Among the thousands of gifts Barack Obama will receive as he becomes America’s new president will be a coveted throw from Mardi Gras. The Times Picayune reports that Charles Hamilton Jr., the president of The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, is on his way to the inauguration, and carefully packed in his luggage is a specially painted commemorative coconut. A continuous painting around the specially prepared surface of the coconut depicts the face of a Zulu member on one side and an American flag flapping over the White House which is flanked by Zulu spears. Hamilton’s inside connection is New Orleans native and former Zulu queen Desiree Glapion Rogers, who was tapped to be White House social secretary. A copy of the presidential coconut will be displayed at the Louisiana State Museum.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
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.
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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