Sure, having a declining population means less jobs, tax dollars, and Louisiana could even lose a Congressional seat, but having people flee your state in droves isn’t all bad. New Orleans City Business interviews some experts who go against the conventional wisdom, pointing out that there is a silver lining to all this outmigration. Billy Fields, director of the Center for Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans, says that a stable or declining population has actually helped New Orleans maintain some of its unique architecture and neighborhoods, precisely because of a lack of pressure for new development. The article also quotes Red Wassenich, the Austin librarian who came up with the popular phrase “Keep Austin Wierd”, which spoke to how the town began to lose some of its identity as it more than quadrupled in size over the past 50 years. “I just don’t understand (why) growth is automatically seen as a virtue,” Wassenich says. “It’s like it’s in most people’s DNA that that’s what we strive for. We need to transcend that and focus on quality over quantity.”
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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