Jean-Paul Villere – Page 2 – Uptown Messenger

Jean-Paul Villere: Your 2014 Mardi Gras survival guide — new laws and my Top 20 parade-etiquette rules

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:24 am city government, events, opinion, public safety

Feb 192014

NOPD Sgt. Marc Amos watches the crowd during a pause in the Krewe of Proteus parade in 2012. A number of new laws govern parade-goers this year. (UptownMessenger.com file photo by Robert Morris)

Jean-Paul Villere

Bon to the jour, 2014 Carnival people! You may or may not know that the powers that be — read, your New Orleans City Council — have seen it in their infinite wisdom to make this Mardi Gras season one of change. “How so?” you may ask. That is, if you missed all the fuss last month? Before we roll through my standard top 20 we publish annually, in short here are the new rules and ordinances, with a few editorial embellishments: Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: More broken sidewalks

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 10:41 am city government, opinion

Feb 052014

Jean-Paul Villere

If you’ve never traversed the Crescent City by foot, you are missing out. You can really dig in the cracked pavement and tiered landscape, plus there’s a whole host of scents to engage traveling by bike or car one is likely to miss. Just the other night a group of us walked from Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop over to the Marigny and the wafts of equal parts liquor, urine, and pot made for a less-than-appetizing nasal gumbo. But while one wrestles over the legal and the sanitary, in the French Quarter the street surfaces historically remain level. To say the least, it’s refreshing, especially if one is familiar with any other stretch within New Orleans where the mature oaks that pepper the streets over time have broken new ground, so to speak, giving the citizenry, say it with me: more broken sidewalks. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Kings and Queens of Leon

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:14 am opinion, weather

Jan 292014

Jean-Paul Villere

PREDICTION: Nine months from now the New Orleans metro area will be flush with newborns courtesy one winter storm Leon. Grumble, groan, no, you say? Prove me wrong, people, prove me wrong. With residents’ fave go-to spots for music, grub, and beverages largely on hold paired with a do-not-drive announcement unless vitally important, do the math. You’re off work, you can’t go anywhere, and there are only so many shows you can binge watch. And I’m guessing with the masses clamoring for foodstuffs at the nearby grocery, they did not also take time to sweep the birth control from the shelves. So congrats y’all, it’s a storm baby! Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Goodbye, Frank Davis

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:50 am opinion

Dec 112013

Jean-Paul Villere

I woke up yesterday morning to social media posts that Frank Davis had passed, and I kind of sunk. While I did not personally know Mr. Davis, we — you and I — as a collective viewing audience certainly knew him, or at least his highly personalized way of storytelling over the decades. As a species, I think we can easily take for granted the things and people around us that populate our visual landscape, presuming they’ll always be in sight. Except they never are. And when the periphery changes and we lose one of our voices, it’s hard not to pause and reflect on what we’ll be missing. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Dig dogs? Time to obey

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 10:35 am health, opinion, politics, public safety, sports and recreation

Nov 062013

A sign at Coliseum Park reminds dog owners of laws requiring them to keep their pets leashed and pick up after them. (photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

I am a cat person, but we remain feline less for the moment. My oldest developed an allergy recently, and I chose my offspring over my rat decapitator we had had since a wee kitten rescued post-K, all mangy and feral. Not a tough call, but have you ever been brought a headless rodent with its noggin neatly next to its lifeless body? It’s impressive. And repulsive. And in short, quite a skill. Her name was Rita (yes, named after the storm – she did have a sister named Katrina who died a few years ago), and like most cats, self sufficient and less than encourageable; such are these creatures. And therefore and in my experience quite unlike the other preferred domesticated pet: your household dog. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Groceries don’t make themselves

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:24 am business, food and drink, opinion

Oct 302013

Jean-Paul Villere

Among the plethora of regional “only in New Orleans” who dats, where yats, and duck fats, what makes one feel more like a local than the timeless event of gathering foodstuffs we commonly call “makin’ groceries”? I put the origin to my French-immersed 11-year-old, and she walked away perplexed, but more like, “duh.” In French “to buy” translates as acheter (ash-atay), but we are talking academic-France French here, right? So you don’t simply buy your food, you of course “do the market” or faire la marche’. Ergo “to do” and parallel that in “to make” and, voila, one makes one’s groceries. One tween eye roll later, I knew I was on to something. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Countless matinees

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:43 am opinion

Oct 232013

Jean-Paul Villere

One of the earliest memories I have of my father remains a wrestling match with a Christmas tree, trying to persuade it to stand just so. Come to think of it, that was actually an annual event. Flying nettles, sweaty brows, and errant gruntled pseudo-curses on par with A Christmas Story Darren McGavin battles with the home boiler. Years go by, decades really, a couple of kids get raised, a couple of marriages pass on, and in 2010 the world of medicine gave my pop a terminal diagnosis, only he proved them wrong. He’ll tell you he should be dead, but today he turns 73. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Requiem for a Dream Boat

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:44 am blight and demolition, business, opinion

Oct 162013

The former Dreamboat. (photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

On a sleepy stretch at Loyola and Third in the heart of Central City amid a myriad of churches (some with an active congregation, some not so much), there sits a veritable historic housing preservationist’s dream, a 19th Century relic in what would otherwise appear to might have been a corner grocery or barroom. But not so fast, judges of book by covers! Look closer at the empirical data and ask some of the older area locals, and this hiding-in-plain-sight wood frame structure was by all accounts (or those willing to provide accounts) once upon a time a place unequivocally identified as the neighborhood brothel, dba The Dream Boat Inn. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Sole rebels

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:36 am opinion, sports and recreation

Oct 022013

My kids’ bare feet at the playspot (photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

I brought my kids to the park yesterday. As the temps are getting cooler and it’s a little overcast and drizzly this week, their boundless energy seems more so, and invariably the question arises: “Daddy, can I take my shoes off?” Okay, they’re 2 and 4, and yes, they should be asking “may I,” but no matter how hard you try, such corrective linguistic preferences breeze in and out of tiny ears, especially when all they want is to get toes to ground. I almost always answer “yes.” Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: The case for the ‘third place’

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:38 am business, city government, food and drink, opinion, politics

Sep 252013

Jean-Paul Villere

As I wrestled over what I might pen this week I read over the transcript from yesterday’s CPC meeting regarding the rezoning request of 4877 Laurel so that it might become realized as a coffeehouse. And when I read the ridiculous decision crafted by the commission, my inner green apron got ruffled. That the CPC voted against a rezoning by 6 to 1 and with very little if any support from attendees on the matter, frankly baffles me. But then we are talking about a government entity in the City of New Orleans; maybe I shouldn’t be surprised? Le sigh. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Fancy a ferry landing?

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 7:37 am city government, opinion

Sep 182013

The Jackson Avenue ferry landing. (photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

The Jackson Avenue ferry landing could be yours for just a couple of million dollars. (photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

Landmarks loom in high supply the Crescent City over as the landscape tends to change largely on a glacial pace. Many distinctive structures over decades have transformed from their intended utilitarian to cozy home spaces, mostly commonly seen in the ever rarer still in commerce corner grocery turned primary residence for an owner occupant. At auction tomorrow, if you’ve got the coin to spare, you may bid in what some may call a prime example of notable, public use spaces. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you for your consideration: the Jackson Avenue Ferry Landing. Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Breaking Bids — Navigating the Orleans Parish Tax Sale

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 12:04 pm business, city government, opinion

Sep 112013

The house at 1016 North Roman in Treme had already been bid to 1 percent halfway through the first day of the three-day auction. (Photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

Whether you realize it or not, now – right now – and through Thursday evening at 8 PM, the almost annual Orleans Parish Tax Sale is taking place via CivicSource.com. It’s a big deal for many reasons, but also it can be rather fascinating if you’re a fan of Crescent City dwellings as well as archaic governmental proceedings. Here’s why: you bid down.

It’s the same dollar amount to all bidders, but you bid down percentage of ownership. Therefore conceivably one willing to purchase 1% of any given property’s tax year(s) becomes the de facto winning bidder and cannot be outbid, however they are settling for the smallest possible amount of ownership. Very New Orleans, right? Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: The 32-week itch

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:16 am city government, opinion

Sep 042013

Power lines emerge from a thicket of branches as an Entergy worker repairs the broken power line. (Photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

New Orleans: if you live here, you’re married to it. Along with the betrothed come all the perks of city government with assorted departments therein, and Parks & Parkways, I’m looking at you. This is me, index and middle fingers extended, pointing horizontally into my eyes and singularly redirecting index finger in your general direction, P & P Music Factory. I. Am watching. You. You have 32 weeks to trim the tree across the street from me. Do it before and I’ll give you a gold star and curse less over the amount of property tax I pay annually. Do it a day later than yesterday, I will channel the spirit of Pulp Fiction‘s Sam Jackson’s Jules before he had his religious awakening, and I will figuratively eat your Big Kahuna burger. Why? Because of the time frame you conjured, a turnaround time of supposedly and approximately 7 1/2 months before an issue gains resolution. Only I won’t be saying “This is a tasty burger!” Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Annunciation ain’t just a street in New Orleans

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:18 am opinion

Aug 282013

Jean-Paul Villere

With the annual replenishment of the Crescent City’s back to school population each August (read: freshmen, grad / med / law students, and transfers), my ears perk up over the newer voices one encounters and how they finesse our local vocab. My audio focal point will forever be the new crop of WTUL deejays who unmistakably take the crown for what I can only describe as interpretive “annunciation.” Between the butchering of street names, there are always the local musicians’ monikers that invariably twist tongues. I mean, is Torkanowsky really that hard to correctly pronounce? Le sigh. Let’s go over a few basics on the rue tip: Continue reading »

Jean-Paul Villere: Freret’s white whale

Posted by UptownMessenger.com at 11:22 am blight and demolition, business, opinion

Aug 212013

A surveyor outside the Barreca building on Freret Street. (photo by Jean-Paul Villere for UptownMessenger.com)

Jean-Paul Villere

PROLOGUE: In 2009 on Freret St at an open house I held, a septuagenarian realtor I can only imagine being more local than local sneered in my general direction as she exited, “Freret’s never coming back.” Then being a believer myself, I felt at once insulted and repulsed, as if she’d purposely urinated on the floor and thought nothing of it. After all, in many ways I came to feel it was her generation that had largely abandoned the city proper, swapping distinctive neighborhoods for blanched strip malls and multi-laned thoroughfares, leaving behind a devil-may-care swath of once vibrant stretches, the very core that the surrounding region’s commerce and population sprang from. Now, in 2013, Freret crowns front pages, but without question there’s still much to be done. Continue reading »

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