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A small fire Monday night on Prytania Street drew a number of firefighters who were quickly able to get the incident under control. The fire broke out around 10 p.m. on Prytania near Soniat. Witness Kurt Fromherz said there were no visible flames, but a “smell of smoke, like an electrical fire.” The cause of the blaze has yet to be disclosed by authorities.
A man walking home from a Prytania Street corner store was attacked and stabbed Thursday evening for apparently no reason, police said, and the attack came so quickly that he was unsure how many people were even involved. The victim had reached the 1300 block of Antonine on his way home about 8:30 p.m. when he was struck from behind, said Sgt. Chris Billiot of the NOPD Second District persons-crimes division. “As far as he knows, someone just attacked him,” Billiot said. “He doesn’t remember them saying anything.”
After the high-intensity tour of music provided by Jazz Fest over the last two weekends, Uptown New Orleans hosts a number of events this weekend centered around other art forms: a film festival, art gallery openings and markets, and book signings. The weeklong Film-o-Rama kicks off Friday at noon at the Prytania Theatre, bringing about 12 hours of independent , foreign and classic film showings to anyone already looking for reprieve from the beginning onslaught of summer blockbusters. Highlights from the first weekend will include a 3-D showing of Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams;” “The People vs George Lucas,” a documentary about Star Wars fans; and the unlikely thriller “Rubber,” about a deadly tire. The visual arts will be on display at both the inaugural Freret Street Gallery Crawl and the monthly O.C. Haley Art Market, and the book lovers will have the opportunity to meet several notable authors, including Freddie Evans, a historian of Congo Square, and Kathryn Stockett of the bestselling novel “The Help.” For complete details and links to these and other events, see our full calendar listings below.
Rene Brunet, the 89-year-old owner of the Prytania Theatre and its gracious doorman, describes growing up in the theater side of the movie business, his hobby of playing the organ, and the Prytania’s place in the world today, in a wide-ranging interview with the website NOLA Defender.
With today’s announcement of this year’s Academy Awards nominees, the Prytania Theatre made an announcement of its own: between now and March 3, the Uptown cinema will be hosting a full slate of Oscar contenders. The “Best Picture Series” is already underway with showings of The King’s Speech, which led the field with 12 nominations. Through the next several weeks, the Black Swan, Oscar-nominated short films, “True Grit” and “The Fighter” will all be shown, the cinema announced.
Investigators released the name of a suspect Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old on Freret Street, and said the same man may have been ambushed by others shortly after the shooting on Freret. William Baham, 25, is wanted on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Errol Meeks, who was gunned down late Monday in front of Friar Tucks bar on Freret. Moments before the shooting, Baham and Meeks spoke “as if they knew each other,” said Sgt. Shaun Ferguson of the NOPD Second District persons-crime division. Meeks was a resident of the Freret neighborhood, and police have two addresses for Baham, one on nearby General Taylor Street in the nearby Milan neighborhood and one on Parc Brittany in New Orleans East.
Attend a Christmas bash, catch up on shopping at the market, or belt out Handel’s Messiah — there’s no shortage of options to get into the holiday spirit this weekend. See below for a snapshot of what’s going on Uptown. Friday
Friday Night Fights, 7-10pm, Freret Street Boxing Gym, Freret and Napoleon. Monthly outdoor boxing match. $15.
An aspiring chef was stabbed just off Prytania and a bank manager was robbed in his car while driving through Fontainebleau in a wave of seemingly unconnected muggings around Uptown New Orleans over the last week, police said Wednesday.
A would-be kidnapper tried to grab a woman off the sidewalk and force her into her car as she walked to work last week a block off of St. Charles, police said. A man also had his wallet forcibly stolen on Magazine Street as he walked home from a bar early Saturday morning, but other than those incidents, police have seen a remarkable recent lull in crime in the NOPD Sixth District, which covers the Garden District, Irish Channel and Central City. In the kidnapping attempt, a woman who lives in Central City was walking to her job at a Central Business District office building about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 4, when she saw a white sedan pass by that she’d seen several times in the area previously, said Sgt.
Two teens have been arrested in an armed robbery outside an Uptown charter high school that served as a prelude to a violent Halloween weekend around the city, police said Thursday. In separate incidents, a man was shot in the Garden District, a woman was robbed of her luxury car in the Milan area, police found a major stash of drug money in Freret, and thefts deemed “crimes of opportunity” saw a surge around Uptown, ranking NOPD officers reported at their weekly meetings Thursday morning. Sci High robbery | The robbery was reported at 4:40 p.m. Friday in the 5600 block of Loyola Avenue, just outside the New Orleans Charter Math and Science High School, police said. Two 17-year-old students, the victim and 17-year-old Ciontray Campbell, were standing on a corner when a third person walked up, said Sgt. Shaun Ferguson of the Second District persons-crimes division.
