Gambit: December 14, 2021

December 14-20 // 2021 // Volume 42 // Number 49

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DECEMBER 14 — 20, 2021 VOLUME 42 || NUMBER 49

CONTENTS

The Year in Culture and the Arts.................................... 23

ENJOY WEEKLY SPECIALS WITH THESE GUYS!

NEWS

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In Zaila we trust 2021 Year In Review

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5

Well-rooted

Ariel Elias

The Roots of Music shakes off some bad luck and celebrates 15 years at Tipitina’s

|

by Jake Clapp

WHEN THE ROOTS OF MUSIC STAFF, INSTRUCTORS, BOARD MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS GET TOGETHER Thursday

at Tipitina’s for a benefit concert, it’ll be a chance for the music education program to both ring in its 15th year and shake off a string of bad luck.

After a challenging summer 2020 — you try teaching kids how to play drums over Zoom — The Roots of Music had been able to slowly bring back small groups of students for in-person music lessons in the fall of last year. By early 2021, they had found a rhythm and the first half of the year was great, says executive director Suzanne Raether.

But in the last week of summer a student tested positive for COVID19, and “that kind of started a bad luck streak for The Roots of Music, it seemed,” Raether says. The organization went on an August break, which is normal for the program, but right as they were preparing to come back for fall lessons, Hurricane Ida hit. The storm damaged homes and the facility The Roots of Music rents, and Raether herself had a heatstroke.

Still, The Roots of Music has slowly but surely recovered from the hurricane, and they were able to start lessons back a little bit before Thanksgiving.

“We’ve been really trying to focus on healing ourselves, getting our staff whole again, making sure folks have a safe place to live and to be,” Raether says. “So we’ve been working hard to get back grounded again, and we’re back with full programming.”

That will make the celebration at Tipitina’s a little sweeter. The benefit concert for The Roots of Music takes place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16, with performances by Ani DiFranco, a Roots of Music board member, and Re-Creations Brass Band and Big 6 Brass Band. Both brass bands feature players who are alumni of the program.

The Roots of Music teaches music lessons to kids ages 9-14, normally five days a week and year-round, though with breaks based around the school year. The pandemic, of course, made that tough to do.

After the initial shutdowns in 2020, the program began hosting lessons online. But by August of that year, The Roots of Music was able to start offering in-person lessons again. They focused on

STAND-UP COMIC AND WRITER ARIEL ELIAS weathered the pandemic

doing rooftop and parking lot shows in her adopted home of New York and is now on tour. She performs at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 15, at the Toulouse Theatre. Tickets are $15 at toulousetheatre.com.

Motel Radio LOCAL MELLOW ROCK BAND MOTEL RADIO has been working on a new

album and will play some of those songs this week at d.b.a. The show is at 10 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18.

Tickets are $15 at eventbrite.com.

NOLA ChristmasFest THERE’S ICE SKATING AT THE BIG FREEZY RINK and more as NOLA

PHOTO BY SCOT T THRELKELD / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

forming small “pods” with siblings, neighbors or classmates, Raether says, as well as staggering practice schedules and getting outdoors as much as possible. Instructors also would visit front porches for lessons or listen in over the phone to a kid playing.

“We had kind of an adjusted schedule,” Raether says. “Not every child was coming every day. We’d only really gotten to that in June, July of 2021. Our last summer session, we were able to get every kid every day, which is really cool.”

The Roots of Music in the spring debuted a new program, The Roots Academy, which teaches teens ages 15-19 about audio recording, engineering and studio production. Students also learn music theory, financial literacy and business management.

Carnival is a key time on The Roots of Music calendar, when the program’s performance group, the Marching Crusaders, marches in parades, and the organization is in full preparation mode, Raether says.

Not only does it give the students a chance to show off their hard work, it’s a recruitment tool for the program with the hope it inspires another kid in the crowd to want to pick up an instrument.

The Roots of Music usually serves up to 200 kids, but right now there are about 50 in the program, Raether says. The pandemic and Ida has dampened participation.

The organization, though, is actively

Tipitina’s hosts a benefit concert for The Roots of Music on Thursday, Dec. 16. recruiting more students ahead of Carnival. No experience is necessary.

A smaller number of players during the Carnival season won’t necessarily impact the Marching Crusaders’ performance schedule, Raether says. It mainly influence instrumentation: A parade marching group requires certain instruments, so students might have to swap out their preferred instrument for a needed part in the parade.

“It’s really more about the technical side of instrumentation than it is about how far we can march,” Raether says. “We’re still indestructible in that realm.”

The Roots of Music will turn 15 in 2022, and the program has plans for expanded services. Along with the Marching Crusaders and The Roots Academy, the organization plans to soon launch The Sprouts of Music, a general music education program for ages 5-8 in partnership with Bayou District Foundation.

“To be here for 15 years is huge, and the fact we started at Tipitina’s, our first programming space, it’s kind of perfect to kick off our 15th year with them,” Raether says.

Learn more about The Roots of Music at therootsofmusic.org. For tickets to Thursday’s benefit concert, go to tipitinas.com.

ChristmasFest creates a holiday wonderland inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. There also are giant slides, ice bocce, a climbing wall and amusement rides including a carousel. A stage will present live entertainment, and there will be a holiday market, a cafe, a bar and more.

ChristmasFest is open 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Dec. 17-22 and 26-30, and will be open 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Dec. 25.

Admission is $15-$25, and some activities may have additional fees.

Visit nolachristmasfest.com for information and tickets.

PHOTO BY SCOT T THRELKELD / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

Jackson Rudolph, 4, runs to a giant snowman bouncy house during an opening party for the 2018 NOLA Christmas Fest at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

James Booker Celebration THE MAPLE LEAF WILL HOST THE ANNUAL BIRTHDAY PARTY for the late, great New Orleans piano icon James Booker. The party, which celebrates what would have been Booker’s 82nd birthday, will feature drinks with Seagrams 7 — one of Booker’s go-to drinks — and performances by Tom McDermott, PAGE 41

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NEW ORLEANS NEWS + VIEWS

Flunky: noun; A person who performs relatively menial tasks for someone else, especially obsequiously.

#

T H U M B S U P/ THUMBS DOWN

37

The Sankofa Community Development Corporation and

Lower 9th Ward neighbors successfully lobbied the state to have part of St. Claude Avenue designated a “Louisiana Main Street.” The designation will help community organizers access funding and resources for neighborhood revitalization like Sankofa’s upcoming Fresh Stop Market construction. The Lower 9th Ward Main Street district runs along St. Claude, from Sister to Government streets, and extends out to Marais and North Rampart streets.

THE COUNT

THE NUMBER OF PROBABLE COVID-19 CASES (AS OF PRESS TIME) IN LOUISIANA ATTRIBUTED TO THE OMICRON VARIANT, ACCORDING TO STATE HEALTH OFFICIALS.

SCREENSHOT OF GOOGLE MAPS STREET VIEW

Both the National Blindness Professional Certification Board and the Louisiana Center for the Blind list the same Ruston address on their websites.

The variant prompted global travel restrictions after it was discovered in South Africa last month. Scientists are concerned about Omicron because it has several mutations that may allow it to skirt past protection from vaccines or prior infection. Despite these uncertainties, state health officials last week said the best way to protect against it is to get vaccinated and get the booster.

Attorney General Jeff Landry

joined anti-vaxxer and notorious misinformation peddler Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to testify before a Louisiana House hearing against a plan to require the Covid vaccine for K-12 students. Kennedy, one of the leading sources of anti-vaccine lies generally, was banned from Instagram for sharing debunked claims.

Landry parroted much of that misinformation.

Jeff Landry (yeah, him again), just two days after helping spread anti-vax lies, Landry tried to have LSU “take appropriate action” against Robert Mann, a tenured professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication. Landry was upset that Mann called an assistant attorney general “a flunkie” in a tweet after the AG dispatched the staff attorney to read an anti-vax screed by Landry to the LSU Faculty Senate. So much for Landry’s hatred of the fictitious “cancel culture.”

New Report Shows Abuse Was Worse At Ruston Center for the Blind Than Thought THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND ACKNOWLEDGED leadership within its affiliated training centers knew about multiple complaints of sexual misconduct but failed to take significant action in a report released Dec. 8, which also didn’t mention whether those leaders would face consequences for their inaction.

In the report, the internal NFB committee said they discovered at least four instances “where Center staff were made aware of a complaint, but there was minimal intervention or no intervention at all, and the alleged perpetrator later re-offended.”

The committee also said they’re aware of 23 separate alleged incidents of sexual misconduct at the NFBaffiliated Louisiana Center for the Blind in Ruston, a dozen of which they believe occurred.

The report doesn’t lay out the criteria the committee used to determine the validity of the

allegations or say whether NFB has referred any of the incidents to law enforcement.

While the report provides no discussions on what repercussions — if any — leadership at the centers may face, it does go through great lengths to give extensive rationale on why leadership may have mishandled complaints, including “concerns about the ‘inaccuracy of the rumor mill.’ ” The committee also found center leaders sometimes reached “informal resolutions” without “formal and complete investigations” but said it was because they “were at times dealing with serious issues outside their expertise with little or no support.”

NFB is now working with the same leaders and board members of centers where many alleged instances of abuse occurred to update center policies for addressing sexual misconduct. — Kylee Poche

C’EST W H AT

?

Now that we’re near the end of the year, what was the dumbest thing Jeff Landry did in 2021?

22.5%

18.1%

ADVISING HIS EMPLOYEES ON HOW TO GET AROUND COVID RULES IN SCHOOLS

HOSTING AN ALLIGATOR HUNT POLITICAL FUNDRAISER WHILE 200,000 PEOPLE WERE STILL WITHOUT POWER AFTER IDA

44.1%

THERE ARE STILL A FEW WEEKS LEFT IN 2021, SO LANDRY MIGHT OUTDO HIMSELF

3%

WARNING PARENTS TO WATCH OUT FOR EDIBLES BEING GIVEN TO KIDS AT HALLOWEEN (WHICH IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY)

12.3%

SUING A REPORTER AT THE ADVOCATE IN ORDER TO PROTECT PAT MAGEE

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

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BLAKE PONTCHARTR AIN™

Hey Blake, A friend is planning a wedding reception soon at the Audubon Tea Room. What can you tell us about its history?

Wasn’t there a building by the same name at another spot in Audubon Park?

pajama party

Dear reader,

PHOTO BY PETER G. FOREST / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

THE ORIGINAL AUDUBON TEA HOUSE,

Designer Thomas Jayne speaks the 2013 Essence of Style Design Symposium at The Audubon Tea Room.

as it was known, opened in Audubon Park on April 21, 1919.

According to The New Orleans Item, the Audubon Park Auxiliary Association hosted an opening day housewarming event, which featured a showing of “moving pictures,” a concert and dancing.

The one-story yellow wooden structure was located between the Audubon Park lagoon and Magazine Street. Then as now, the facility hosted dances, debutante parties, receptions and meetings.

The building was destroyed by fire in September 1976, which firefighters said was the work of an arsonist. In 1977, police arrested a 17-year-old for starting the fire. The building’s remains were cleared away and the Audubon Park Commission began making plans to rebuild.

It took nearly 25 years, but a new Audubon Tea Room opened

in 2000, at its current site near the entrance to Audubon Zoo. The new 10,000-square-foot facility (with a 5,600-square-foot main ballroom and beautiful gardens) cost more than $3.5 million to build. It opened in July 2000 by hosting its first event — a political fundraiser for then-Mayor Marc Morial.

The Tea Room was built in part by a large donation from the Jerome S. Glazer Foundation. As a result, the building is dedicated to Glazer, a steel company executive who was a member of the Audubon Park Commission for many years before his death in 1991.

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BL AKEVIE W THIS WEEK MARKS AN ANNIVERSARY for the New Orleans Museum of Art, which opened to the public 110 years ago as the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art on Dec. 16, 1911.

The Beaux Arts-style structure in City Park was built with a $150,000 gift (the equivalent of about $4.4 million today) from Delgado, the Jamaica-born sugar broker and philanthropist who also helped fund what is now Delgado Community College.

According to The Times-Picayune, the museum opened with a permanent collection of nine pieces supplemented with about 400 artworks donated by New Orleanians.

The museum now holds more than 40,000 objects. It is particularly well known for its collections of African art, fine art glass, decorative arts and Japanese art. In addition to hosting visiting works of art from around the world, its collection includes pieces by icons such as Monet, Picasso, Pollock, Cassatt and O’Keeffe as well as hundreds of regional and local artists, sculptors and photographers.

The museum’s name was changed to the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1971. As its campus expanded over the years, a major addition came in 2003 with the opening of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. It features more than 65 works of sculpture in a beautiful outdoor setting open for free public viewing.

Admission to the museum itself is free to Louisiana residents on Wednesday, courtesy of The Helis Foundation. Tickets are just $15 otherwise, with discounts for seniors and students. For more information and hours, visit noma.org.

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CL ANCY DUBOS @clancygambit

A template for economic development initiatives THE LATEST PUSH IN THE LONG-DELAYED EFFORT TO GET THE NEW ORLEANS BIODISTRICT OFF THE GROUND offers

an example of how citizens seeking to protect their neighborhoods and business leaders hoping to launch large-scale economic development initiatives can both achieve their aims. It is both a cautionary tale and a budding success story — if things stay on track.

For that to happen, citizens must stay vigilant and economic development promoters must be open to neighborhood input — even if it means slowing things down. Neither is easy.

The BioDistrict was created by state lawmakers in the spring of 2005 but sat virtually dormant for more than a decade in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Until 2018, it lacked significant political and civic support, which left it bereft of fiscal resources.

After University Medical Center and the VA Hospital opened, efforts to revive the district began to gain traction, but the issues of finances and political support remained unresolved.

Amid recent news that Tulane will be the anchor tenant in a redeveloped Charity Hospital building, BioDistrict leaders hoped to jumpstart things by signing a cooperative endeavor agreement

PROVIDED GR APHIC

(CEA) with the city to, among other things, generate revenue for the district.

That’s when alarm bells began to sound in Mid-City and Gert Town. The district has a huge footprint — running from Loyola Avenue to Carrollton Avenue, from Iberville Street to Earhart Boulevard — and constitutionally granted expropriation power (as a legislatively created “political subdivision” of the state).

Mid-City residents remember all too well how LSU and the city grabbed a huge swath of their neighborhood to build UMC and the VA hospital after Katrina. Many fear the BioDistrict might gobble up what’s left, along with Gert Town.

They began to make noise. In response, City Council President Helena Moreno delayed consideration of the proposed CEA in order to address neighborhood concerns. To its credit, the district’s leadership quickly agreed to incorporate significant changes in the CEA to protect homeowners.

The changes included requiring council approval of all expropriations — and neighborhood input on other district initiatives.

The New Orleans BioDistrict has been a dream of economic promoters for more than a decade. The newly formed BioDistrict Board is seeking taxpayer funding to make it “the jobcreating hub of the future.”

“Energizing the BioDistrict is an opportunity to grow a new industry into a job engine, and I will ensure we do this while also adding major protections for our neighborhoods and controlling our own destiny,” Moreno said in a statement. “It’s a win for New Orleans.”

Moreno plans to introduce a revised CEA on Dec. 16, with council consideration set for Jan. 6.

BioDistrict board chair Andy Kopplin, who also leads the Greater New Orleans Foundation, said the district never intended to grab private homes — but he noted that expropriation is “a fair concern given the history that the neighborhood experienced post-Katrina.” He added that the district “was never part of that history, but I understand the neighborhood’s concerns.”

History has taught us that expropriation is a poor way to do economic development. Hopefully, the district’s willingness to slow things down — and cede some of its state-granted powers — will produce a CEA that serves as a template for future economic development initiatives.

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N O I T C E COLL

allison ford metals: jewelry | atlas handmade beads: recycled paper ornaments, jewelry, gifts | beatrix bell: handcrafted jewelry and gifts | big chief gerald page, great spirit warriors: black masking indian art | bow shoeshoe: neckwear, masks, shirts | carnival sculpture: paper mache art by brian j. bush | matt haines: author of the big book of king cake | jill shampine: textiles and mixed media art | nola mask: handcrafted holiday fascinators | nola pens: handcrafted pens, wallets, coasters | passion lilie: fairtrade clothing | statement goods: home, body, apparel, and gifts | the historic new orleans collection publications | time will tell watches: timepieces | allison ford metals: jewelry | atlas handmade beads: recycled paper ornaments, jewelry, gifts | beatrix bell: handcrafted jewelry and gifts | big chief gerald page, great spirit warriors: black masking indian art | bow shoeshoe: neckwear, masks, shirts | carnival sculpture: paper mache art by brian j. bush | matt haines: author of the big book of king cake | jill shampine: textiles and mixed media art | nola mask: handcrafted holiday fascinators | nola pens: handcrafted pens, wallets, coasters | passion lilie: fairtrade clothing | statement goods: home, body, apparel, and gifts | the historic new orleans collection publications | time will tell watches: timepieces | allison ford metals: jewelry | atlas handmade beads: recycled paper ornaments, jewelry, gifts | beatrix bell: handcrafted jewelry and gifts | big chief gerald page, great spirit warriors: black masking indian art | bow shoeshoe: neckwear, masks, shirts | carnival sculpture: paper mache art by brian j. bush | matt haines: author of the big book of king cake | jill shampine: textiles and mixed media art | nola mask: handcrafted holiday fascinators | nola pens: handcrafted pens, wallets, coasters | passion lilie: fairtrade clothing | statement goods: home, body, apparel, and gifts | the historic new orleans collection publications | time will tell watches: timepieces | allison ford metals: jewelry | atlas handmade beads: recycled paper ornaments, jewelry, gifts | beatrix bell: handcrafted jewelry and gifts | big chief gerald page, great spirit warriors: black masking indian art | bow shoeshoe: neckwear, masks, shirts | carnival sculpture: paper mache art by brian j. bush | matt haines: author of the big book of king cake | jill shampine: textiles and mixed media art | nola mask: handcrafted holiday fascinators | nola pens: handcrafted pens, wallets, coasters | passion lilie: fairtrade clothing | statement goods: home, body, apparel, and gifts | the historic new orleans collection publications | time will tell watches: timepieces | allison ford metals: jewelry | atlas handmade beads: recycled paper ornaments, jewelry, gifts | beatrix bell: handcrafted jewelry and gifts | big chief gerald page, great spirit warriors: black masking indian art | bow shoeshoe: neckwear, masks, shirts carnival sculpture: paper mache art by brian j. bush | matt haines: author of the big book of king cake | jill shampine: textiles and mixed

HE T T A OP H S E TH

AND M

PPR A R E EMB

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AY D N O I E C I AT

the shop at the collection’s annual holiday market returns for 2021 with 14 local vendors! These artists, authors, and artisans will be on site on Saturday, December 18, from 9:30 am –4:30 pm to sell their wares. Admission to the market is free and open to the public.

December 18 is also Member Appreciation Day, where THNOC members recieve 20% off all in-store purchases (some exclusions apply). Not a member? Join while you’re here!

Looking back, and recommitting forward IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE OF GAMBIT, WE TAKE A LOOK BACK

at the work we’ve done over the past year. These sorts of reviews are typically self-indulgent “end of year” exercises, but after the year we as a community just had, it seems appropriate to look back — if for no other reason than to help us prepare for what’s to come.

One of the themes we echoed in this space time and again in 2021 is the idea that “This is how we do it in New Orleans” is no longer acceptable.

For too long, those in power have used this attitude as cover for their failures, to line their own pockets, or to pass off responsibility for tackling difficult problems — either onto the legacies of their predecessors or into the laps of those who would follow.

The kind of attitudinal change we promote doesn’t mean abandoning what makes New Orleans what it is, and it certainly doesn’t mean sanitizing our city’s identity (as some other cities have done with theirs). It means demanding accountability, transparency and innovation from our leaders in tackling problems. The new City Council brings hope for change.

As of press time, things looked promising for the kind of check on executive power New Orleans has lacked in recent years. We have high expectations for this new council, and we’ll hold its members to their promises.

We also will continue to push our leaders — not just in City Hall, but in the business community as well — to break with the bad old ways in order to protect our history and culture while nurturing the next generation. That includes continuing to push for reforms to the city’s permitting and enforcement processes to make it easier for home-grown businesses to succeed.

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Mayor LaToya Cantrell will face a less friendly council next year.

Likewise, the idea that New Orleans — the literal home of all modern music — is not a leading city for outdoor music venues is absurd. The hostility such venues have faced from the Cantrell administration (and indifference from some on the council) is shameful. The pandemic may have helped give birth to more venues, but City Hall has been far too slow to adapt to this new reality, particularly when it comes to permitting and enforcement. Live outdoor music is good for our musicians, for our economy and for our souls.

Of course, we’ll continue to support and celebrate local arts and culture in other ways as well.

With the era of tight COVID-19 restrictions hopefully behind us, 2022 should be a banner year for music, food and festivals in New Orleans — and we’ll be there to cover them. We’re already working on new ideas for covering the big fests, and we’ll continue to highlight the work of up-and-coming chefs and food professionals.

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Looking back at the highs and lows of 2021 BY

JOHN STANTON | Gambit editor

A

S WE ENTER THE FINAL FEW WEEKS of the year, I wanted to take a look back at the highs and lows of 2021, as well as some of the work our staff at Gambit and our friends at other outlets have done.

This year started out rough: It was cold as hell, COVID-19 was once again running rampant in New Orleans, live music was largely still not happening and vaccines were only just starting to reach the most vulnerable among us. Carnival parades had already been canceled. So too would be the traditional spring dates for Jazz Fest and French Quarter Fest in favor of more optimistic (but ultimately failed) fall weekends.

In mid-January, our Kaylee Poche would break the first in a series of heartbreaking stories about allegations of racism, abuse and sexual assault at the Louisiana Center for the Blind. Based in Ruston, LCB has for decades been considered one of the leading independent living training facilities for blind and visually impaired children and adults from not only Louisiana but across the country. Kaylee’s dogged reporting also uncovered an equally long, disturbing history of abuse at the center, as well as other associated groups in Ruston and even the National Federation of the Blind.

Kaylee’s work provided space for survivors to tell their stories, and in the wake of her initial article Ruston police would arrest one man in connection with the assaults.

There were bright spots, even early on in 2021. The Krewe of House Floats would help bring some degree of Carnival magic to New Orleanians. The Krewe of Red Beans, who in 2020 emerged as a major force in feeding the city during lockdowns, would soon begin expanding its efforts to propping up local bars who were facing permanent closure, and the arrival of vaccines at least gave us all some amount of hope that someday things would get back to some sort of normal.

2021 was a major year for Gambit. It was our 40th anniversary, making us the jour-

PHOTO BY SCOT T THRELKELD / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

nalism version of the old guy in comfortable shoes standing in the back of the indie rock show. Luckily, we had the youngins from JRNOLA around, who consistently reminded us that the kids are, in fact, alright.

Now in its second year, our partnership with this amazing local nonprofit has not only brought a younger perspective to our pages, but it’s also helped train the next generation of reporters and writers in how to cover their community. From our Spring Fashion issue to Eliza Baquet’s recent cover story, “State of the Stage,” detailing the return of theater in New Orleans, they’ve become a vital part of the Gambit family.

By the time late spring and early summer rolled around, Covid was seemingly getting under control: The city was using everything from jazz bands to free shots to get folks vaccinated, bars were reopening and the delicious smell of crawfish boils perfumed the city’s air once again.

Some things of course never change.

Attorney General Jeff Landry, for instance, remained terrible at his job.

IN THE SPRING, Gambit launched a second partnership, this time with the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network. The goal was to identify new and innovative strategies both here and in other communities for tackling the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Solutions-based journalism can be challenging. Our industry has spent decades ruled by the maxim, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Conflict and turmoil drive the news, which

Mountains of trash were a thing we had to deal with this year.

can leave readers feeling helpless and does little to push political, business and civil society leaders to pursue alternative approaches. It can also result in a narrow view of what the causes of a problem are, which in turn further hamstrings approaches to fixing them.

By centering solutions in our series on housing, however, Jake Clapp and Sarah Ravits discovered a host of new ways to think about the issue. In one of our first stories, for instance, Jake looked at how local transgender and gender-nonconforming activists at House of Tulip are working to help their community in a meaningful, long-term way.

Securing housing of any kind has long been a central challenge for TGNC people.

Rampant employment discrimination has led to chronically low wages and unemployment, and landlords routinely discriminate against them. Thanks to societal discrimination, it can even be hard to find roommates to share the burden of rent and bills.

House of Tulip’s approach is relatively straightforward: Instead of just trying to end these types of discrimination, the group is also purchasing its own housing stock for future TGNC New Orleanians, providing people with affordable options and putting control of their housing in their own hands. It’s an approach that’s already begun paying off and could prove to be a model for other communities across the country.

Likewise, Sarah’s stories on efforts to combat the effects of climate change on the cost of housing and on the lessons

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THE YEAR IN REVIEW

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Have your Cake and drink it too

BYE GIRL, BYE

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The Bywater Art lofts are one of the post-Katrina housing efforts that could be a model for future affordable housing initiatives in New Orleans.

we should be learning from post-Katrina housing projects shed light on relatively simple ways individuals, developers and local governments can reduce housing costs while increasing availability. At their core, both stories looked at problems that aren’t often talked about in the housing context, including how climate change is increasing heating and cooling costs so much it’s forcing people out of their homes as well as the need for low-cost housing for hospitality and service industry workers closer to the areas they work.

In November, Sarah and Jake teamed up for a story on the scourge of short-term rentals.

Their deep dive showed that short of an outright ban, there’s no magic bullet for reigning in the damage the industry is doing to our community and culture — though one place the city could start would be actually enforcing the existing rules for once.

The arrival of warm weather and lower Covid case numbers brought along relaxed Covid restrictions, including the resumption of indoor music in New Orleans — but it also brought unwelcome news.

Beginning in early summer, the Cantrell administration started citing outdoor music venues that had sprung up during the pandemic. Venues like the Broad Theater and Zony Mash had decided to utilize existing outdoor spaces as a Covid-safe way for people to enjoy live music and get out of

their houses, even for just a few hours.

Although the city was OK with these businesses during the height of the pandemic, regulators were champing at the bit to get at them, and

by June they were beginning to crackdown. As our friend Michael Isaac Stein at The Lens detailed in July, the city had been planning to let temporary permits granted during the pandemic expire and begin enforcement against venues, though those plans appeared to be disrupted by the Delta variant surge.

Meanwhile, food pop-ups and other sorts of food-based micro-businesses were facing similar problems. As Kaylee detailed in her story “Regulatory Whack-a-Mole,” getting permits in New Orleans for almost anything is no easy task, and it can cost entrepreneurs dearly. Permitting experts and business owners all made clear they believe the city needs to begin a full-scale rewrite of the regulations to make them easier to understand and easier to obtain, something that City Council President Helena Moreno is championing and which will be taken up in earnest early next year.

Delta, meanwhile, hit us like a ton of bricks, and the Covid variant would run rampant through the city and state until finally breaking in the fall — but not before it would cause Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, Buku’s Planet B and a host of others to scrap plans to turn

BYE GIRL, BYE

17

P H O T O B Y J O H N S TA N T O N

The Cantrell administration has threatened to shut down pop-ups and small vendors who commonly work second lines.

The Sudan Social and Pleasure Club was one of several clubs that resumed second lining this year.

October into one long, live music filled festival in the city.

In fact, the summer was pretty terrible — that is until a hero of mythic proportions rose up from the wilds of the West Bank to bring us hope. On July 8, basketball phenom, amateur mathematician and bibliophile extraordinaire Zaila Avant-garde stepped to the mic and confidently spelled the word “murraya” to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, joyously twirling her way into our hearts and the history books.

Meanwhile, Jeff Landry spent much of the summer

continuing his streak of being bad at his job.

AS A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER, it’s not often that the staff of Gambit find ourselves in the daily news deadline game.

But after Hurricane Ida hit, our reporters quickly transitioned, turning out breaking news on the storm’s impacts on the city, investigations into the response and failures, and the occasional tongue-in-cheek tale of giant pizza monsters on the Northshore.

Our friends and family in the River Parishes and down the bayou were especially hard hit, especially indigenous communities, who took the brunt of the storm. Sarah spent time there and in other areas devastated

by Ida, and will spend much of 2022 focusing on the recovery and needs of our neighbors.

One of the most important aspects of that work was keeping tabs on recovery efforts and

keeping city officials and Entergy honest. For instance, with public anger over the blackouts growing, Entergy was keen to get a win in the hopes of staving off the threat of City Council investigations and fines. As part of that effort, the company — and Mayor Cantrell — repeatedly touted Entergy’s outages map, which showed progress in restoring power in a number of parts of New Orleans.

The only problem was, it wasn’t true. In fact, while pockets of New Orleans East and the French Quarter would get their power on, the map erroneously showed they’d cut the power back on in parts of Treme, MidCity and other neighborhoods.

After numerous readers had complained to us, Jake and Sarah went out and literally walked through parts of the city the map showed had power, only to find they were dark.

But it wasn’t just Entergy we had our eyes on. In the weeks following the storm, Gambit kept a close eye on the growing trash nightmare in our city’s streets. We were the first to report on how senior administration officials had repeatedly lied to the public and the City Council about the severity of the trash crisis before the storm hit, including false claims of taking enforcement actions against trash haulers like Metro Service Group.

But through it all, the spirit of New Orleans, and what makes this the best place on earth to live, remained. Within hours of PAGE 19

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P H O T O B Y B R E T T D U K E / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

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B Y E G I R L , B Y E 19 the storm passing, people across the city began finding ways large and small to help one another.

Nonprofits and private individuals launched mutual aid and recovery assistance efforts not only for people in the city, but to the surrounding parishes that were devastated by the storms. And it wasn’t just local celebrities like Stormy Daniels and Louis Michot who stepped up in the wake of the storm: Across the region, average Louisianans banded together, cooking food for each other, using their generators to set up charging stations for anyone to use and delivering much needed supplies to the River Parishes and down the bayou.

Frustration over the trash piles — and poor wages hoppers and other workers were being paid — became first a reason to complain, then a reason to laugh and finally, a reason to second line. And who can forget the unslakable thirst all y’all had for the thousands of Hot Line Workers who came to New Orleans to help restore the lights — and horniness — to the city?

OVER THE COURSE OF 2021, we continued to lose far too many family and friends, not just to Covid, which took 328 New Orleanians in 2021 as of press time, but also to Ida and the unavoidable march of time. Those lost but never forgotten this year include King Cake Hub co-founder Will Samuels; WWOZ’s iconic DJ Charles “Action” Jackson; poet and activist Lee Meitzen Grue; Jazz Fest founder George Wein; Hot 8 Brass Band co-founder and sousaphonist Bennie Pete; Fat Stupid Ugly People’s Hollise Murphy; R&B singer Lloyd Price; Todd Mollock; and culture bearer and Andrews family matriarch Lois Nelson Andrews, to name but a few.

The arrival of fall meant football season and the return of the Saints. With Drew Brees off playing real estate developer, nobody knew for sure how the team would do. Would Jameis Winston rise to the challenge?

Could Taysom Hill step in to save the day? Or would that other guy be the answer?

Turned out, none of the above, as first Winston and then Hill

PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

New Orleans lost a number of important figures in 2021, including Bennie Pete Jr., the Hot 8 Brass Band’s co-founder and sousaphonist. would go down to injury. And we’re still not sure who the other guy is, so he’ll probably not end up being the long-term solution.

Meanwhile, crime continued to go unchecked in much of the city. There were more highway shootings, a pattern that nobody seems to understand but police officials are weirdly confident isn’t a trend.

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But the end of the Delta wave and Ida have also brought with some glimmers for long-term hope this fall. Halloween — and the first parade since Mardi Gras 2020 — came and went with no significant spike in illnesses or deaths, as would Thanksgiving a few weeks later. Mayor Cantrell and the city’s health officials would also announce that, short

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20 B Y E G I R L , B Y E PHOTO BY JOHN R AOUX / THE AP

In Zaila we trust.

of a major change in those numbers, Mardi Gras would return in 2022.

And while it would take a year and a half, second lines finally returned to the streets. Slowly at first, but by December social aid and pleasure clubs were rolling on a weekly basis, bringing out thousands of New Orleanians to once again dance, sing and celebrate in the streets.

The city held its City Council elections without a hitch, and while at press time some of those races were still TBD, it seems clear that for the first time in a long time, the council will be more willing to flex its own muscles and not defer to the office of the mayor. And if 2022 is going to be an improvement on 2021, a council committed to oversight, transparency and accountability, and finding new ways of doing business will be critical.

Corruption and messiness, of course, remain a problem here — as WWL’s David Hammer’s expose on the Sewerage & Water Board (and the subsequent FBI raid on their offices) showed. After decades of a “law and order” approach and billions of dollars in tax dollars, NOPD this year once again had little to show for its efforts, as murders and crime continued to plague our com-

munities. And in the waning weeks of the year, the Cantrell administration announced its intention to begin an “aggressive” crackdown on pop-ups. If, as expected they target people selling food and drinks at second lines or in the food deserts of New Orleans East, that could have a disastrous effect on thousands of New Orleanians who are simply trying to make ends meet.

So 2021 was … a mixed bag. Not as horrifying as 2020, but definitely hard on the body and soul. We lost far too many of our loved ones and culture bearers and suffered through Ida and Covid. But there’s plenty of reasons for hope. The last year and half showed New Orleans what it would be like to live without what makes this city so special — each other.

For all the difficulties of living here, our music, food, culture and sense of community make it the best place on earth, and worth fighting for. And not just to defend what we already have, but to demand what we deserve.

And always remember, no matter how much things change or how uncertain the times may feel, you’ll always be able to count on Jeff Landry being garbage.

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THE YEAR ON THE CULTURAL SCENE JAKE CLAPP, WILL COVIELLO AND JOHN STANTON

BY

A

FTER ALMOST AN ENTIRE 2020 in which New Orleanians played against type and didn’t gather to watch live music or communally eat delicious food, the safe bet was on residents finding some way to get back to the old ways in 2021. You did not disappoint, even as you by and large looked out for one another and obeyed Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s common sense COVID-19 rules.

In fact, the world of culture, food and the arts had a pretty decent year, all things considered. New Orleans-based filmmaker Marion Hill made a splash with her debut film “Ma Belle, My Beauty,” which won an audience award at Sundance and screened in the New Orleans Film Festival. Irma Thomas turned 80 and was fêted by not one but two documentaries on PBS. Local movie theater Zeitgeist marked its 35th anniversary, and Prospect.5, New Orleans’ art triennial, finally opened.

Of course, the city lost one of the greatest military police crime procedurals ever in the history of television when “NCIS: New Orleans” wrapped up its run on CBS, but you can’t have it all.

2021: SURPRISINGLY TASTY POP-UPS HAVE LONG BEEN A PART OF NEW ORLEANS’ FOOD SCENE, but during the pandemic they’ve become a significant force in the city. They’ve provided folks out of work a way to flex their culinary muscles while also paying the bills and providing residents a Covid-safe way to enjoy dining out.

Over 2021, that trend has continued. New Orleans now has com-

PHOTO PROVIDED BY CHRIS TINE DUMOUCHEL

Bo Dollis Jr. and the Wild Magnolias released ‘My Name is Bo’ in August.

munities of small-batch ice cream makers, bakers and vegan bakers among others. It’s also helping diversity, with Indian and Filipino pop-ups among the many new food businesses that have opened.

Whether the trend will continue, however, remains to be seen.

The Cantrell administration, which turned a blind eye to these sorts of kitchen table enterprises during the lockdowns, has become increasingly hostile to the freewheeling nature of the pop-up industry.

This fall, the city warned it would begin permitting and sales tax crackdowns in early 2022, and despite vocal public opposition, they’ve shown no sign of backing down.

Despite the pandemic and Hurricane Ida, 2021 also saw quite a few brick-and-mortar operations open in and around New Orleans.

And not just pricy hotel spots catering to the well-healed like San Lorenzo or Miss River. Seafood Sally’s, NOLA Crawfish King and an expansion of Peewee’s Crabcakes into New Orleans East all brought new spots to enjoy delicious seafood. Cebu Litson & Grill on the West Bank, Golden Gate Bistro, Fritai and Yakuza House, meanwhile, expanded our city’s culinary palate with Filipino, Colombian, Haitian and Japanese offerings, respectively.

Still, 2021 wasn’t without its losses in the bar and restaurant

industry. Upperline was perhaps the most famous to close this year, though others including Cavan, Avery’s and Korea House also shut down. Plus, as writer Domonique Toliver discovered, the prolonged pandemic and Ida have conspired with the forces of gentrification to push more and more Black-owned bars onto the bubble. The loss of these spaces, which have long been the incubators of our city’s music and culture, would do irreparable damage to New Orleans.

FIVE (OR SO) ALBUMS WE CAN’T PUT DOWN LIKE ANY YEAR, New Orleans was filled with good music in 2021 — but it all came with unique twists and turns. Live music finally, thankfully, returned to indoor venues in the spring. Outdoor music venues came into City Hall’s crosshairs, ramping up the fight over outdoor live music. And musicians and fans alike started to look forward to an active festival season in the fall — just for the rug to be pulled out from underneath them.

Some of the New Orleans music community’s biggest stories, though, came with new music.

This year, artists released albums they made during the pandemic shutdowns, revisited projects left on the shelf when life was too

busy in the before times, or just worked within Covid-safe restrictions while recording.

It would be impossible to recap in this space all of the great new releases by New Orleans-based musicians. Trumpeter, pianist and composer Nicholas Payton fulfilled a dream on “Smoke Sessions” by recording with bassist Ron Carter along with saxophonist George Coleman and longtime collaborator Karriem Riggins. Ivan Neville’s powerhouse Dumpstaphunk released the prescient “Where Do We Go From Here,” the group’s first studio album in eight years. Fast-rising pop musician LeTrainiump made his big introduction with his first album.

And there were many, many more excellent releases.

Rather than try to run through it all, we picked out five (or so) new albums whose stories we just couldn’t let go of this year:

GLBL WRMNG’S “VOL. 1”

GLBL WRMNG, a collective of around 30 New Orleans-based musicians, producers and music industry professionals, got off to a hot start early this year when the group released its collaborative debut album in February.

Co-founded by hip-hop artist Pell and industry professional Nate Cameron, the collective focuses on connecting and uplifting New Orleans musicians — particularly

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## . , & . 1& '& # ' * '$ $ $ $ $ # 0 ( 1 # & * & ( & $ # &$ # & & $& & + ) & # &# & & $ $) & $& '& $ # # * ' ' * $ & $ * # & & & # &#' *

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PHOTO PROVIDED BY PETROS KOY

Dawn Richard released her new solo album, ‘Second Line,’ in April.

Black and Brown New Orleanians — in an effort to build up local music infrastructure. Along with the “Vol. 1” release, 2021 saw new music by GLBL WRMNG members Pell, $leazy EZ, Kr3wcial, Alfred Banks, Dominic Scott and others.

And, when Hurricane Ida hit, the collective mobilized to help raise funds for mutual aid relief for New Orleans musicians. Keep an eye out, GLBL WRMNG is now pressing a limited run of “Vol. 1” on vinyl.

Find more at glblwrmng.com.

DAWN RICHARD’S “SECOND LINE”

, - - $ # & $ $ $ ) # * '! & * # & & $& # '& ) & '& & -- & $& ) & - - * % # $ / ) * ' * # *) # *&

After a number of years in Los Angeles, Dawn Richard decided in 2020 to make the move back to New Orleans, her hometown, and in April of this year, the Danity Kane co-founder struck up an electro revival with “Second Line,” her sixth solo record. Afrofuturism pervades the album, and Richard incorporates soul, house and bounce — as well as nods to the Black pioneers of electronic genres — on the exciting release.

“Second Line” is the follow-up to Richard’s 2019 album, “New Breed,” which explored Black Masking Indian traditions and her family’s history through the lens of her father. Richard on her new album similarly incorporates her mother through short interview clips about second line culture, Creole identity, family history and love. In an interview early this year, Richard said she envisions the album as the second in a trilogy.

LILLI LEWIS’ “AMERICANA”

In an interview with Gambit in October, pianist and singer Lilli Lewis expressed excitement about the growing number of Black musicians taking up space in Ameri-

cana, like Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah and Yola, who all had recent new records. Lewis can add “Americana” to that noteworthy group. On her new solo record, Lewis, a Black queer woman, uplifts the stories of forgotten and overlooked people through storytelling and beautiful voice. The album spans a range of styles, from slow country to rhythm and blues and funk, which not only shows Lewis’ personal influences but also the music’s interconnectedness — and the Black musicians at the roots of Americana.

LEO NOCENTELLI’S “ANOTHER SIDE”

Fifty years ago, Leo Nocentelli went into Cosimo Matassa’s Jazz City Studio to record his first solo outing, an acoustic-driven album inspired by the folk-rock singer-songwriters of the era, like James Taylor. But the album was ultimately never released — that is until Light in the Attic Records bright it back to life this November. Soon after the recordings were wrapped in 1971, The Meters had signed a new deal with Warner Brothers, and Nocentelli left the solo record on the shelf. Fast forward a few decades and Hurricane Katrina destroyed the building where the tape was being held along with a lot of material from Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Studio. Somehow many of those tapes were saved and shipped to a storage facility in California.

Ultimately, a record collector found the box of tapes at a swap meet a decade later and reconnected Nocentelli with his lost album. Thankfully “Another Side” returned home — the recordings really do show another side of the legendary funk guitarist fans might not have ever otherwise seen.

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Chef Charly Pierre created Fritai as a food hall stand in 2016 and turned it into a restaurant in Treme in 2021.

PAGE 24

JON BATISTE’S “WE ARE”

The Kenner-native might live in New York full time these days, but New Orleans never seems far from his heart. You can see the city’s fingerprints all over his stellar March record “We Are,” with appearances by PJ Morton, Trombone Shorty, the Hot 8 Brass Band and the St. Augustine Marching 100.

And Batiste shot a beautiful music video in New Orleans for the track “Freedom.” In November, Batiste earned a staggering 11 Grammy nominations, including for album of the year for “We Are” and record of the year for “Freedom.”

BLACK MASKING INDIAN ALBUM RELEASES

MIGNONFAGET.C O M

This year saw a number of releases

by Black Masking Indians, several of which built on Indian music traditions while pushing into new genres. Flagboy Giz of the Wild Tchoupitoulas celebrated Mardi Gras Day with the release of his album “Flagboy of the Nation,” which incorporated hip-hop and highlighted calls for racial equity in the city. In April, second chief of the Golden Eagles Joseph Boudreaux Jr. and his funk band Cha Wa released “My People,” which received a 2022 Grammy nomination for best regional roots album.

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux dug into reggae and blues for his new record “Bloodstains & Teardrops,” released in May. And Bo Dollis Jr., Big Chief of the Wild Magnolias, made a statement of purpose on the record “My Name is Bo,” a double album of Mardi Gras Indian funk and traditionals.

THE YEAR OF THE FESTA-TEASE ONCE AGAIN THIS YEAR, Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, Voodoo and Buku all ended up canceling, though not for a lack of trying.

They’d all originally scheduled for various weekends in October. For much of the year New Orleanians were counting down the days until the start of a giant month-long Super Fest of Fests. But then the Delta variant and Hurricane Ida came along like your two drunk cousins who you had to take home early from the party, ruining it for everyone.

WWOZ stepped in once again, running its popular Festing In Place programming. Similarly, the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival was held virtually this year.

Others, however, did pull off in person events, including Hogs for the Cause (though it was a smaller affair held in Belle Chasse) and the New Orleans Film Festival.

In an effort to help support local acts and smaller venues, NOLAxNOLA was born this fall. Despite not having the flood of tourists typical of festival season, the monthlong event helped pump much needed revenue into the local music and bar scene.

And a special year end shoutout to Faubourg Brewery, who in addition to offering pitchers of beer with straws has basically been running a non-stop string of weekly festivals at their 9th Ward brewery, featuring local musicians, pop-up restaurants and other vendors.

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Mississippi Banks Donald Link opens Chemin a la Mer at the Four Seasons AT NINE IN THE MORNING, CHEMIN À LA MER’S DINING ROOM on the fifth floor

of the Four Seasons Hotel is bathed in spectacular light as the room’s wrap-around windows invite in the sunshine bouncing off the surface of the Mississippi River.

The beauty of that light is one reason the restaurant opened for breakfast as well as dinner on Nov. 26, with lunch soon to follow.

French for pathway to the sea, Chemin à la Mer is chef Donald Link’s first foray into the swanky world of luxury hotel brands.

Link can’t say enough good things about the Four Seasons team. General manager Mali Carow was the first to win him over. One of the youngest women GMs in the Four Seasons company, Carow moved her family from London to the Bywater to take on the formidable task of opening the hotel in the World Trade Center tower, which has been vacant since 2009.

Link says he’s lucky it was the Four Seasons that did the asking.

The Louisiana-born chef fell so hard for the restaurant’s riverfront location, even a budget chain might have convinced him to sign on.

Chemin à la Mer crowns the build-out addition to the original 34-story tower, with terraces that give diners a view of the Mississippi’s bustling maritime traffic and boomerang crescent.

“I can never get enough of the river,” Link says.

The restaurant’s design is inspired by that landscape, from the geological striations on the marble bar to John Alexander’s stunning portraits of the purple grackles, herons and roseate spoonbills that feed along the river’s shores.

At 52, Link has earned the accolades and won the awards. He took on his first affiliation outside of his Link Restaurant Group (LRG) for the fun of it. And there truly is nothing like Chemin à la Mer in LRG’s portfolio, which he shares with business partner Stephen Stryjewski. The restaurant lineup includes Herbsaint, Cochon, Cochon Butcher, event

FORK + CENTER

|

by Beth D’Addono

venue Calcasieu, Peche Seafood Grill, La Boulangerie and Gianna.

Given the Four Seasons pedigree, diners can expect to pay top dollar for dining on dishes like cote de boeuf, a bone-in, cap of ribeye sliced at the table, which at $180 for four diners is actually one of the better per person steak prices on the menu.

“I kept the sides reasonable since everything is a la carte,” Link says.

Still, dropping upwards of $100 per person — before drinks — isn’t necessary to enjoy the beauty of Chemin à la Mer. Order a half-dozen oysters, sourced both locally and from colder waters ($16$18 for six) and a glass of wine ($15$19) and that same spectacular view awaits. There’s also a more casual bar menu, which includes a killer burger ($22) and charcuterie ($15), along with a menu served exclusively to hotel pool guests.

Link has traveled the globe researching Creole food pathways, and much of that inspiration — drawn from French- and Spanishspeaking Caribbean islands, France, Spain and Italy — informs his menu.

He and his team took inspiration from the Clover Grill in Paris, a French steakhouse from chef Jean Francoise Piege.

“It’s a great French restaurant with a few amazing steaks,” Link says. “That’s our vision, too.”

The beef offerings include a ribeye spinalis, Kobe strip steak, panroasted filet mignon and seared sirloin coulette, cut effortlessly with the green-handled Perceval French knives the chef fell in love with at a restaurant in Italy.

Pan-roasted Ora King salmon with lentils, Gulf coast ceviche with mint,

Email dining@gambitweekly.com

Hogs for the Cause announces 2022 lineup SHAKEY GRAVES, GALACTIC AND BRUCE HORNSBY AND THE NOISEMAKERS will

PHOTO BY CHERYL GERBER

Donald Link of Chemin a la Mer at Four Season Hotel duck confit with spicy greens and lamb chops with tapenade are a few other menu options. Link’s take on a West Indies crab salad is bright and fresh, spiked by fresh mint, cilantro and thinly sliced jalapeno and dressed with a piquant chile vinegar from Guadalupe. Panseared jumbo shrimp is paired with a cheesy cauliflower and rice casserole that tastes like everybody’s favorite holiday side.

The breakfast menu ranges from fresh biscuits and avocado toast to Cochon sausage and ham, and omelets folded over savory fillings like French chevre and herbs.

“I really tried to achieve a balance on the menu,” says the chef.

At the end of the day, Link is a New Orleanian forever inspired by the Cajun and Southern cooking of his grandparents, assuring that seafood gumbo, peel and eat shrimp, white beans and grits have a place at the table, even when these familiar dishes are prepared with French technique and a presentation fit for a five-star restaurant.

?

WHAT

Chemin à la Mer

WHERE

Four Seasons New Orleans, 2 Canal St., (504) 434-5100; fourseasons.com/neworleans

WHEN

7-10:30 a.m. and 5-10 p.m. daily

HOW

Dine-in

CHECK IT OUT

Familiar Southern dishes with five-star presentation

headline next year’s Hogs for the Cause, the annual barbecue festival and fundraiser for families impacted by pediatric cancer, organizers announced on Dec. 7.

The two-day fête, which Forbes dubbed “the world’s most delicious festival” will take place April 1-2, 2022, at the UNO Lakefront Arena Festival Grounds.

Other artists booked include Yonder Mountain String Band, Allison Russell, Neal Francis, Flatland Cavalry, Mike and the Moonpies, The Iceman Special, Joshua Ray Walker, Michot’s Melody Makers, Buffalo Nichols, Silver Synthetic, Glen David Andrews, the New Orleans Suspects, Eddie 9V, The Pink Stones, Jank Setup and People Museum.

P H O T O B Y R O N H A R R I S / A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S

Shakey Graves will headline the 2022 Hogs for the Cause annual barbecue festival and fundraiser.

Ninety teams of barbecue enthusiasts, including amateurs and professionals alike, have signed up in advance for the April festival to show off their skewering skills and duke it out for awards, including best sauce, best bacon, best side dish and best pork butt.

“There are some huge barbecue names that come in every year,” says founder Becker Hall. “But to us, the amateurs are just as important as the big guys ... It’s Louisiana. Our backyard chefs are very talented and this is a great chance to flex those muscles.”

An early-bird special costs $85 for a two-day pass at hogsfest.org, and other VIP packages are also available. — SARAH RAVITS

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by Will Coviello RONI DACULA GREW UP IN THE PHILIPPINES, where many people

celebrate Christmas Eve with a feast called Noche Buena. He moved to Louisiana in 2009 to join his father and relatives, and he began studying for a nursing degree at LSU. But Dacula ended up switching gears to pursue his love of cooking. He worked at Root, Part & Parcel, Johnny Sanchez and other local restaurants. In 2017, he started the Filipino food pop-up Gata, which means coconut milk in Tagalog. He is collaborating on a Noche Buena dinner with fellow Filipino food pop-up operators and chefs Michael Bruno of Kusina and Cristina Quackenbush of Milkfish.

The event is at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 15, at Bywater Brew Pub. Find the menu and ticket link on @gata. foodph on Instagram.

How did you get interested in cooking?

RONI DACULA: I have always been a foodie. I grew up in Manila.

My grandma would make something like an Italian dinner, with four or five dishes — we call a (main dish) ulam. And there would be noodles. She would make those ulam, which could be caldereta (meat braised with tomatoes, soy sauce), pochero (a meat stew with vegetables, beans and banana), or asado, which is a favorite of mine.

It’s like a different version of adobo (pork braised with soy and vinegar). Asado is braised chicken or pork, but the sourness comes from calamansi (a sour fruit) and it has garlic and shallots and muscovado (unrefined sugar).

And there would be a dessert like ube or leche flan or maha (coconut pudding). Anything she could find, she’d work it out. An example is she’d take jackfruit, make a syrup and boil bananas, and that would be dessert.

I named the pop-up Gata because of my grandmother. My grandmother would buy a whole coconut. You shaved off the husk to get the meat. She’d let the husk dry out in the sun. From the meat, she would extract the milk. She’d render the leftover meat to get the oil out of it. The oil she’d put in her hair, so she always smelled like fresh coconut oil. The meat she would make into latik to top off desserts. So we’d have sweetened rice with coconut milk and it would

PHOTO PROVIDED BY RONI DACUL A

be topped with that latik. The husk drying in the sun, she’d polish the floor with that — it became a bristled scrubby. She used every part of the coconut. She was my cooking role model.

What do you cook for Gata pop-ups?

D: Gata has always been me cooking what I grew up eating. The motto in my pop-up is we’re more than adobo, lumpia and pancit.

I learned all this courage from Anthony Bourdain. Just do it. Tell them what you are, who you are.

I have never served adobo in my pop-up. When I was asked to do it for catering, I made an exception.

One time, I was like, let me introduce something different, called laing. It’s braised taro greens, or any kind of greens I can find here.

It’s braised in coconut milk and shrimp paste and it’s served with bagnet, which is similar to a crackling, but the pork is cooked in vinegar first, so it renders the fat more.

It evens the balance of meat and fat. It sold out in two hours at Miel (Brewery). So now I am into going back to my roots and not being afraid to cook whatever I want.

At the last pop-up, I did pancit habhab, which is flour noodles and a vermicelli noodles combined. They usually eat it with banana leaves and no utensils.

(Traditionally) they’d eat it with hard boiled eggs, really hard boiled — til the yolk is turning green. But I served it with a fried poached egg.

What are you doing for the Noche Buena dinner?

D: I grew up having this Noche Buena dinner, which is a Christmas Eve dinner. We’d go to church first and then have this feast. That’s

Roni Dacula and Erin Schott run Gata. a tradition in the Philippines.

Filipinos play Christmas music starting in September. It’s called “Ber months.” There are lanterns and you’ll hear kids caroling. In the Philippines, even the poorest person would go broke for the whole year for it — so there’s something on the table for Noche Buena. So they would be proud of it.

I had approached Bruno and Cristina and said, “Why don’t we do a Noche Buena?” It could be anything — whatever your tradition is. This is a re-imagined Christmas Eve Filipino menu.

For our starters, we’ll have a trio of empanadas. There will be a pork base, a sausage base and mine will be a veggie base. For an entree, Cristina is doing a lechon and laing, which is crispy roasted pork with braised greens. Michael is making clams with linguine, because he is half Italian, with achuete butter and herbs. I am giving a quick tour of the Philippines with baka LuzViMin, a term for the three regions — the north, middle and south of the country. It’s a braised short rib with a caldereta component from the north, a sauce and vegetable component from the middle and the palapa paste and burnt coconut sauce with turmeric and ginger from the south. There’s also humba, which is soy, citrus, calamansi and black bean sauce.

For the dessert, Bruno is making a calamansi tart with meringue, and I am doing something called keso’t tsokolate, which means cheese and chocolate. It is a hazelnut mousse with carabao cheese sponge cake.

Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz

Deep dark cherry-red. On the nose, initially there are plummy fruits meshed with sweet spices (predominantly cinnamon), and almond. And then a pause to imbibe the aromatic atmospherics of a patisserie: crème anglaise, cannoli with vanilla custard and classic bourbon vanilla at that.

DISTRIBUTED BY

35 G A M B I T > B E S T O F N E WO R L E A N S . C O M > D E C E M B E R 1 4 - 2 0 > 2 0 2 1

WINE

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37

O U T T O E AT

Out 2 Eat is an index of Gambit contract advertisers. Unless noted, addresses are for New Orleans and all accept credit cards. Updates: Email willc@gambitweekly.com or call (504) 483-3106.

$ — average dinner entrée under $10 $$ — $11-$20 $$$ — $20-up

CBD

LAKEVIEW

Juan’s Flying Burrito — 515 Baronne St., (504) 529-5825; juansflyingburrito. com — See Uptown section for restaurant description. Outdoor dining available. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Thu.-Tue. $$

The Blue Crab Restaurant and Oyster Bar — 7900 Lakeshore Drive, (504) 2842898; thebluecrabnola.com — The menu includes sandwiches, fried seafood platters, boiled seafood, shrimp and grits and more. Outdoor seating available. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sun. $$ Lakeview Brew Coffee Cafe — 5606 Canal Blvd., (504) 483-7001; lakeviewbrew. com — This casual cafe offers coffee, pastries, desserts, sandwiches and salads.

Delivery are available. Breakfast and lunch daily. $

CARROLLTON Mid City Pizza — 6307 S. Miro St., (504) 509-6224; midcitypizza.com — See MidCity section for restaurant description.

Delivery available. Lunch Thu.-Sun., dinner Thu.-Mon. $$ Mikimoto — 3301 S. Carrollton Ave., (504) 488-1881; mikimotosushi.com — The South Carrollton roll includes tuna tataki, avocado and snow crab. Delivery available.

Lunch Sun.-Fri., dinner daily. $$

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

FRENCH QUARTER Desire Oyster Bar — Royal Sonesta New Orleans, 300 Bourbon St., (504) 586-0300; sonesta.com/desireoysterbar — The menu features Gulf seafood in Creole dishes, po-boys char-grilled oysters and more. Reservations recommended. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$

JEFFERSON/RIVER RIDGE The Rivershack Tavern — 3449 River Road, (504) 834-4938; therivershacktavern.com — This bar and music spot serves burgers, sandwiches and lunch specials. Delivery available. Lunch and dinner daily. $ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 1212 S. Clearview Parkway, Elmwood, (504) 733-3803; theospizza.com — Choose from specialty pies, salads, sandwiches and more. Delivery available. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sat. $

TAKEOUT and DELIVERY

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. Delivery available.

Lunch and dinner daily, brunch Sun. $$$ Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop — 2309 N. Causeway Blvd., Metairie, (504) 835-2022; gumbostop.com — The seafood platter includes fried catfish, shrimp, oysters, crab balls fries and a side. Delivery available. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sat. $$ Kosher Cajun New York Deli & Grocery — 3519 Severn Ave., Metairie, (504) 8882010; koshercajun.com — New York-style deli sandwiches feature corned beef, pastrami and more. Lunch Sun.-Thu., dinner Mon.-Thu. $ Martin Wine Cellar — 714 Elmeer Ave., Metairie, (504) 896-7350; martinwine. com — See Uptown section for restaurant description. No reservations.

Lunch daily. $$ Nephew’s Ristorante — 4445 W. Metairie Ave., Metairie, (504) 533-9998; nephewsristorante.com — The Creole-Italian menu features dishes like veal, eggplant and chicken parmigiana. Reservations required. Dinner Tue.-Sat. $$ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 2125 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie, (504) 510-4282; theospizza.com — See Jefferson section for restaurant description. $ Short Stop Po-Boys — 119 Transcontinental Drive, Metairie, (504) 885-4572; shortstoppoboysno.com — Fried Louisiana oysters and Gulf shrimp

are served on a Leidenheimer loaf. No reservations. Breakfast, lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat. $

MID-CITY/TREME Angelo Brocato’s — 214 N. Carrollton Ave., (504) 486-1465; angelobrocatoicecream. com — Try house-made gelato, spumoni, Italian ice, cannolis, fig cookies and other treats. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sun. $ Juan’s Flying Burrito — 4724 S. Carrollton Ave., (504) 486-9950; juansflyingburrito. com — See Uptown section for restaurant description. Outdoor dining available. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Thu.-Tue. $$ Katie’s Restaurant — 3701 Iberville St., (504) 488-6582; katiesinmidcity.com — Boudreaux pizza is topped with cochon de lait, spinach, red onions, roasted garlic and scallions. Delivery available. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sun. $$ Mid City Pizza — 4400 Banks St., (504) 483-8609; midcitypizza.com — Shrimp remoulade pizza includes spinach, red onion, garlic, basil and green onions on an garlic-olive oil brushed curst. Delivery available. Lunch Thu.-Sun., dinner Thu.-Mon. $$ Neyow’s Creole Cafe — 3332 Bienville St., (504) 827-5474; neyows.com — The menu includes red beans with fried chicken or pork chops, as well as seafood plates, po-boys, char-grilled oysters and more. Lunch daily, dinner Mon.-Sat., brunch Sun. $$ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 4024 Canal St., (504) 302-1133; theospizza.com — See Jefferson section for restaurant description. $

NORTHSHORE The Blue Crab Restaurant and Oyster Bar — 118 Harbor View Court, Slidell, (985) 315-7001; thebluecrabnola.com — See Lakeview section for restaurant description. No reservations. Lunch Fri.-Sat., dinner Wed.-Sun. $$ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 70488 Highway 21, Covington, (985) 234-9420; theospizza.com — See Jefferson section for restaurant description. $

UPTOWN Joey K’s — 3001 Magazine St., (504) 8910997; joeyksrestaurant.com — Sauteed trout Tchoupitoulas is served with shrimp, crabmeat, vegetables and potatoes.

Delivery available. Lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat., brunch Sun. $$

Juan’s Flying Burrito — 2018 Magazine St., (504) 569-0000; 5538 Magazine St., (504) 897-4800; juansflyingburrito.com — The Flying Burrito includes steak, shrimp, chicken, cheddar-jack cheese, black beans, yellow rice, salsa la fonda, guacamole and sour cream. Outdoor seating available. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Thu.-Tue. $$ Martin Wine Cellar — 3827 Baronne St., (504) 894-7444; martinwine.com — Sena salad includes pulled roasted chicken, golden raisins, blue cheese, pecans and field greens tossed with Tabasco pepperjelly vinaigrette. No reservations.

Lunch daily. $$ Red Gravy — 4206 Magazine St., (504) 561-8844; redgravycafe.com — Cannoli pancakes are filled with cannoli cream and topped with chocolate. Reservations accepted. Dinner Wed.-Sat., brunch Sun. $$ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 4218 Magazine St., (504) 894-8554; theospizza. com — See Jefferson section for restaurant description. $ Tito’s Ceviche & Pisco — 5015 Magazine St., (504) 267-7612; titoscevichepisco.com — Peruvian lomo saltado features beef tenderloin tips sauteed with onions, tomatoes, cilantro, soy sauce and pisco, and is served with fried potatoes and rice. Outdoor seating and delivery available. Lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat., brunch Sun. $$$

WAREHOUSE DISTRICT Annunciation — 1016 Annunciation St., (504) 568-0245; annunciationrestaurant. com — Fried oysters and skewered bacon are served with meuniere sauce and toasted French bread. Reservations required. Dinner Thu.-Sun. $$$ The Mill — 1051 Annunciation St., (504) 582-9544; themillnola.com — Short ribs are braised with red wine and served with risotto. Reservations accepted. Dinner Thu.-Sat., brunch Sat.-Sun. $$

WEST BANK Asia — Boomtown Casino & Hotel, 4132 Peters Road, Harvey, (504) 364- 8812; boomtownneworleans.com — The menu of Chinese and Vietnamese dishes includes a Lau Hot Pot with a choice of scallops, snow crab or shrimp. Reservations accepted. Dinner Fri.-Sun. $$ Mosca’s — 4137 Highway 90 West, Westwego, (504) 436-8950; moscasrestaurant.com — This family-style eatery serves shrimp Mosca, chicken a la grande and baked oysters Mosca. Dinner Wed.Sat. Cash only. $$$

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39

MUSIC

To learn more about adding your event to the music calendar, please email listingsedit@gambitweekly.com Note: Due to COVID-19, events may have certain restrictions or may be postponed; we recommend checking out a venues social media sites or call before you go for the most up to dateinformation.

TUESDAY 14 BAYOU BAR AT THE PONTCHARTRAIN HOTEL — Peter Harris Quartet, 7 pm DOS JEFES — Tom Hook, Wendell Brunious, 8:30 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Fritzel's All Star Band, 8 pm ROCK 'N' BOWL — Javier Olondo & Asheson, 8 pm TIPITINA'S — Louis Cole Big Band, 9 pm

WEDNESDAY 15 BAYOU BAR AT THE PONTCHARTRAIN HOTEL — Peter Harris Trio, 7 pm BOURREE — Tim Nielson, 6 pm BROADSIDE NOLA — Brad Walker revisits John Coltrane's "Ascension," feat. Steve Lands, GLADNEY, Kevin Scott, Pedro Segundo, Peter Varnado & Matt Booth, 7 pm D.B.A. NEW ORLEANS — Tin Men, 6 pm; Walter "Wolfman" Washington & the Roadmasters, 9 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Richard “Piano” Scott, 12:30 pm; Fritzel’s All Star Band, 8 pm GASA GASA — Primus Roman with Fungi, 9 pm ROCK 'N' BOWL — Ron Hotstream & The Midcity Drifters, 8 pm SANTOS — Swamp Moves with Russell Welch, 8 pm ST. ANNA'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH — Electric Yat Quartet, 7 pm ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL — Sunpie and the LA Sunspots present a Creole Zydeco Christmas, 6 pm THE HOWLIN' WOLF — Freddie Blue & the Friendship Circle Band, 7 pm THE JAZZ PLAYHOUSE — Funkin' It Up with Big Sam, 7:30 pm

THURSDAY 16 ALGIERS AUDITORIUM — Tunes for Toys, 7 pm BAYOU BAR AT THE PONTCHARTRAIN HOTEL — Peter Harris Quartet, 8 pm BOUCHERIE — Tom Andes, 6 pm BOURREE — Jenn Howard Band, 6 pm BUFFA'S — Tom McDermott and Marla Dixon, 7 & 9 pm CARNAVAL LOUNGE — Kelcy Mae's 4th Biennial Merry Songwriter Revue, 7 pm CASA BORREGA — Matt Johnson, 6:30 pm D.B.A. NEW ORLEANS — Colin Lake, 6 pm; Ted Hefko and The Thousandaires, 9 pm DEUTSCHES HAUS — John Rankin, Harry Hardin, Ed Wise, 7 pm DOS JEFES — Anna Quinn, 8:30 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Richard “Piano” Scott, 12:30 pm; Doyle Cooper Trio, 2:30 pm; John Saavedra Trio, 6 pm; Fritzel’s All Star Band, 8 pm GASA GASA — Evan Oberla with Mikayla Braun, 9 pm LE BON TEMPS ROULE — Soul Rebels, 10 pm

MUSIC BOX VILLAGE — Music Box Village House Band feat. Tif Lamson, Julie O’Dell, Greg Arceneaux, and more, 6 pm NEUTRAL GROUND COFFEE HOUSE — Sebastian Miscenich, 9 pm PEACOCK ROOM, HOTEL FONTENOT — Da Lovebirds with Robin Barnes, 8 pm ROCK 'N' BOWL — Horace Trahan & Ossun Express, 8 pm SIDNEY'S SALOON — DarkLounge Ministries, 6 pm SNUG HARBOR JAZZ BISTRO — Germaine Bazzle with the Larry Sieberth Trio, 8 & 10 pm THE JAZZ PLAYHOUSE — Brass-AHolics, 7:30 pm THE OLD POINT BAR — Valerie Sassyfras's Christmas Spectacular, 8 pm TIPITINA'S — A Benefit for The Roots of Music, 7:30 pm W NEW ORLEANS FRENCH QUARTER — Tea with Psychic Readings, music, 1 pm

FRIDAY 17 ACE HOTEL NEW ORLEANS — Khris Royal & Dark Matter, 9 pm BAYOU BAR AT THE PONTCHARTRAIN HOTEL — Peter Harris Trio, 8 pm BOUCHERIE — Jonathan Bauer, 6 pm BOURREE — The Matt Andrews Project, 4 pm; Julie Elody, 7 pm BUFFA'S — James Booker Tribute Birthday Celebration wtih Tom Worrell and Friends, 7 & 9 pm CARNAVAL LOUNGE — Monty Banks at Carnaval, 6 pm; Come to Ruin, Empty Model, Death Church, 9 pm CASA BORREGA — Los Tremolo Kings, 6:30 pm D.B.A. NEW ORLEANS — The Fish Fridays Six Feat. Members of ShakeEmUp JB, Preservation Hall JB, Tuba Skinny, Palmetto Bug Stompers, 5 pm; Hot 8 Brass Band, 10 pm DOS JEFES — The Afrodisiac's Jazz, 9 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Richard “Piano” Scott, 12:30 pm; Sam Friend Trio, 2:30 pm; Lee “Plink” Floyd, 6 pm; Fritzel’s All Star Band, 9 pm GASA GASA — The Beast Release Show with Slangston Hughes, Rodo and Naughty by Choice, 9 pm KERRY IRISH PUB — Patrick Cooper, 9 pm NEUTRAL GROUND COFFEE HOUSE — Damn Hippies, 7:30 pm; Mike True and the Phantom Band, 9 pm NEW ORLEANS FRENCH MARKET — Bracuru feat. Fernando Lima, Livya, Yusa and Bruno, 11:30 am ROCK 'N' BOWL — Dat Band, 8:30 pm SANTOS — Crush Diamond, Dana Ives, Epic Reflexes, Pope, 9 pm SIDNEY'S SALOON — PM The 78s, 9 pm SNUG HARBOR JAZZ BISTRO — J ason Marsalis’ Tribute to Ellis Marsalis, 8 & 10 pm TIPITINA'S — Anders Osborne, 8:30 pm

SATURDAY 18 ACE HOTEL NEW ORLEANS — Kydra Joi, 9 pm

BAYOU BAR AT THE PONTCHARTRAIN HOTEL — Peter Harris Trio, 8 pm BEAUREGARD-KEYES HOUSE — A Holiday Affair with Bon Operatit!, 7 pm BOUCHERIE — Patrick Cooper & Mark Carroll, 6 pm; Cast Iron Cactus, 6 pm BOURREE — The Somerton Suitcase, 1 pm; Tiffany Pollack & Co., 4 pm; Davis Rogan, 7 pm BUFFA'S — Cosmic Fishheads Camile Baudoin, Reggie Scanlan and Mikey B3 Burkart, 7 & 9 pm CARNAVAL LOUNGE — Anne Elise Hastings and Skiles Kelley, 6 pm D.B.A. NEW ORLEANS — Motel Radio, 10 pm; Tuba Skinny, 6 pm DOS JEFES — Vivaz!, 9 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Richard “Piano” Scott, 12:30 pm; Joe Kennedy Trio, 2:30 pm; Lee “Plink” Floyd Trio, 6 pm; Fritzel’s All Star Band, 9 pm MAGNOLIA BRIDGE — John Ranking, Clarence Johnson, Ed Wise, 3 pm NEUTRAL GROUND COFFEE HOUSE — Quinn Pilgrim, 7:30 pm; Gooseteeth, 9 pm NEW ORLEANS JAZZ MUSEUM — Professor Longhair 103rd Birthday Celebration, 7 pm REPUBLIC NOLA — PEEKABOO, Buku, SubDocta, 11 pm ROCK 'N' BOWL — Karma, 8:30 pm SNUG HARBOR JAZZ BISTRO — Masakowski Family Holiday Show and album release, 8 & 10 pm ST. ANNA'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH — Betty Winn and One A-Chord, 4 pm THE JAZZ PLAYHOUSE — The Nayo Jones Experience, 7:30 pm TIPITINA'S — Anders Osborne, 8:30 pm

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SUNDAY 19 BOURREE — Orphaned in Storyville, 2 pm; Buddy Conway Band, 6 pm BUFFA'S — Some Like It Hot, 11 am; Steve Pistorius and His Porch Pals, 7 & 9 pm CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH — A Christmas Brass Spectacular, 5 pm D.B.A. NEW ORLEANS — Treme Brass Band, 10 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Richard “Piano” Scott, 12:30 pm; Joe Kennedy Trio, 2:30 pm; Marla Dixon Trio, 6 pm Fritzel’s All Star Band, 8 pm LE BON TEMPS ROULE — Doctor Lo, 8 pm MONKEY HILL BAR — "Y'ule Love It...It's Christmas!", 5 pm MONKEY MONKEY — Valerie Sassyfras, 8 am MUSIC BOX VILLAGE — 21st Century Brass Brunch at the Music Box Village, 10 am NEW ORLEANS FRENCH MARKET — Julio and Cesar Trio, 11:30 am ONLINE — NOVA Chorale 2021 Holiday Concert, 3 pm PEACOCK ROOM, HOTEL FONTENOT — Jordan Anderson, 6 pm SNUG HARBOR JAZZ BISTRO — Oscar Rossignoli Quartet, 8 and 10 pm

MONDAY 20 BUFFA'S — Doyle Cooper Trio, 7 pm CARNAVAL LOUNGE — Dick Deluxe's Dive Bar Christmas, 6 pm DOS JEFES — John Fohl, 8:30 pm FRITZEL'S EUROPEAN JAZZ CLUB — Twisty River Band, 8 pm PRESERVATION HALL — Creole Christmas, 1:15, 2:30 & 3:45 pm

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Large parties available.

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40 ALL ABOUT THE

Holiday Gumbo!

MUSIC

Meschiya Lake quits Chickie Wah Wah as plans to sell venue move forward

by Keith Spera / The Times-Picayune BARELY TWO MONTHS AFTER SHE HELPED REOPEN CHICKIE WAH WAH as its

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talent buyer, singer Meschiya Lake has cut ties with the music venue.

She no longer works there, and says she won’t perform there anymore either.

“I’ve completely backed away from it,” she said this week. “I thought it was going to be so awesome. I gave it my all.

“But it took a 360-degree turn very quickly. It turned out to be very different from what I thought.

There was stuff going on that I didn’t agree with.”

Lake declined to elaborate on the nature of her disagreements.

In late September, she was full of optimism about her new role at Chickie Wah Wah. The club’s future was even more uncertain after owner Dale Triguero died July 8 from complications following heart surgery.

Reggie Seay, an attorney and longtime friend of Triguero’s who often worked the door at Chickie Wah Wah, was named executor of his estate. Triguero, 68 at the time of his death, wasn’t married and had no children. His two brothers, who live in New York, are his only family heirs.

The estate intended to follow a retirement plan Triguero had discussed. According to Seay, Triguero had wanted to sell a house he was renovating in Algiers Point, use the proceeds to pay off the Chickie Wah Wah building, then sell the building and business and move to Los Angeles.

After Triguero’s death, Jacques Ferland, another Triguero friend and a fixture at Chickie Wah Wah, lobbied Seay to reopen the venue prior to any sale. Lake, a regular on the club’s schedule for the past decade, was also keen to see live music restored to the room.

With the estate’s blessing, Ferland – who repairs and restores pianos and installed one in the bed of a pickup for the roving “Piano In a Truck” pandemic concerts – and

PHOTO BY CHRIS GR ANGER / T H E T I M E S - P I C AY U N E

Singer Meschiya Lake and Jacques Ferland.

Lake jointly took on the responsibility of bringing Chickie Wah Wah back to life.

Working together, they spruced up the venue. The room hosted a celebration of life in honor of Triguero on Oct. 5, then officially reopened to the public the next night with a performance by Lake and pianist Tom McDermott.

Lake filled the rest of the October and November calendars with many of the same artists that Triguero frequently booked.

But by late November, she had resigned.

Like Lake, Seay declined to elaborate on what went wrong.

Lake said she is still owed compensation for the time she worked at Chickie Wah Wah. Her attorney and an attorney representing the club are “tying up loose ends,” Seay confirmed. “I have every confidence that it will get resolved.”

Meanwhile, the plan to sell Chickie Wah Wah is moving forward.

The last date currently on the calendar is the Fortifiers on Dec. 18. With Seay and Ferland both planning to be out of town during the holidays, they decided to close Chickie Wah Wah for the last two weeks of 2021.

But they are lining up shows for January. Should a new owner want to continue operating, an uninterrupted schedule would be helpful.

If Chickie Wah Wah hasn’t been sold by mid-January, they’ll start booking February.

41 FILM

PAGE 5

Kieko Komaki, David Torkanowsky and more. They’ll also show Lily Keber’s documentary on Booker “Bayou Maharajah” at 6 p.m. One dollar from each ticket will go to the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic.

Doors open at 5 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 19, and tickets are $25 at mapleleafbar.com.

‘Cats’ THE TOURING PRODUCTION OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’S HIT MUSICAL about

a tribe of singing cats comes to New Orleans. The production runs Tuesday, Dec. 14, through Sunday, Dec. 19, at the Saenger Theatre.

Showtimes vary. Find tickets at saengernola.com.

Caroling in Jackson Square THERE’S CAROLING RETURNS TO JACKSON SQUARE at 7 p.m. Sunday,

Dec. 19. Patio Planters of the Vieux Carre, the event organizer, provides candles and song sheets.

Those wishing to participate remotely can watch on WLAE-TV or listen to the livestream on patioplanters.net.

Delta Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ DELTA FESTIVAL BALLET PRESENTS THE HOLIDAY CLASSIC with

Tchaikovsky’s score performed by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. Performances are at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, and Sunday, Dec. 19, at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts. Tickets $35-$75 at saengernola.com.

New Orleans Bowl THE RAGIN’ CAJUNS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA AT LAFAYETTE won the

Sun Belt Conference championship and finished the year with a 12-1 record and a top 25 national ranking. It’s also the winningest team in the history of the New Orleans Bowl. The Cajuns face the Marshall University Thundering Herd at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, in the Caesars Superdome. Find tickets at caesarssuperdome.com.

JPAS present ‘The Nutcracker’ JEFFERSON PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY PRESENTS THE CLASSIC BALLET at

2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 19, at Jefferson Performing Arts Center. Tickets $23-$58 via jpas.org.

Classical Christmas THE LOUISIANA PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA performs a program of

holiday music, including excerpts from Handel’s “Messiah” and works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Vaughan Williams and more. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec.

16, at Orpheum Theater. Tickets are $25-$110 at lpomusic.com.

Holiday Music Party SONGWRITER KELCY MAE WILBURN, WHO PERFORMS AS EVER MORE NEST, will host the 4th Biennial Merry Songwriter Revue featuring Micah McKee, Gal Holiday, Loose Cattle, Joy Clark, Prey for Neighbors, Jamie Lynn Vessels, Tiny Dinosaur, Natalie Mae and A Strange Bird.

The musicians will perform classic holiday songs, pop music and their own original material to celebrate the season at 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16, at Carnaval Lounge.

Tickets are $15 in advance; $20 at the door and can be purchased at kelcymae.com.

Michot’s Melody Makers with Leyla McCalla LONGTIME COLLABORATORS LOUIS MICHOT, backed by his band the Melody Makers, and singer Leyla McCalla will debut a new musical performance at the revamped Toulouse Theatre in the French Quarter. Fiddler Michot brings Cajun flair to the stage while multi-instrumentalist McCalla sings in Haitian Creole. The show is at 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18. Tickets are $20-$40 at toulousetheatre.com.

Dance It Out THE RE: FRAME: EVERYBODY DANCE NOW FESTIVAL features a series of workshops, classes, performances and seminars, all focusing on dance and creative physical expression. The three-day celebration is for dance enthusiasts and amateurs alike, and brings together some of the city’s top choreographers and performers. It takes place Thursday, Dec. 16, through Saturday, Dec. 18, at the Contemporary Arts Center.

Admission is free but RSVP is recommended at cacno.org.

Professor Longhair Celebration FRIENDS OF THE CABILDO’S CONCERT SERIES IS BACK at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, where they’ll host a celebration of Professor Longhair, marking the musical legend’s 103rd birthday and feature a performance by Jon Cleary. The show will also be available online at facebook.com/nolajazzmuseum/live.

It starts at 7 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 18, at the New Orleans Jazz Museum. For more information, go to nolajazzmuseum.org.

Looking for more to do this week? Check out the latest on Gambit’s calendar at calendar.gambitweekly.com.

Collage of Arts and Sciences

by Will Coviello BART KRESA ISN’T A HOUSEHOLD NAME ,

but many people may have seen one of his light projection spectacles from around the world.

For the premiere party of “Game of Thrones” season seven, his videos of the show’s imaginary world covered Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall. For the 25th anniversary of the sitcom “Friends,” he created a video show using almost the whole half-mile of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. For a visit by Pope Francis, he created a video mapping projection on the front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A new Kresa production is a featured attraction at Luna Fete, the festival of art, light and technology curated by the Arts Council New Orleans. This year’s festival also is sponsored by the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and New Orleans & Co., and there is creative input from the American Geophysicists Union, a convention of an expected 26,000 people in town this week on dates overlapping the festival. Luna Fete will feature video and sound projections and light and art installations at the recently expanded 7.5-acre pedestrian walkway in front of the Convention Center on Thursday, Dec. 16, through Sunday, Dec. 19.

Luna Fete is free to the public.

The façade of the Philadelphia Museum of Art where Kresa did his projection features the same Greek Revival style as New Orleans’ Gallier Hall. The former New Orleans city hall has been the anchor of Luna Fete for several years, as projection mapping projects enabled the display of videos on the varied surfaces of its columns and walls. But Kresa’s work for this Luna Fete will be projected on the much flatter surface of the Convention Center’s Hall D — roughly across from the Mississippi River Heritage Park and the Sugar Mill. Several blocks of Convention Center Boulevard will be closed to vehicle traffic during most of Luna Fete’s 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. hours so pedestrians can view the projections from the street.

Kresa’s “Earth + Space” piece explores the natural world and the planet’s fragility and also highlights

PHOTO PROVIDED BY ARTS COUNCIL NEW ORLEANS

Michael Davis’ Halo exhibit people who have contributed to our understanding of it. Intermissions in the projection feature scientists and philosophers from Aristotle to Charles Darwin, George Washington Carver, Jane Goodall and John James Audubon. The seven-minute video screens on the hour, with the final run at 10 p.m.

There are more than 15 artists and groups presenting work at Luna Fete, from other international guests to locals such as the Virtual Krewe of Vaporwave. Michael Davis has created several “Halo” installations in European cities. He brings his totems of luminescent rings to Luna Fete.

Luciana Abait, an artist native to Argentina who works in Los Angeles, created “Agua,” a largescale projection of water cascading down walls and flowing on the ground. Diane Burko’s “Lenticulars” draws on drone footage and oceanography to create fluid images.

Through their Nature as Data project, James McGrath and Gary Sinclair created “Ghost Trees,” which examines the effect of climate change. Brandon Ballengee’s “Love Motel for Insects” features sculptures of insects that play important roles in pollination and other vital natural processes.

Several of the installations will be permanent. New Orleans artist Rontherin Ratliff created a piece inspired by Louis Armstrong. Denver sculptor Patrick Marold’s shiny metal work “Alluvial Mirror” also takes its inspiration from local music and nature. Australian-born artist Erwin Redl’s illuminated art bench offers a tiny, curved shelter from traffic.

Luna Fete also has an arts market and VIP lounge with food and drink on the grounds. For more information, visit lunafete.com.

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A R T S & E N T E R TA I N M E N T

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" ! #

62 Big meeting to discuss protective metal gear?

66 Foot the bill 69 A-bomb, e.g.

71 “— dare?”

72 — Lilly 73 “Tamerlane” poet 74 Cold, damp park birds?

79 Declare 82 Apia locale 83 Elton John’s ’70s label 84 Figure skater Midori — 86 Bet to win and place 90 Cloning stuff 92 Was an overly aggressive barber?

96 Cato’s “to be” 99 — alla Scala 101 Intensify, with “up”

102 Antique auto 103 Trouncing in a number-adding contest?

109 Bullring call 110 Balcony box 111 “Send help!”

112 Netflix rival 113 Medium for burning data 115 Pork serving 118 Of sentence units 121 Cork’s land 122 Decreed to be the most prudish?

126 Observes 127 Computer programming output 128 More skillful 129 Chances 130 Covered with bathroom rolls, slangily 131 Outback food 132 Fliers’ homes DOWN 1 Strike with the horns 2 Court champ Arthur 3 Lead-in to “done that” 4 “Eek!” 5 Add ammo to 6 Emails or texts: Abbr.

7 Wet mo.

8 Come — halt 9 Body not staying at rest?

10 “My treat!”

11 Family in computer games 12 DuVernay of “Queen Sugar” 13 Flawless 14 Request in advance, in a way 15 Spoken exam 16 Sicily’s capital 17 A gazillion 18 Brief plugs for political candidates 21 Bread variety 24 — Lube (STP alternative) 29 Chou En- — 31 Add fuel to 32 Groups on church risers 33 The Plame affair, informally 35 Hammer or spade 36 52-wk. units

37 Dad’s partner 38 Longtime wire svc.

39 Moses’ peak 40 Seltzer, e.g.

41 ICU VIPs 46 Imbiber’s hwy. offense 47 “— be nice if ...”

48 Like taffy 49 Bea Arthur sitcom 51 Air-testing gp.

55 Hispanic “hello” 57 Intensify, with “up” 58 Loving sound 59 Previous to, poetically 61 12-hour clock toggle 63 Lowing sound 64 Fluid dram fraction 65 “Hawaii —” (Jack Lord series) 66 Acer offerings 67 Styled after 68 Orange tuber 70 Say aloud for transcription 75 Net access provider 76 Groom, e.g.

77 “The Dance” singer Brooks 78 Canned heat 80 Good Grips brand 81 Nursery cry 85 Dramatist Clifford

87 Merry-go-rounds 88 Not kosher 89 Hurry-scurry 91 For free 93 Furious state 94 Spill cleaner 95 Sony products 96 1962 Paul Anka hit 97 Tarnished 98 Tarnished 100 Chinese soup 104 Sort 105 Facet 106 “Surprised to run into you!”

107 University in Greenville, South Carolina 108 In a blazing brandy sauce 114 Fed Eliot 115 Ace or queen 116 Fruit drink brand 117 Tip jar bills 118 Nursery school, briefly 119 Play — (perform some songs) 120 Env. items 123 Receivable 124 John in court cases 125 High-tech organizer

ANSWERS FOR LAST ISSUE’S PUZZLE: P 2

PUZZLES

30 Romanov royal 31 — -fi film 33 Michael of “Superbad” 34 Stephen of the screen 35 Time when everybody turned down their radios all at once?

41 — v. Wade 42 Aussie critter 43 Soporific drug 44 Electrolysis particles 45 Reading quickly in the Scandinavian manner?

50 Novelist Stout 52 Hammer or Spade 53 History topic 54 Hot tub sigh 56 Tranquility 60 Brainchild

( $" $ & " #

" " ! $ ' & ! " $ # % #

PREMIER CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACROSS 1 Kiddie-lit elephant 6 Seder bread 11 Warren in the Pro Football Hall of Fame 15 Numbered work of a composer 19 “I’d love to help” 20 Fictional town in an Edgar Lee Masters title 22 Intensify, with “up” 23 Aged female horse that has won lots of singing awards?

25 Dog food brand 26 Flimsy 27 Hive swarm 28 “Lie Down With Lions” novelist Ken

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NEAR THE BAYOU