Happy Fat Tuesday, Metafilter! [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Feb 21, 2012 - 55 comments

Let's say that you're Lenny Kravitz and you're relaxing on a balcony in New Orleans when you hear someone singing one of your songs. What do you do? Well, you could always join in. (SLYT)
posted by ColdChef on Jun 29, 2010 - 95 comments

'If I die,' Brandon Franklin had said, 'I want all the bands at my funeral.' As Franklin’s family filed out of the eastern New Orleans church and the hearse waited, nearly 300 current and former band members performed a final salute. Via.
posted by ColdChef on May 24, 2010 - 32 comments

Just ease on into one of the most laid-back grooves to ever weave its way through a New Orleans junkyard, and join the procession as the estimable Dr. John is led through the rusting automobiles on a mule. After that, you'll be ready to enter the Inner Sanctum of Deep Mystic Hoodoo, with the good Doctor as your intoning, night tripping guide through the Zu Zu Mamou hallucinations. You won't be the same, afterwards...
posted by flapjax at midnite on Nov 27, 2009 - 22 comments

Enrich your Halloween experience with some seasonally appropriate art: the whimsical and charming SkeleCANS (flapjax recommends: slideshow viewing) from New Orleans' indefatigable Skeleton Krewe.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 31, 2009 - 6 comments

One effect of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was to render existing bike maps of the city obsolete and incomplete. The NOLA Cycle Bike Map Project is a grassroots effort to create a comprehensive, freely-available bicycle map for New Orleans (like those that already exist for Chicago, Portland, and other cities). Because the project is driven by DIY maps produced by individuals and by volunteer social events organized around mapping different locations that can then be added to the project's database, it's been described as "Wiki-style involvement in the real world." (Here's some video of the project.) [more inside]
posted by liketitanic on Oct 29, 2009 - 4 comments

The Gulf Coast has just witnessed what's being called the "the largest evacuation in US history", but let's hear from those hardy souls who stuck around NOLA to ride it out, shall we? Hey, where else are you gonna see National Guardsmen (charged with the task of enforcing curfew) put down their rifles and take the stage at a local bar for a little blues jam? And be sure to watch the video that accompanies the article: immensely entertaining!
posted by flapjax at midnite on Sep 3, 2008 - 16 comments

More worries in New Orleans, this time from the Police Department. Within three weeks, Police Superintendent Warren Riley (as seen on the left) has suspended three NOPD officers in separate incidents: one for leading Crescent City Connection police on a high speed chase which ended in one pursuit officer grazed by the fleeing car and another slapped (video). One involved an off-duty officer brandishing a gun at a children's camp and shouting expletives, apparently even backed up by responding officers, according to witness accounts. Another was suspended for wearing the wrong colored shirt on the day he retired, a punishment Riley sees as appropriate as a "consequence of his actions".
posted by kuperman on Jul 17, 2008 - 28 comments

Killings Bring New Orleans to its Bloodied Knees In the sixth New Orleans murder in less than 24 hours, Helen Hill was killed and her husband (who co-founded a sliding-scale doctors' office to serve the impoverished community) was shot in their home Thursday about 5:30 a.m., said police, who found the bleeding man kneeling at the door of the couple's Faubourg Marigny home, clutching their 2-year-old son.
posted by ColdChef on Jan 5, 2007 - 106 comments

When the levees broke, he looked for was his camera and a boat. This Times-Picayune photographer tells his story of what happened next.
posted by Pacheco on Dec 13, 2005 - 2 comments

Convoy on the go. Most of you probably already know this, but a massive convoy of food in and people out of downtown New Orleans is underway. On CNN they have video from helicopters, showing lines of hundreds of busses. This is a huge relief.
posted by delmoi on Sep 2, 2005 - 269 comments

Horror writer Poppy Z Brite is a NOLA resident affected by Katrina. Here's some journal entries.
posted by nyxxxx on Sep 1, 2005 - 18 comments

Hurricane Risk for New Orleans: "if that Category Five Hurricane comes to New Orleans, 50,000 people could lose their lives. Now that is significantly larger than any estimates that we would have of individuals who might lose their lives from a terrorist attack. When you start to do that kind of calculus - and it's horrendous that you have to do that kind of calculus - it appears to those of us in emergency management, that the risk is much more real and much more significant, when you talk about hurricanes. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, has come to grip with that: that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone." (Nb. this excerpt from a fascinating 2002 American RadioWorks documentary does not refer specifically to Ivan.)
posted by sudama on Sep 14, 2004 - 55 comments