Jean-Paul Villere
I ride my bike. A lot. I always have. When I was kid I used to ride all over Beaumont, Texas, the towniest of towns. I collected comics then, and there were few places that offered the medium. I’d hit Parkdale Mall, or I’d venture out to mom and pop shops like Mike’s Coins & Books in old town. Between there, the mall bookstores and Jack’s Pak-It I fed my comics craving well enough, and years later we finally got an honest-to-goodness comics shop, Comics Kingdom. But as a kid we never conceived of the monolithic book emporiums that now litter America’s landscape. And litter in the literal sense. Some are closing. With more to follow. Big, big boxed behemoths once bustling with beaming readers, now lay in wait for the next highest and best use of the space. Continue reading »
If you know anything about New Orleans in its post-Katrina journey you should at least have heard something – or some things – about Freret Street. Good or bad. Beyond bisecting the city from north and south as a fairly well-traveled thoroughfare, it’s been in the press for various reasons, too. There’s blight, but new businesses keep popping up. Shootings happen on occasion. Monthly there’s a market. And on. But what you might not know is that starting this Friday night, April 1st, a veritable Freret extravaganza is set to unfold over 24 hours of relatively epic proportions. No, this isn’t some sort of April Fool’s prank. It’s all a part of the engine that has been pushing this “little corridor that could” from relative obscurity to well, to quote Beck, “where it’s at.” And it starts with a delightful evening of (wait for it) – - – boxing.