MAINLY MAIN STREET The small-town charm of Louisiana circa 1930 gets a reverent retrospective in a new book by writer Anne Butler and photographer Henry Cancienne. A worthy addition to the coffee table, Main Streets of Louisiana ($35, UL Lafayette Press) brings the reader on a tour of some of the Bayou State’s most picturesque towns. Notably absent in the book is Lafayette, but Acadiana is well-represented by Abbeville, Crowley, Eunice, New Iberia and St. Martinville. Many of these old downtown districts were saved thanks in no small part to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Main Street Center, a national network that Louisiana joined in 1984. Mixing pictures and prose in equal measure, Main Streets serves as both a lively guide for history buffs and a reminder than many a historic downtown went to seed across the state in the second half of the 20th century as people and businesses fled to the suburbs. — Walter Pierce
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.
The small-town charm of Louisiana circa 1930 gets a reverent retrospective in a new book by writer Anne Butler and photographer Henry Cancienne. A worthy addition to the coffee table, Main Streets of Louisiana ($35, UL Lafayette Press) brings the reader on a tour of some of the Bayou State’s most picturesque towns. Notably absent in the book is Lafayette, but Acadiana is well-represented by Abbeville, Crowley, Eunice, New Iberia and St. Martinville. Many of these old downtown districts were saved thanks in no small part to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Main Street Center, a national network that Louisiana joined in 1984. Mixing pictures and prose in equal measure, Main Streets serves as both a lively guide for history buffs and a reminder than many a historic downtown went to seed across the state in the second half of the 20th century as people and businesses fled to the suburbs. — Walter Pierce
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