Rubensteins New Orleans has always been a place to shop for quality clothes. Now, the New Orleans business provides a quality place to stay. Located at Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, Rubensteins has long shown a commitment to the…
This week's episode is a crossover with sister podcast "Beyond the Beads" from New Orleans Magazine. Since the early 20th Century, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club has been a prominent figure in Carnival culture. From the meeting of…
John Burke knows about swamps. He spends time living close to the Atchafalaya swamp near Patterson, Louisiana. Earlier in his career he was involved in a business of making caviar from the roe of the choupique, a native fish whose…
Why are people from Louisiana leaving? Well, not all of them are, but there has been a subtle decline enough to make people wonder. “Jobs” is usually the answer, but there is some good news for the future, including in…
Dennis Woltering had a long and distinguished career as the nightly news anchor on WWL tv, Ch. 4. Since retiring, he is still frequently in front of a camera and has lots of stories to tell. Acting as an independent…
There are lots of questions raised by numbers; fortunately, many answers have been found. Allison Plyer, chief demographer for the New Orleans-based Data Center, looks at both sides including analyzing why Louisiana’s population is declining and why there is…
Arguably, no one knows Louisiana food better than Stanley Dry. Having served 21 years of writing the food column for Louisiana Life – as well as having been a contributor to national publications including Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, The…
There was a time when king cakes were a mere side attraction to Carnival, served mostly in classroom parties and during office breaks. A New Orleans’ baker had borrowed from the French tradition of Gallette des Roi and prepared what…
We suggest that you clip out this column; laminate it if you can or at the very least seal it in a storage bag and place it in a treasured cookbook. Why? Stanley Dry, our long time food expert is,…
Gordon “Nick” Mueller once had a conversation with Stephen Ambrose, a history professor colleague at the University of New Orleans. What Ambrose had to say would make history itself. He proposed a project to build a museum focused on the…
Louisiana has a rich literary history. All authors conduct interviews as part of their craft, but only one wondered what it would be like to interview a vampire. As another Louisiana author, Kate Chopin, might have said about Anne Rice’s…
When driving into Baton Rouge, one can be amazed by the object in the distance that looks like a rocket ship on a launch pad about to take off. The building, of course, is the state capitol, the tallest…
Jessica Harris has twice won James Beard Foundation awards, including one for Lifetime achievement. Rather than just being in the kitchen, she has proved herself to be especially skilled at blending sentences and paragraphs and then seasoning the mix with…
Suppose your job is to take care of a tiger – a real tiger with jaws and claws and that is physically fit. David G. Baker is a veterinarian who for several year had the responsibility of overseeing the most…
One of the great green spaces in America is New Orleans’ City Park. In 2005, the flood waters from Hurricane Karina turned it into a gray space that was muddied, overcome with fallen trees, deprived of joy and hope. Robert…
On a Saturday night in 2005, only a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina plowed through the state, there were bursts of bright red glows along the levee near the Avoyelles Parish town of Mansura. There had not been much…
Who better to talk about the Day of the Dead celebration than a Vodou priestess? Also known as Día de los Muertos, the celebration has different roots than Vodou, which worked its way through Haiti. It is also Hispanic in…
Barbara Sillery has her favorite haunts, not just to visit but to write about. She has written several books about hauntings including in Louisiana, Mississippi (as well as its Delta country), Cape Cod and Nantucket. Sillery joins Louisiana Life Executive…
In 1873, though little known throughout the state, the Shreveport area suffered one of the greatest tragedies in Louisiana history. The region faced what is recorded as the third largest Yellow Fever epidemic in the nation’s history. In the course…
Jim Brown has had quite a career including terms as Louisiana’s Secretary of State; Insurance Commissioner and a state senator. He is also a publisher, a columnist and a font of knowledge about the state and its politics. Brown joins…
Millions of people listen to music on the radio. Over a half million people listen to radio each week to hear Nick Spitzer talk about music. Spitzer’s pioneering broadcast American Routes is way more than a D.J. spinning songs but…
A teenager named Abraham Lincoln was once part of the crew of a packet boat bringing goods downriver to New Orleans. As they approached the city they camped on the river banks up shore from New Orleans. There were rough…
Hunters were pursuing monsters, and on this day the pursuers would win. But there were still many other creatures nearby. This being the season of Halloween brings to mind beasts that lurk in our world. Some states have legends…
Whenever polls are taken of Louisiana’s most popular restaurants Commander’s Palace in New Orleans is usually near or at the top. That’s quite an accomplishment for a state already known for its great restaurants. Ti Martin, co-proprietor of Commander’s Place,…
There are thousands of hurricane stories. Some stories are tragic, others are heroic and many are truly compelling, especially for podcast listening. A documentary recently released by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, the statewide public broadcast system, entitled “Cajundome City” tells the…
Remember the comedian George Carlin? In 1958, when he was an airman at nearby Barksdale Air Force Base, his first appearance on a stage was in Shreveport. Carlin was the star of the Shreveport Little Theatre’s production of “The Happiest…
There are two things, among many, that we all need to do – eat, and be fit. The problem is that sometimes doing one contradicts the other. Fortunately, there are some dietitian who keep and eye on that sort of…
If you confuse the Louisiana Children’s Museum for a boat permanently docked alongside a small bay that is understandable. The museum, located in New Orleans’ City Park, is a masterpiece of whimsical design and learning creativity. It is as much…
New Orleans was once a fertile area for developing championship boxers. Mainly because of the large Italian immigration many of the boys who came from poor families and grew up in tough neighborhoods were attracted to boxing. Not only were…
Who would have thought that there would be a working farm on Jackson Avenue right in the heart of Uptown amid the mansions and the magnolias? Well, there is, and it is more than tomato plants stuck in the ground…
When hurricanes rumble from the Gulf, the high winds and storm surges sometimes re-locate unwilling sea mammals into surrounding land masses and waterways. That happened after Hurricane Ida in 2021, which displaced a dolphin into a bay near Grand Isle.…
In 2010, during the time that Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser was Plaquemines Parish’s President, the BP Oil Spill took place. He became immersed in the issue, so much that the national media referred to him as the “Face of the…
There is something about this magazine that we have not said much about; perhaps it was because of shyness or maybe uncertainty about the protocol of the media talking about itself. But then came the inner realization; first…
Fifty years ago there was a tragic fire in New Orleans’s French Quarter at a bar with a largely gay clientele called the Upstairs Lounge. There were 32 deaths. Documentary maker Royd Anderson joins Louisiana Life Executive Editor Errol Laborde, along…
If the subject is restaurants don’t call Stanley Dry; if the subject is kitchens, then he’s your man. Dry is the long time writer of the “Kitchen Gourmet” column for Louisiana Life magazine. He has also authored cookbooks; two of…
We learn history for several perspectives including political, social and military, but to really understand a place and the influences that shaped it, we need to hear from a geographer as well. Richard Campanella, a Tulane University research professor, combines…
One person who most identifies a city is its mayor. There are council members, legislators, judges, sheriffs and police chiefs, but it's the mayor who usually, for better or worse, is in the best position to direct the future. Friday…
LSU is known for its achievements on the playing field and in the classroom, but before any of that could happen there were political battles and maneuvers to grow the university and to make it nationally prominent. Chief among the…
There is a crop that is grown here in Louisiana that is not found anywhere else in the world. Even in Louisiana it is a rarity sprouting from the ground in only one parish. Perique tobacco has been cultivated in…
When ordering, one might wonder why the cup in which their coffee is served has an image of the devil on the outside or, especially, why the coffee when poured into a serving bowl is on fire. The real jolt…
In the years prior to the passage of the federal Civil Rights Bill, the responsibility of offering higher education to Black students went to a few segregated universities. After the bill passed the doors were open and Black students were…
French is perhaps one of the most beautiful languages. It is also a vital part of Louisiana’s history. Through the effort of some dedicated individuals looking to preserve our culture, we have the opportunity to hear more of the language…
During the year after the 2010 BP oil spill, much of the Gulf of Mexico’s sea life was scarce — including oysters. It wasn’t until the following February that I saw servable raw oysters again. The occasion was a debutante…
Chris Thomas King has been close to the blues all his life. His is the son of a legendary blues musician, Tabby Thomas, who operated a blues club in Baton Rouge. King has excelled not only on guitar, but also…
Kouri-Vini is the name given to Louisiana’s endangered, indigenous Creole language. It is spoken largely in rural south Louisiana by both Louisiana Creoles and Cajuns. Linguist and performer Clif St. Laurent joins Louisiana Life Executive Editor Errol Laborde, along with…
Here are some questions about our native jambalaya that you might not have thought about, but should: Is our native jambalaya an offshoot of Spanish paella? Is seafood jambalaya more of a casserole since jambalaya originated as a meat dish?…
According to legend, the original cocktail was invented in an apothecary in New Orleans’ Vieux Carré. The neighborhood, with its many restaurants and bars, is such a watering hole for classic drinks it seems only right that there would be…
Officially known as “Hansen’s disease” but the world recognizes the jarring, more familiar term “leprosy.” A place in south Louisiana known as Carville was, along with a facility in Hawaii, the national center for the care of patients with the…
So, you thought you knew a lot about crawfish. Well, how about this? What global event triggered the interest in boiled crawfish in Louisiana? Sam Irwin, the author of the book “Louisiana Crawfish, A Succulent History of the Cajun Crustacean,”…
There is so much talent in Louisiana that selecting finalists for Louisiana Life’s annual Louisianian of the Year issue is one of the magazine’s toughest challenges. But, It was accomplished! And, there are many promising prospects left for the future.…
