimes that’s all we got. I feel like writing has definitely been there for me at times when I just didn’t know where to turn. And that’s like really powerful. So, stay at it. But also don’t beat yourself up just because you need a break.

We’re human beings and we gotta take breaks. We gotta stop what we’re doing and just rest ourselves, especially right now.

Especially with all the drama going on in the world. With so many people dying, it’s really important that we practice self-care. And

sometimes writing is self-care, but sometimes we have to just stop everything and just be still and relax and watch TV or whatever we gotta do, you know? So like don’t, don’t beat yourself up.

That’s my advice.

What’s been your experience like writing comic books — as opposed to (longer) graphic novels?

Older: As a matter of fact, I have a comic book coming out in a couple of weeks. It’s called “Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures.” It [came] out on Feb. 3. So it’s really awesome. I love writing comics and that comes out every month — at least for the next year. So yeah, pick that up.

I’ll be sure to check that out. I’m a big fan of Star Wars and comic books.

Older: Me, too.

Since we’re on the topic of comic books, what’re your favorite super heroes?

Older: Hmm, that’s a tough one. I go back and forth on.

Superheroes aren’t my main, favorite thing. I watched most of the Marvel movies. But I’d say Miles Morales.

How has the pandemic and the past year been for working on your craft?

Older: In some ways a lot has changed. In other ways, It hasn’t — mostly on a practical level. It means I just haven’t been able to travel as much. So I’ve really

tried to make sure I spend that time doing my work and getting stuff done. It’s stuff that I would probably have to do on the plane or in hotel rooms if I wasn’t here.

So I’m just trying to sort of take that for the blessing amidst all the other bad stuff. It’s like, at least I get to be at home and get this writing done.

Has there ever been a point in time where you felt like, “Oh man, I don’t know if people will really like the story that I’ve been working on?” And has there been someone there to keep you going or keep you motivated?

Older: Sure. My wife is that someone for me a lot. I definitely talk to her about stuff when I’m struggling with a story issue or if I’m wondering if something works. She’s also a really good writer, so I trust her opinion. I have a lot of friends who are writers, so I bounce stuff off of them.

Sometimes it’s really important to have a writing community around you and other people who you can trust. Not just people who think you’re great, but people who actually tell you the truth the best.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing series of pieces by young journalists that Gambit is running in partnership with JRNOLA, a local nonprofit that works with aspiring journalists in our area. Through this ongoing partnership, we hope to not only give JRNOLA students real-world experience, but to also provide them a platform to tell stories that are important to them. Please consider supporting them by donating to their work.

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Short Stop Poboy knows what they are doing when it comes to poboys and they’ve been doing it right for over 54 years. Stop in to get a Crawfish Poboy served with Louisiana crawfish tails battered and fried crisp to order. Comes in Small, Regular or the 14 inch King!

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Home to authentic Japanese cuisine in New Orleans for more than 20 years, Mikimoto has a full menu of sushi, salads, soups and rolls like the Rainbow Roll - Snow crab, asparagus, and avocados inside seaweed & rice, topped with tuna (3), salmon (2), and yellowtail(1), and lemon slices.

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Serving up the best Italian food in New Orleans since 1957. Come join us during lent for our fresh seafood specialties like Shrimp Diavolo - Large fresh Gulf shrimp in a spicy red sauce served with linguine. There’s something for everyone at Venezia.

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There’s never a limit to delicious seafood dishes at Andrea’s and right now fresh fish are swimming to Andrea’s door. Get a 1lb Fresh Maine Lobster steamed and served with drawn butter.

You never know what will be on the Specials menu at Katie’s! What you do know is that anything you order will be DELICIOUS! Softshell crab goes perfectly for a Sunday Brunch. Open Monday – Saturday from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm, and Sunday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.

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Looking for home-style Creole cooking tonight? Look no further than Neyow’s Creole Café. Menu favorites include File’ Gumbo, Shrimp Creole, Farm raised Catfish, Gulf Oysters, Stuffed Crabs and so much more.

Just added to our Lent Specials on Friday - Chargrilled Dungeness Crab served with corn on the cob.

Attention seafood lovers! Shop Dorignac’s deals for Lent storewide.

From local to international waters, our selection of shrimp, fish, lobster, crawfish, and crabmeat is the best around. When it comes to seafood, only the freshest will do at Dorignac’s!

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Fresh Start Casual restaurant Nice Guys Bar & Grill takes off during the pandemic

BY B E T H D ’A D D O N O HAVE A SLURP OF GUMBO from Nice

Guys Bar & Grill chef Darian “D Fresh” Williams and there’s a lot more than sausage and chicken going on.

There are memories in that bowl — memories of Williams’ grandfather and the truck farm behind his family’s house on the West Bank, where there was okra to be picked, eggs to be gathered and turtles to be fed. Williams’ mother died when he was 6 years old, so he spent a lot of time in Harvey, surrounded by his grandmother, aunts and his grandfather in the kitchen.

“He’s the one who gave me my passion to cook,” says Williams, 42. “He was excellent, always using fresh ingredients and home-grown produce. I was there right by his side. He taught me his red beans and his white beans and one of the best gumbo recipes. It’s still my go to.”

Williams describes his gumbo as lighter than average, built on a peanut butter-colored roux that isn’t as thick and mahogany-colored as many versions. But it’s loaded with smoked turkey, sausage, seafood, chicken and sometimes okra or file.

“It has the whole kitchen sink in it,” he says. “You can just get lost in the sauce. Mine is almost brothy, the way he made it.”

That gumbo is one of the homestyle specialties Williams brings to the table at Nice Guys, the casual eatery Allison and Glenn Charles opened in a former Gert Town daiquiri bar in June. Williams went to school with Allison Charles and they reconnected in Houston, where he had been living since 2016, operating a New Orleans-centric food truck.

When she proposed the idea of him manning the kitchen at the restaurant she and her husband were planning to open — just before the pandemic hit — he accepted the offer.

Although Nice Guys’ menu leans toward casual dining, with dishes like smothered fries, burgers and nachos, Williams brings fine dining experience to the mix. He worked at Emeril Lagasse’s flagship restaurant for nearly a decade, moving up to the position of sous chef, learning and working alongside chef de cuisine David Slater, executive sous chef Tyron Carmouche and Homebase culinary director Chris Wilson.

“Working at Emeril’s was like going to school,” Williams says.

“I’d encourage any chef to work there for six months or a year to get a real foundation. I was paying $28,000 a year to go to the Art Institute in Atlanta for culinary; there I was getting paid to learn.”

He’s especially proud of creating a dish for bunch — chicken and waffles — that was named for him, Darian’s chicken and waffles.

“Those chefs taught me so much,” he adds. “How to work with flavor, how to think about the business side and give guests an experience they can’t forget. That’s what I’m trying to do now at Nice Guys.”

He puts his own signature on the menu in bold flavor combinations like drunken wings doused with boozy sauces. Flavors like tequila mango and Crown peach harmonize well with the cocktail menu he created for pairing.

“I knew Allison wanted messy fries,” he says. “At first I kind of turned my nose up at the idea of a crazy pile of food on the plate. But I started playing around, and they’re one of our most popular items.”

He’s talking about the Earhart Attack Fries, which are seasoned fried potatoes slathered in crawfish cheese sauce and topped with chunks of marinated chicken, hot and smoked sausage, bacon, jalapenos and a fried egg. There’s plenty to share.

A recent Saturday special featured

WHAT

WHERE

7910 Earhart Blvd., (504) 302-2404; niceguysbarandgrillnola.com

WHEN

Lunch daily, dinner Mon.-Sat.

Email dining@gambitweekly.com

Gentilly surf and turf THE SPECIALTIES OF NOLA CRAWFISH KING SEAFOOD & BARBECUE are emblazoned on a

wild, colorful mural of crawfish, hogs, citrus and crabs.

Around back, the tale of this new Gentilly spot is told in dueling drifts of spicy boil from the seafood pots and pecan logs burning in the smoker.

P H OTO B Y C H E R Y L G E R B E R

Chef Darian Williams and owners Glenn Charles Jr. and Allison Charles serve birria tacos and more at Nice Guys Bar & Grill.

surf and turf Chef D Fresh’s way. A 12-ounce grilled rib-eye was served with a lobster tail atop a loaded potato oozing seafood cream sauce.

Priced at $39, it’s an entree built for comfort not for speed, and portioned for two.

Besides the regular menu, there’s a daily special that ranges from gumbo on Fridays to red beans and fried chicken on Mondays, tacos on Tuesdays, hibachi-style hot boxes with fried rice and grilled seafood on Wednesdays and stuffed turkey legs on Thursdays. Brunch is served on weekends and diners can get Williams’ chicken and waffles. Char-grilled oysters are always available. Families are welcome and there’s a kids menu.

Nice Guys has dining inside and under tents outdoors. The restaurant does a brisk takeout business and delivery is available.

Despite the pandemic, business has been good.

“I’m very thankful,” Williams says.

“We’re still growing and I still have a lot of ideas and dishes I want to try.”

?

Nice Guys Bar & Grill

FORK CENTER

HOW

Dine-in, outdoor seating, takeout and delivery available

CHECK IT OUT

A mix of casual and refined dishes in a neighborhood spot

P H OTO B Y I A N M C N U LT Y/ T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E | T H E N E W O R L E A N S A DVO C AT E

NOLA Crawfish King is a seafood market and barbecue shop. It’s more like a takeout deli than restaurant.

A few picnic tables outside are the only available seating when you need to eat a brisket pastrami Reuben or a bag of boudin balls on the spot.

It’s also another example of a local business transformed by the pandemic.

Chris “Shaggy” Davis built NOLA Crawfish King from backyard boils into a crawfish catering service that could serve hundreds at once. He made a niche in festivals and events and even produced his own music and crawfish festival in New Orleans for a few years.

The coronavirus crisis upended all of that.

“The whole entire game changed overnight,” Davis says. “I had to look at something different.”

So he and partner Kat Brennan turned NOLA Crawfish King into a neighborhood business — in a neighborhood that long has been hungry for more restaurant options. In effect, this new addition pulls double duty between barbecue and seafood.

The Franklin Avenue storefront once housed a seafood market called Cousin’s Seafood, though it had sat vacant for years. Now, its front and flank have been transformed with murals by local artist Zac Maras, whose work also covers the exterior of Toups’ Meatery in Mid-City.

PAGE 24

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While best known for crawfish catering, Davis also built a following for barbecue catering, too, and he dubbed this spinoff NOLA Cochon King.

“We built a niche in both,” Davis says. “This is a way to combine them.”

They come together behind the shop, where the boil room and smoker shed stand side by side.

Davis and his co-pitmaster, Scott Geerds, tend this smoker for barbecue that goes on platters, in the retail case and into sandwiches.

Up front, one part of the counter is devoted to fried snacks, of the sort you’d find at Acadiana gas station butcher shops — bags of cracklings, boudin balls, boudin egg rolls and specialty rolls filled with crawfish boudin, brisket and jalapenos (the brisket bomb) or smoked ground pork and macaroni and cheese (all in the same egg roll wrapper for the “soul roll”).

For the retail side, the shop makes and packages its own bacon, boudin, andouille and green onion sausage. The butcher case has whole smoked turkey breasts and slabs of ribs ready to heat and eat. That product line will gradually expand, Davis says.

Crawfish are just starting up, and Davis says signs are good for a plentiful season. The shop is boiling local shrimp and blue crabs and also has snow crab and Dungeness crab legs.

Before the market opened in January, Davis had deployed a food truck outside. Also painted by Maras, it drew steady business for both boiled seafood and barbecue, helping affirm Davis’ plans for the neighborhood spot.

As the market gets rolling, the truck will be back in action again, too. In the weeks ahead, it will turn up for pop-ups at venues like Pal’s Lounge, Zony Mash Beer Project and the Broadside.

NOLA Crawfish King Seafood & Barbecue is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Wednesday through Sunday. — IAN McNULTY / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE | THE NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE

Dizzy’s reopens FIRST THEY’LL MAKE A ROUX , the

way they always have, for a Creole gumbo that’s been a signature dish for generations.

Then the next generation of the Baquet family will open the doors again at Li’l Dizzy’s Café, bringing back an essential piece of the New Orleans culinary story that was almost lost in the pandemic.

Li’l Dizzy’s was scheduled, at press time, to reopen at its longtime home at 1500 Esplanade Ave. on Monday, Feb 15. To begin, the restaurant will serve lunch only,

with all meals prepared for takeout.

Limited seating will be available inside and outdoors for people who want to unpack their lunch on the spot.

The restaurant will start with a menu of house standards, including that Creole gumbo and fried chicken, and will prepare daily specials.

“We’re bringing back what we’re known for, we want people to know the food will be the same,” said Arkesha Baquet, the restaurant’s new co-owner.

P H OTO B Y DAV I D G R U N F E L D , N O L A .

C O M | T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E | T H E N E W O R L E A N S A DVO C AT E

Wayne Baquet Jr., Wayne Baquet Sr. and Arkesha Baquet at the Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe.

The restaurant is opening in progressive phases, with table service and an expanded menu still to come. But just firing up the Li’l Dizzy’s kitchen again is a significant milestone.

Arkesha and her husband Wayne Baquet Jr. bought the restaurant late last year from founders Janet and Wayne Baquet Sr., who are Wayne Jr.’s parents. (Wayne Baquet Jr. is CEO of Imperial Trading, the grocery distributor owned by John Georges, who also owns Gambit.)

Li’l Dizzy’s has been a Treme mainstay since 2004, serving as a neighborhood restaurant for people from all corners of the community. People have been eating traditional Creole cuisine at a succession of Baquet family restaurants across the city since the 1940s. From Paul Gross Chicken Coop on Bienville Street to Eddie’s on Law Street to Zachary’s on Maple Street, it’s been a tale of family, hospitality and local flavor.

Wayne Baquet Sr. was the steward of that legacy for many years, but he closed the restaurant during the pandemic, before deciding to sell it to his family.

Li’l Dizzy’s will be open for lunch Monday through Saturday. — IAN McNULTY/THE TIMES-PICAYUNE | THE NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE

EAT+DRINK

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Cordelia Heaney Director of Market Umbrella CORDELIA HEANEY MOVED TO NEW ORLEANS to take a job at

Tulane university in 2004. After later attaining an MBA at Tulane’s Freeman School of Business, she became the Director of the Office on Women’s Policy for Louisiana, focusing on health, domestic violence, economics and education.

After five years as director of north Carolina’s Compass Center, which addresses economic justice and gender equity issues, she returned to new Orleans. In early February, Heaney became director of Market umbrella, the nonprofit that operates the Crescent City Farmers Markets.

The Crescent City Farmers Market just marked its 25th anniversary. What’s your impression of the organization?

CORDELIA HEANEY: I am honored to be part of an organization that has done so much in the past 25 years in the community and has really grown. Some of my goals are looking at and positioning us as a culture bearer in the city, so that work we do surrounding small food producers, creating a community space and educating people around food and making food accessible are part of maintaining the new Orleans culture so many of us opt into so purposefully and believe in.

I want to raise Market umbrella’s visibility, since I think people aren’t always aware that we operate farmers markets as a nonprofit. We also do community education and hope to do more advocacy work.

I am excited to join at this time because Market umbrella has pivoted during Covid to continue to make the markets viable and to utilize technology to expand our reach. We’re in a position to build on what we’ve learned in the last year and move forward with projects like exploring home delivery from the market and adding more drive through and contactless options.

How have the farmers markets changed during the pandemic?

H: We developed an online sales platform to facilitate contactless purchases, and we trained farmers

and food producers to integrate these technologies. We were able to provide opportunities for nearly 60 local food growers and producers so they could generate the income they need to support their families, businesses and employees.

We’ve lost some vendors because of Covid, because some farmers didn’t feel safe. But when I talked to some of the farmers, they said they felt like Market umbrella had done a good job of keeping their safety and their needs in mind as we made these adaptations. It’s not just about keeping the customer safe, it’s also about keeping the farmers safe.

We also fully realized our goal that we’d had for several years to relocate our Mid-City market to the Lafitte Greenway, which just happened at the end of last year.

It’s really exciting to be on public land in such a beautiful place that’s focused on the city. We’ve been working on expanding the footprint of our other markets to increase capacity. We are expanding our Tuesday uptown market. We’ve also relocated our Sunday drive-through market to City Park beginning on Valentine’s Day. When Covid started, there were all these supply chain challenges.

At first people were saying these things aren’t on the shelves, or I can’t get x, y and z. It opened up a conversation about where does our food come from when we’re talking about large scale agribusiness and some of the pitfalls of that system.

We’re looking at getting food from our region and keeping cash in our system and supporting all of us who live here. I think people are starting to think differently about the value of that.

How can farmers markets improve access?

H: We distributed $75,000 in food incentives for SnAP shoppers and WIC mothers, seniors and school children. We were awarded a really competitive grant from the uSDA to triple our annual distribution to SnAP shoppers through the dollar-for-dollar Market Match program for about $125,000 per year for four years. Traditionally, the shopper would pay for half and the SnAP program would pay for half of the market box. We are helping to fund it so there isn’t a cost to the

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shopper, so the food is accessible.

We have been doing that, but we’re expanding it.

With Lafitte Greenway, it’s the first time in 25 years we’ve been on public property for a market.

It’s always been on private property.

That may not sound like a big thing, but it is. We are part of the city, on a space the city has created for the community.

I think sometimes there is a perception that farmers markets are elitist or not accessible to everyone. We work hard to make farmers markets accessible because as a nonprofit, we’re making sure vendors aren’t paying high fees, and that more of what they’re earning goes in their pocket. We help by doing marketing and outreach for them, and we recruit new vendors.

We make sure we find ways to make food access easier and more affordable so everyone can have that farmers market experience.

I see a lot of through lines between the work I did at the Compass Center and doing women’s policy work and what I am doing now at Market umbrella. I am excited to highlight the fact that we are an economic driver for small businesses in the community and we are providing food access in a city where people so love our food. new Orleans and south Louisiana have historic foodways, and we play a central role in making that accessible and supporting those traditions in the community.

— WILL COVIeLLO

New Orleans Public Radio • wwno.org

ADVERTISE WITH US Call Sandy Stein (504) 483-3150 or sstein@gambitweekly.com

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Contact Will Coviello wcoviello@gambitweekly.com 504-483-3106 | FAX: 504-483-3159 C O M P L E T E L I S T I N G S AT W W W. B E S T O F N E WO R L E A N S . C O M Out 2 Eat is an index of Gambit contract advertisers. Unless noted, addresses are in New Orleans and all accept credit cards. Updates: email willc@gambitweekly.com or call (504) 483-3106.

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Five Happiness (3605 S. Carrollton Ave., 504-482-3935) serves Chinese food in Mid-City.

Notice: Due to COVID-19, dining at restaurants is impacted, with limited indoor seating and other recommended restrictions. All information is subject to change. Contact the restaurant to confirm service options.

BYWATER Luna Libre — 3600 St. Claude Ave., (504) 237-1284 — Roasted chicken enchiladas verde are filled with cheese and served with house-made cheese dip. The menu combines Tex-Mex and dishes from Louisiana and Arkansas.

Curbside pickup is available. B Sat-Sun, D Wed-Sun. $

CARROLLTON Mikimoto — 3301 S. Carrollton Ave., (504) 488-1881; mikimotosushi.com — The South Carrollton roll includes tuna tataki, avocado and snow crab. Takeout and delivery available. L Sun-Fri, D daily. $$ Pyramids Cafe — 3151 Calhoun St., (504) 861-9602 — Diners will find Mediterranean cuisine featuring such favorites as shawarma prepared on a rotisserie. Takeout and delivery available. L, D daily. $$

CITYWIDE Breaux Mart — Citywide; breauxmart. com — The deli counter’s changing specials include dishes such as baked catfish and red beans and rice. L, D daily. $

FAUBOURG MARIGNY Kebab — 2315 St. Claude Ave., (504) 3834328; kebabnola.com — The sandwich shop offers doner kebabs and Belgian fries. A falafel sandwich comes with pickled cucumbers, arugula, spinach, red onions, beets, hummus and Spanish garlic sauce. No reservations. Takeout and delivery available Thu-Mon. $

New Orleans

HOME + STYLE + DESIGN

DON’T MISS THE MARCH ISSUE

FRENCH QUARTER Desire Oyster Bar — Royal Sonesta New Orleans, 300 Bourbon St., (504) 586-0300; sonesta.com/desireoysterbar — The menu features Gulf seafood in traditional and contemporary Creole dishes, po-boys and more. Char-grilled oysters are topped with Parmesan, herbs and butter. Reservations recommended.

Takeout available. B, L and D daily. $$

FOLLOW

New Orleans

Heart YOUR

Embroidered heart pillows

by Annie Lou Studios

Amour Heart

$10 each from | (1109 Royal Glitterbox NOLA St., glitterboxno. 504-568-0955; com).

Ikat platter

$39.95 from | Williams-Son Veterans Memorial oma (3301 Blvd., Metairie, “Mask 504-828-3769 Up” ; williams-sono ma.com).platter | $34 from Home Malone (629 N. Carrollton, 504-3248352; 4610 Magazine St., 504-766-6148 ; homemalone nola.com).

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PHOTO PROVIDED BY WILLIAMS-SO NOMA

HOME + STYLE + DESIG F E B R UA R Y N 2021

PHOTO PROVIDED BY HOME MALONE

Spade pot |

$45 from Eclectic Home Standing (8211 Oak St., 504-8666654; eclectichome dukes |

Emma

Bridgewater teapot |

PHOTO PROVIDED .net). $65 each from

BY Home ECLECTIC HOME Malone.

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$83 from Amara (amara.com).

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LOV E-THEME D ACCESSORIES

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$50 from Amara Rolling Stones print (amara.com) | .

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BY AMAR A

Towel |

$12.95 from Fleurty Girl (Citywide; fleurtygirl.ne t).

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BY FLEURT

Bring the CAR NIVAL SPIR IT into your home

The Rivershack Tavern — 3449 River Road, (504) 834-4938; therivershacktavern.com — This bar and music spot offers a menu of burgers, sandwiches and changing lunch specials. Curbside pickup and delivery available. L, D daily. $ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 1212 S. Clearview Parkway, Elmwood, (504) 7333803; theospizza.com — There is a wide variety of specialty pies and toppings to build your own pizza. The menu also includes salads and sandwiches.

Curbside pickup and delivery available.

L, D Tue-Sat. $ PAGE 28

Storage solutions |

price available request from upon The Occasional Wife (8237 Earthart

Blvd., 504-302-989 3; theoccasion alwife.com).

GAMBIT STAFF

PHOTO

Style with

passion

Les Ottomans eye cushion |

$138 from Amara.

Cynthia Kolls crown collage

Hopsulator beverage insulator |

$225 from Judy | at the Rink (2727 Prytania St., 504-891-7018 ; judyatthe-rin k.com).

|

$24.99 from Gordon’s (4308 Waverly St., 504-354-2248 gotogordons ; .com).

PHOTO PROVIDED

BY GORDON’S

PHOTO PROVIDED BY JUDY AT THE RINK

BY AMAR A

Monhegan

Vietri goblet

throw |

$243 from Maisonette Shop (2727 Prytania maisonettes St., 504-437-1850; hop.com).

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$65 from Hazelnut (5525 Magazine

St., 504891-2424; hazelnutnew orleans.com ).

PHOTO PROVIDED

BY HAZELNU T

Michael Aram heart dish |

PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAISONETTE SHOP

Vietri decanter

$131 from Hazelnut. |

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BY HAZELNUT

Glasswar

$125 from Chateau Dru gs & Gifts (3544 W. Esplanade Ave., Metairie, 504-889-2300 ; chateaudrugs rx.com).

inside

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set the mood

Podevache

tattoo heart $76 from Amara. cushion

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$200 from Judy | at the Rink (2727 Prytania St., 504-891-7018 ; judyatthe-rin k.com).

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flower

gold heart $179 from Home | $95 from Borsheims| Malone.

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SHOP

RESERVE SPACE

FEBRUARY 19

Go cups |

$7.99 for set of Decor (5101 eight from NOLA Gifts & W. 504-407-3532 Esplanade Ave., Metairie, ; nolagiftsand decor.com).

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BY NOL A GIFTS

& DECOR

GAMBIT STAFF

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Oyster shell

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$26 from Hazelnut (5525 Magazine 891-2424; hazelnutnew St., orleans.com) 504.

BY

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ISSUE DATE

MARCH 2

Rates begin at $150 Contact Ad Director Sandy Stein 504.483.3150 or sstein@gambitweekly.com

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28

OUT TO EAT PAGE 27

LAKEVIEW Lakeview Brew Coffee Cafe — 5606 Canal Blvd., (504) 483-7001; lakeviewbrew. com — This casual cafe offers coffee, pastries, desserts, sandwiches and salads.

Tuna salad or chicken salad avocado melts are topped with Monterey Jack and Parmesan. Takeout, curbside pickup and delivery are available. B, L daily. $ Lotus Bistro — 203 W. Harrison Ave., (504) 533-9879; lotusbistronola.com — A Mineko Iwasaki roll includes spicy snow crab, tuna, avocado and cucumber topped with salmon, chef’s sauce, masago, green onion and tempura crunchy flakes. The menu also includes bento box lunches, teriyaki dishes, fried rice and more.

Takeout and delivery are available. L and D Tue-Sun. $$

METAIRIE Andrea’s Restaurant — 3100 N. 19th St., Metairie, (504) 834-8583; andreasrestaurant.com — Chef Andrea Apuzzo’s speckled trout royale is topped with crabmeat and lemon-cream sauce. Capelli D’Andrea combines house-made angel hair pasta and smoked salmon in cream sauce.

Curbside pickup and delivery available.

L, D daily, brunch Sun. $$$ Kosher Cajun New York Deli & Grocery — 3519 Severn Ave., Metairie, (504) 888-2010; koshercajun.com — This New York-style deli specializes in sandwiches, including corned beef and pastrami that come from the Bronx. Takeout available. L Sun-Thu, D Mon-Thu. $ Mark Twain’s Pizza Landing — 2035 Metairie Road, Metairie, (504) 832-8032; marktwainpizza.com — Mark Twain’s serves salads, po-boys and pies like the Italian pizza with salami, tomato, artichoke, sausage and basil. Takeout and curbside pickup are available. L Tue-Sat, D Tue-Sun. $ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 2125 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie, (504) 510-4282; theospizza.com — See Harahan/Jefferson section for restaurant description. $

MID-CITY/TREME Angelo Brocato’s — 214 N. Carrollton Ave., (504) 486-1465; angelobrocatoicecream. com — This sweet shop serves its own gelato, spumoni, Italian ice, cannolis, fig cookies and other treats. Window and curbside pickup. L, D Tue-Sun. $ Brown Butter Southern Kitchen & Bar — 231 N. Carrollton Ave., Suite C, (504) 6093871; brownbutterrestaurant.com — Sample

items include smoked brisket served with smoked apple barbecue sauce, smoked heirloom beans and vinegar slaw. A Brunch burger features a brisket and short rib patty topped with bacon, brie, a fried egg, onion jam and arugula on a brioche bun. Dine-in, takeout, curbside pickup and delivery available. L and D Wed-Sat, brunch Sat-Sun. $$ Doson Noodle House — 135 N. Carrollton Ave., (504) 309-7283; facebook.com/dosonnoodlehouse — Bun thit is Vietnamese-style grilled pork with cucumber, onions, lettuce, mint, cilantro and fish sauce served over rice or vermicelli. The menu includes pho, spring rolls and more. Takeout, curbside pickup and delivery are available. $$ Five Happiness — 3511 S. Carrollton Ave., (504) 482-3935; fivehappiness.com — The large menu of Chinese dishes includes wonton soup, sizzling seafood combinations served on a hot plate, sizzling Go-Ba and lo mein dishes. Takeout and delivery available. $$ Katie’s Restaurant — 3701 Iberville St., (504) 488-6582; katiesinmidcity.com — Favorites include the Cajun Cuban with roasted pork, grilled ham, cheese and pickles pressed on buttered bread. The Boudreaux pizza is topped with cochon de lait, spinach, red onions, roasted garlic and scallions. Takeout, curbside pickup and delivery available. L and D Tue-Sun. $$ Nonna Mia — 3125 Esplanade Ave., (504) 948-1717; nonnamianola.com — A Divine Portobello appetizer features chicken breast, spinach in red pepper sauce and crostini. The menu includes salads, sandwiches, pasta, pizza and more. Curbside pickup and delivery are available.

Service daily. $$ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 4024 Canal St., (504) 302-1133; theospizza.com — See Harahan/Jefferson section for restaurant description. $

NORTHSHORE Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 70488 Highway 21, Covington, (985) 234-9420; theospizza.com — See Harahan/Jefferson section for restaurant description. $

UPTOWN Joey K’s — 3001 Magazine St., (504) 8910997; joeyksrestaurant.com ­— The menu includes fried seafood platters, salads, sandwiches and red beans and rice.

Sauteed trout Tchoupitoulas is topped with shrimp and crabmeat and served with vegetables and potatoes. Takeout and delivery available. $$ Red Gravy — 4206 Magazine St., (504) 561-8844; redgravycafe.com — Thin cannoli pancakes are filled with cannoli cream and topped with chocolate. The menu includes brunch items, pasta dishes, sandwiches, baked goods and more.

Takeout available. $$

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Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza (citywide; theospizza.com) serves a variety of specialty pies, sandwiches, salads, wings and more.

Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 4218 Magazine St., (504) 894-8554; theospizza. com — See Harahan/Jefferson section for restaurant description. $ Tito’s Ceviche & Pisco — 5015 Magazine St., (504) 267-7612; titoscevichepisco.com — The Peruvian menu includes a version of the traditional dish lomo saltado, featuring beef tenderloin tips sauteed with onions, tomatoes, cilantro, soy sauce and pisco, and served with fried potatoes and rice. Dine-in, outdoor seating and delivery available. L and D Mon-Sat., runch Sun. $$$

NOLA Caye — 898 Baronne St., (504) 302-1302; nolacaye.com — The menu features Caribbean-inspired dishes and Gulf seafood. Seared ahi tuna is served with mango, avocado, mixed greens, citrus vinaigrette and sesame seeds. Takeout, delivery and outdoor seating available.

D daily, brunch Sat-Sun. $$$ Provisions Grab-n-Go Marketplace — Higgins Hotel, 500 Andrew Higgins Blvd., (504) 528-1941; higgingshotelnola. com — The coffeeshop serves salads, sandwiches, pastries and more. Takeout available. Service daily. $

WAREHOUSE DISTRICT

WEST BANK

Annunciation — 1016 Annunciation St., (504) 568-0245; annunciationrestaurant. com — The menu highlights Gulf seafood in Creole, Cajun and Southern dishes.

Fried oysters and skewered bacon are served with meuniere sauce and toasted French bread. Reservations required. D Thu-Sun. $$$ Carmo — 527 Julia St., (504) 875-4132; cafecarmo.com — Carmo salad includes smoked ham, avocado, pineapple, almonds, cashews, raisins, cucumber, green pepper, rice, lettuce, cilantro and citrus mango vinaigrette. The menu includes dishes inspired by tropical cuisines. Takeout and delivery are available.

Mon-Sat. $$

Mosca’s — 4137 Hwy. 90 W., Westwego, (504) 436-8950; moscasrestaurant.com — This family-style eatery serves shrimp Mosca, chicken a la grande and baked oysters Mosca, made with breadcrumbs and Italian seasonings. Curbside pickup available. D Wed-Sat. Cash only. $$$ Specialty Italian Bistro — 2330 Belle Chasse Hwy., Gretna, (504) 391-1090; specialtyitalianbistro.com — The menu combines Old World Italian favorites and pizza. Paneed chicken piccata is topped with lemon-caper piccata sauce served with angel hair pasta, salad and garlic cheese bread. Takeout and delivery available. Service daily. $$

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MUSIC

P R OV I D E D P H OTO B Y E R I C WAT E R S

BY KEITH SPERA AVANT-JAZZ SAXOPHONIST AND EDUCATOR Edward “Kidd” Jordan

didn’t always get paid.

Audiences and venue owners sometimes responded poorly to his adventurous, mostly improvised approach to jazz, which prioritizes being in the moment more than melody.

“Some people liked it, and some walked out,” he recalled recently.

“They’d say, ‘Y’all play that crazy music. Y’all crazy.’ We were, but it developed into something.”

Staring down an empty venue, he’d prep his bandmates with, “We’re going to play for the seats tonight.”

But, he said, “I’d see the seats dancing.

“Come hell or high water, whether you were making a million dollars or you knew they were going to run out with the money and you weren’t getting paid, it was the same thing: We played, and we had a great time. If you get a dollar, you get a dollar.”

Persistence, as he’s learned, can pay off.

United States Artists, a Chicagobased arts funding organization, recently named him to its 2021 fellowship class. The fellowship comes with a $50,000 grant.

To the 85-year-old Jordan, who also helped mold countless young musicians during his decades as a teacher, this late-career recognition for his “crazy” improvisational style is especially gratifying.

“It’s not so crazy after all,” he said.

Kidd Jordan’s music was never too extreme for his wife, Edvidge Chatters Jordan. They have been together for more than 60 years.

“She comes from a musical family,” he explained.

At 85, his health has slowed him down. “I’m feeling my age. I’m hanging in there, for an old man. I’ve been over a lot of mountains.”

He aspires to play his main tenor

saxophone every day, though some days he just cleans it. “Every day I try to do something. If I play two minutes or I play an hour.”

The duration of his daily playing is a barometer of his health.

“If he’s not practicing, we know something is wrong,” said Rachel Jordan, one of his daughters.

He’s always taken care of himself.

Born in Crowley in 1935, Jordan picked up the saxophone early. In New Orleans, he spent time in the Hawketts, though not when the rhythm & blues band recorded “Mardi Gras Mambo.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Southern University and a master’s in music from Millikin University in Illinois.

In New Orleans, a city built on traditional jazz, Jordan carried the torch for the avant-garde. Intent on pushing boundaries, he founded the Improvisational Arts Quintet to play “new New Orleans music.” The title of the group’s debut album spoke to its philosophy: “No Compromise!”

Jordan scoffed at musicians who tried to sound like legends Charlie “Bird” Parker or John “Trane” Coltrane.

His music might be “crazy,” he said, but “it’s mine. It’s not Charlie Parker.”

“If you play what Coltrane and Charlie Parker played ... ain’t nobody going to play like Bird and Trane. You better do what you do.”

He’s also educating the next generation. In 1955, he landed his first teaching job, at Bethune High School in Norco.

In 1972, he embarked on a 34-year stint at Southern University at New Orleans. He retired as chairman of the university’s jazz studies program in 2006.

He’s also been artistic director of the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp since its 1995 inception.

He founded the Kidd Jordan Institute of Jazz and Modern Music to instill his sense of artistic freedom in others. He’s

New Orleans saxophonist Edward ‘Kidd’ Jordan.

also tutored scores of private students.

The goal was “not to teach them jazz, but to teach them how to play their instrument, and then let them go.”

Prominent former students include Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Donald Harrison Jr., Tony Dagradi, Jon Batiste, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and “Big” Sam Williams.

He also taught his own children.

Four of the seven became professional musicians: Kent on flute, Stephanie as a singer, Rachel as a classical violinist and Marlon on trumpet.

The senior Jordan plays “what comes off the top of my head.

Everything I do is original,” he said.

“I’m playing jazz, and jazz is supposed to be improvisational music. You’ve got to stick to your principles.”

The squawks, honks and nonlinear progressions that tumbled from his horn sometimes cleared a room.

Eventually, though, “that crazy music don’t sound so crazy. That’s improvisation. That’s what jazz is supposed to be.”

He toned down to back the likes of Cannonball Adderley, Ornette Coleman, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. But with his own bands, he followed his instincts wherever they led.

Jordan has collected his share of

honors. The French Ministry of Culture anointed him a knight, or chevalier, of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985.

Becoming a United States Artists fellow is a different kind of honor. “It’s an honor,” he said, “and a check.”

Since its founding in 2006, United States Artists has given a total of $33 million to 700 individuals representing music, writing, dance, film, visual art and more.

In announcing Jordan’s award, United States Artists recognized that he is “internationally acclaimed as one of the true master improvisers still performing today.”

He hasn’t been able to perform publicly since the coronavirus shutdown. But just before the lockdown commenced in March 2020, he recorded a double album, “Last Trane To New Orleans,” with drummer Mark Lomax, saxophonist Eddie Bayard, keyboardist Darrell Lavigne and trumpeter Marlon Jordan.

Rachel Jordan produced the recording session at McDonogh 35 Senior High School and released “Last Trane to New Orleans” in July through her RJ Records. On it, her father is as uncompromising as ever, as he engages in “spontaneous composition,” i.e. improvisation.

He intends to continue improvising as long as he can.

“I’m not tired of music, believe me,” he said. “I’ve got enough stuff to keep me busy the rest of my life.”

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Silent treatment

BY WILL COVIELLO

IN “TWO OF US,” NINA AND MADELEINE have apartments on

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opposite halves of an apartment building in a picturesque French city. Essentially, they live together on the top floor, closing their respective doors when guests arrive. But they’re more than neighbors, which is a secret they’ve kept from Madeleine’s family.

They want to sell the apartments in order to move to Rome, where they met years earlier and hope they can shed the secrecy of their relationship. Madeleine’s children, Anne and Frederic, and her grandson come over to celebrate her birthday, and she’s supposed to tell them the truth, at least about moving to Rome. But she loses her nerve when Frederic accuses her of having cheated on her long-deceased husband.

Madeleine can’t bear to tell Nina that she didn’t level with her family, and Nina is furious when she soon discovers she’s been deceived. The truth is further buried when Madeleine suffers a stroke and is literally muted while she regains motor skills and speech.

Nina offers to attend to Madeleine while she recovers, but Anne can’t imagine why a neighbor would be so interested or insistent. Nina agonizes as she is cut off, desperate to know how Madeleine is. She’s also certain she can help Madeleine recover, if the family would let her.

The suspense builds in a love story covering the uncommon ground of an aging couple fighting for their relationship.

“Two of Us” was recently included on the short list of Academy Award nominees. The finalists for all categories will be released in mid-March, and the winners announced in April.

The talented cast features German actress Barbara Sukowa as Nina.

Sukowa was an accomplished stage actress before entering the film world. She won a Best Actress Award at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for “Rosa Luxemburg,” and has won

P H OTO P R OV I D E D B Y M AG N O L I A P I C T URE S

numerous German awards. She also appeared in David Cronenberg’s “M. Butterfly” and Lars von Trier’s “Europa.” Madeleine is played by French actress Martine Chevallier, a veteran of stage and screen.

Director Filippo Meneghetti builds the tension slowly but efficiently among the story’s few characters. A hapless personal caregiver rebuffs Nina’s offers of assistance and finds herself caught in the middle with Anne. Following the heartbreak of her mother’s injury, Anne doesn’t know who to trust as some doctors seem more interested in keeping her mother sedated than helping her recover her normal life.

At times, Meneghetti overplays simple things. When Madeleine struggles to find a way to tell her children that she’s a lesbian, her grandson plays with a cuckoo clock, which loudly announces the hour over and over. There are numerous scenes with one character ringing the bell at a closed door, while the person on the other side peers through the peephole and refuses to deal with what’s happening.

Meneghetti tries to keep anyone from becoming a villain, though Anne is bewildered by the sudden stream of revelations. Madeleine is afraid to face her children, but Chevallier is a master of nuance in the subtle signs of her recovery. Faced with losing everything she’s built her life around, Nina is pushed to the edge. Sukowa is intense in scenes of her battling her own isolation and anxiety. She’s cold and businesslike with everyone except Madeleine.

The love story hinges more on the prospect of Nina and Madeleine being reunited than coming out, but that unconventional tale heightens the drama in Meneghetti’s impressive first feature film.

“Two of Us” screens at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.

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IN ST

PREMIER CROSSWORD PUZZLE HARD-TO-SEE FEE

By Frank A. Longo

33 Friz Freleng’s real first name 36 Mean-spirited sort 37 Fill-up sites with star logos 42 Crows 43 Oscar winner Brody 44 Like a straight line, in brief 45 Work to get 46 Mimicking an angry dog 48 1993 event at Mount Carmel Center 55 Comic actor Danny 56 Spill the info, with “up” 58 Region 59 Raines of old Hollywood

60 Active person 62 Spring forth 65 Thingamajig 67 “Please help!”

70 Venue of the 2002 Humanitarian Bowl 73 Log chopper 74 Brief summary 76 Sprung forth 77 Trail 79 Prefix with dynamic 80 Henna applier 81 Read hastily 83 Gibbons, e.g.

87 Something Plus White toothpaste claims to remove 92 Water, humorously

94 Sports side 95 Potting stuff 97 TV journalist Chung 98 Mimicked Daffy Duck 101 A cut from the short loin 105 Playwright Fugard 106 Vocalists 107 Simile middle 108 University in northern California 110 McKellen of “X-Men” 112 Mosul native 117 Aquarium 118 One of 18 on a golf course 119 They’re in eight answers in this puzzle 122 Slushy drink 123 Superior to 124 Works the rudder 125 Dimple site 126 Play roster 127 Joins in matrimony 128 Cherished “Mother” 129 Held on to

GARDEN DISTRICT OFFICE 2016 & 2017

38 Pulitzer winner Ferber 39 Diagnostic pic 40 Ran on TV 41 Clothes, colloquially 42 Ewe’s call 45 LGA guess 47 Emperor before Galba 49 A la — (menu words) 50 Hammond instruments 51 Potential plant 52 “Three Sisters” sister 53 Tighten up a muscle 54 Destiny 57 Under wraps 61 Kyoto sash 63 Actress Kelly or Shearer 64 Suffix with prophet 65 Andean llamas 66 Quantity: Abbr.

67 Little quarrel 68 Classic cookie 69 Kosovo native 71 “No” votes 72 Apple device 75 Opening in a parka, say DOWN 1 With 11-Down, “Sleep- 78 Lacks less in Seattle” director 80 DeLuise of “Hot Stuff” 82 Large city in Colombia 2 Aroma 3 Destructive habit 4 After a while 5 In days past 6 Carl Sagan book 7 Roman censor 8 Blissful 9 Nothing at all 10 One of 18 on a golf course 11 See 1-Down 12 One’s wifey 13 Nephew’s sister 14 Gucci of fashion 15 Unlike righties 16 Farewells 17 Go back to the way it was 18 Belfry sounds 24 Call off 29 Foofaraw 30 Jeer at 32 Christmas trees, usually 34 Single-pot meal 35 Verdi heroine 37 Job to do

ABR, CRS, GRI, SFR, SRS

84 Window unit 85 Kazan of film 86 Search for 88 Green with Grammys 89 Ill-bred man 90 “Oh, woe —!”

91 Jordanian queen dowager 93 Tile artwork 96 Like some trading 98 Milk-related 99 Cornell University city 100 Gives off light 101 Used a rotary telephone 102 Puts in 103 Big T-shirt size: Abbr.

104 Some chair craftspeople 106 Hot pot spot 109 Movie or play 111 “Zip- — -Doo-Dah” 113 Pebble, e.g.

114 Tennis’ Arthur 115 Ear swab 116 “— that special!”

119 1940s pres.

120 Suffix with Israel 121 Hush-hush govt. gp.

ANSWERS FOR LAST ISSUE’S PUZZLE: P 2

PUZZLES

ACROSS 1 Suddenly blazing star 5 Put stress on 11 Volcano in Sicily 15 Meadow songbird 19 Supreme Norse deity 20 Net-tending player 21 Donahue of TV 22 Genesis garden 23 Very ornate designs of the 1700s 25 Be mindful of 26 Bill with Lincoln 27 Sports site 28 Apr. and Dec. 29 Longtime metal alloy manufacturer 31 M.Sgt., e.g.

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!#' ".,)%.!&% (+$%-%+$%+0*3 ,2+%$ !+$ ,-%.!0%$ (#%+/%$ (+ ,1(/(!+!

1423 N. CLAIBORNE AVE., UNIT B

G A M B I T > B E S T O F N E WO R L E A N S . C O M > F E B R UA R Y 1 6 - 2 2 > 2 0 2 1

1805 GOVERNOR NICHOLLS STREET

31