Tsunami's new Baton Rouge sushi restaurant sits atop the downtown Shaw Center, and last Friday, Aug. 26, Baton Rouge-based Daily Report said that the LSU Museum of Art had ordered Tsunami to stop serving drinks on the Shaw Center for the Arts' terrace. The online news service, an offshoot of the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, cited unnamed sources for the story, because LSU reps and Tsunami's owners weren't talking about the dispute. (Tsunami owner Michele Ezell did not immediately return The Independent Weekly's call for comment.)
"Sources say LSU ordered the popular sushi restaurant and bar to stop serving drinks because some patrons had become drunk and rowdy, littering the area with beer bottles and damaging the arts center," stated Daily Report. The news outlet also cited sources claiming the owners of Tsunami and representatives of the museum now have a tense relationship over the matter, "partly driven by a dispute that started small but escalated as each side puffed its chest."
"Tsunami has become a key to downtown development, attracting a diverse crowd of punks and politicians that usually don't mingle in Baton Rouge," continued the story, which also reported the findings of a readers' poll on the fate of Tsunami's improvised terrace bar. According to the poll, DailyReport.com and BusinessReport.com readers want the terrace bar reopened. In the online poll, 91 percent of 1,367 respondents said the LSU Museum of Art should continue letting Tsunami serve alcohol on the terrace, with 9 percent against it. ' LT
Sales Tax on a Roll
Now halfway through 2005, taxable sales in Lafayette Parish are continuing at a feverish pace, outperforming 2004 by 7 percent. From January to June of this year, almost $2 billion in taxable sales have been recorded. At this time last year ' 2004 ended in record-breaking sales of $3.85 billion (a 3.6 percent increase over 2003) ' the six-month increase was merely 2.2 percent.
In June 2005, sales came in at $362.2 million, rising 8.6 percent above the $333.5 million in June of last year, according to figures from the Lafayette Parish School Board's Sales Tax Division. The miscellaneous services group ' which includes hotels, bowling alleys, movie theaters and dry cleaners ' escalated a whopping 30 percent, followed by manufacturing and lumber/building materials groups, which rose 9.4 and 9.25 percent, respectively. ' LT
MAY 20 This post by blogger CB Forgotston draws parallels between Gov. Bobby Jindal and two individuals he probably doesn't want to be aligned with: President Obama and former governor Edwin Edwards. CB says Jindal's trying to jack up the debt ceiling (an Obama play, according to CB) and buy votes from GOP leges who normally wouldn't go for that (an Edwards play, CB says).
MAY 20 Here's a post in the Baptist Message from an alumnus of Louisiana College. The author, Larry Burgess, calls on the leadership of the private school to take care of some pressing problems. Physical plant issues are critical and unaddressed, some faculty make so little they need government health care, and there is an atmosphere that does not encourage honest discussion, he writes. It's time to get things back in order, he says.
MAY 20 This post in Gambit tells of a benefit concert scheduled to raise money for the 19 people shot during a Mother's Day second line on Frenchmen Street in NOLA. Among them was Gambit blogger Deb Cotton, who spoke frequently about violence in the city and reported on the city's second line culture. Gambit's foundation, along with other NOLA non-profits, also is selling t-shirts to raise money for the victims.
MAY 20 Blogger Robert Mann is critical of the personal interest some legislators take in their work here, sharing the comments one NOLA solon made in explaining his decision to vote against a bill that would require people to stop discriminating against female workers. His wife might lose some salary, so he was going to have to vote against the equal pay bill, Conrad Appel said. Appel and everyone who heard him should have been ashamed, but they weren't, and that's what is wrong in that building, Mann argues.
MAY 20 American Press columnist Jim Beam writes about the budget again here, urging kudos for the House and its efforts to try to fix the budget as opposed to passing on a flawed and messy rubber-stamped document as it usually does. The Senate already is poo-pooing the effort, but instead Senators should be trying to find a way to improve it as well, Beam argues. He also has some predictions in here from LABI and CABL.
MAY 20 Here's a link to the photo gallery from Tulane's graduation this past weekend. Dr. John and Allen Toussaint played together and received honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama was so entranced by their performance he got up from his seat and walked across the stage to stand next to them. He even participated in a second line with his own personal, saffron-colored umbrella. To the graduates, he urged them to think about creating a peaceful, hopeful life and society.
MAY 20 This Picayune story questions the rhetoric of NOLA officials who say the city, aside from having a "murder problem," is safe. The talking points generally are that the criminals are killing each other, but everything else is OK. The police chief there says that even Lafayette is more dangerous than NOLA. But crime experts interviewed here say that NOLA's numbers indicate one of two things: either people are so used to violence they don't report it, or somebody's "fudging the numbers."
MAY 20 The Advocate's Mark Ballard writes about some of the background maneuvering that took place during the development of budget alternatives in the Legislature. From Rep. Joel Robideaux being called a "tax and spend liberal" to robo-call influence, Ballard lets us in on some of the work that happens behind the scenes but usually doesn't make it into the Advocate's daily coverage of the session.
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