Man shot to death at South Claiborne car wash

A man was shot death Monday afternoon at the Pelican Pointe Car Wash on South Claiborne Avenue, the New Orleans Police Department reported. Bruce Gaten, 31, was in a car at the business in the 3700 block of South Claiborne at 3:19 p.m when a vehicle parked next to him. A gunman got out of the vehicle and fired multiple gunshots, police said. Gaten died at the scene. Further information was not immediately available.

Police arrest one suspect, seek another in string of armed carjackings

The NOPD has arrested Joshua Dean, 18, and has obtained an arrest warrant for Robert Garrett, 23, in the ongoing investigation of multiple armed carjacking incidents in Uptown neighborhoods and in the Navarre neighborhood and Jefferson Parish. NOPD Second District detectives determined that four recent armed carjacking incidents were related, three in the Uptown area. Two occurred in Carrollton on Feb. 9, one in the 8100 block of Green Street, targeting two women delivering food. It was quickly followed by another on Cohn and Pine streets.

New wine shop from Second Vine Wine proposed for Magazine Street

The stretch of Magazine Street between Gen. Pershing and Milan streets has seen a lot of comings and goings of businesses through the years, and even more recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One new business that plans to open in the next few months is Second Vine Wine, in the space that most recently housed the Claudia Croazzo clothing store, at 4210-14 Magazine St. If the wine shop’s name is familiar, it’s because Second Vine Wine was previously located in the Marigny Triangle. It closed last year in March, just after the pandemic and lockdowns began. But you can’t keep a wine lover and educator away from Bacchus’ call, and Troy Gant, one of the previous Second Vine Wine owners, is harvesting a new wine shop.

Man killed in Central City double shooting

A shooting left one man dead and another wounded Saturday (Feb. 13) evening in Central City, the New Orleans Police Department reported. At 5:08 p.m., NOPD Sixth District officers were called to Washington and Loyola avenues for an aggravated battery by shooting. The officers found two men suffering with gunshot wounds.va
One victim, Bryan Veal, died at the scene. Veal was 26.

Viewpoint: Lusher School leaders turn their backs on the need to remove a racist legacy

By Corinne A. Williams, guest columnist

On Jan. 1, New Orleans transformed one of its many relics of the Confederacy into a new monument for justice and excellence. When Jefferson Davis Parkway was renamed for Dr. Norman C. Francis, we cast off a president of the Confederacy for a president of a historically black university, a purveyor of educational equity and a living civil rights legend. In this moment, New Orleans took the time to register that white supremacy and sedition have no place on one of our most prominent parkways. For New Orleans — one of the Blackest cities in the United States, held together by the culture of Black people and kept afloat by a tourism industry that relies on the labor of Black people — it was a wrong made right.

Nola Flora, Peony in full bloom on Magazine Street

Both Nola Flora and Peony Fine Clothing on Magazine Street have incorporated large flowers in their storefront floats this Carnival season. 

The already festive building at 4536 Magazine St. where Nola Flora is located is eye-catching enough, but it just got enhanced. Their storefront float theme is the shop’s name and it features giant flowers and a flowering vine going up the front and side of the building. Nola Flora is located on the Uptown parade route, so when parades were cancelled for this year, it was  truly discouraging. But being good New Orleanians, they took the bad stuff that came their way, covered it in glitter and kept on going.

How Ceaux’s Carnival poster series reflects the Black Mardi Gras experience

Every year since 2016, New Orleans-born-and-raised multimedia artist Courtney “Ceaux” Buckley, of Axiom Gallery on Freret Street, has been painting vibrant and detailed posters that depict the Black Mardi Gras experience. Through this annual poster series, Buckley said, he not only aims to provide a representation of the Black experience during Carnival season, but that he also intends to normalize it. “I don’t think we should always be presented like a big deal,” he said. “These things go on all the time, every year, it’s recurring.”

He adds that it is important for Black people from New Orleans to see representations of their culture in this more generalized way opposed to only packaged news stories and documentaries. Inspiration and communal Black experiences

Buckley said that the poster series was inspired by childhood photos lost in the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina.