Freret Street helps revive festival season on Saturday. Here’s the music lineup.

On Saturday (March 26), the Freret Street Festival will take over the popular restaurant and entertainment corridor. The six-block street party features 18 bands music on three stages (see the lineup below). The headliners include Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band, Squirrel Queen, Erica Falls and Kermit Ruffins & the BBQ Swingers. Alongside the 46 brick-and-mortar restaurants, bars and shops on Freret, the free festival includes a food court featuring top local chefs and more than 200 arts and crafts vendors. Plus there’s a children’s area with inflatables, a petting zoo, alligator meet and greets, arts and crafts, clowns and stilt walkers.

Magasin Vietnamese Café closes on Magazine, joins Mukbang on Oak Street

Magasin Vietnamese Café recently closed its Magazine Street location, but the Magasin egg rolls, pho, vermicelli and other menu favorites can now be found on Oak Street. 

The owners of Magasin, formerly at 4201 Magazine St., and Mukbang Seafood at 8312 Oak St. have merged the two restaurants. The Oak Street restaurant’s menu will pull double duty and offer Mukbang’s buttery boiled seafood and Magasin’s Vietnamese favorites.

Neighborhood Cares initiative kicks off in Central City

With music ringing out from speakers on the basketball court, tasty food from local eateries Peewee’s Crabcakes and Heard Dat Kitchen and a variety of local institutions with tables full of swag, the city’s first Neighborhood Cares initiative event brought the party to the Keller Community Center.

The event organized by Hands On New Orleans and the Mayor’s Neighborhood Engagement Office kicked off the initiative that is part vaccine drive, part job and resource fair, and part neighborhood cleanup. 

Woman found dead on Central City sidewalk

A woman was killed in Central City early Saturday (March 19), the New Orleans Police Department reported. At about 2:45 a.m., NOPD Sixth District officers went to the 3000 block of South Saratoga Street in response to a call. They found an unresponsive woman on the sidewalk who had suffered a gunshot wound. Emergency Medical Service workers pronounced her dead at the scene. On March 21, the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office identified the victim as 35-year-old Ciara Bullock.

Passenger dies, driver injured when car crashes into floodwall in Lower Garden District

The New Orleans Police Department is investigating a fatal vehicle crash that occurred Friday night (March 18) at the floodwall in the Lower Garden District that left one person deceased and a second injured. At about 10:15 p.m., NOPD Traffic Division officers responded to a vehicle crash near Tchoupitoulas and Felicity streets. They determined that a black BMW sedan was traveling east on Tchoupitoulas when it left the roadway and struck the nearby floodwall, coming to rest in the grass near the intersection of Tchoupitoulas and Felicity. Investigators determined there were two occupants in the vehicle at the time of the crash. The passenger in the vehicle, an adult female, was declared dead at the scene.

Where to score some freshly boiled crawfish

March and April are prime time for crawfish in Louisiana. The best way to enjoy them is to gather your friends and boil your own, but sometimes you just need a fix. So we’ve put together this list of neighborhood spots where you can get your fill of good boiled mudbugs.