Browsing All Posts By

ejensen

Calling All Creatives: Sub ‘Zine HEAT ISSUE

May 1, 2012 By ejensen In Announcements

The dog days are coming.

Sticky afternoons lounging on porches, swampy bike rides through the Quarter, steam rising up from sunbaked sidewalks: August in New Orleans burns with a heat unlike any other.

Notes from the underground

The first edition of Sub ‘Zine was a love letter to the Crescent City: how it lulls us with romance, makes us blush, challenges us to flourish and even breaks our hearts. This inaugural collection of poetry, flash fiction, photography and art was an ode to living life down the alleyways and on the front stoops of our regal mistress.

New Orleans is a city full of secret scribes, underground painters and blossoming artists who deserve a wider audience for their work. Sub looks to be an outlet for the unsung heroes of the arts here in New Orleans to find their voice, celebrate their brilliance and begin to build a stronger creative community.

What gets you hot?

The second installment of Sub ‘Zine—set for release this August—will feature work from artists of all varieties about heat in their New Orleans lives. Whether you’ve penned a story of a passionate Chartres Street love affair, concocted a five-alarm recipe for jambalaya, or snapped photos of kids cooling off in fire hydrant floods, we want you to share your visions of what sets this city on fire.

Submissions will be accepted from May 1, 2012 until June 15, 2012. We’re specifically looking for innovative approaches to old visual art forms (i.e., painting, photography, etc.), short and thoughtful literary vignettes (poems and flash fiction of 250 words or less) and anything that takes our breath away: be outlandish, dazzle us, make it raw and beautiful.

Send your submissions to hellosubzine@gmail.com.

And for further inspiration, check out the first issue here. About 40 paper copies are hidden throughout the city – keep your eyes peeled.

Top 5 Spots to Get Wet & Stay Cool

301477_577995250866_14502917_32338104_6354008_n

April 11, 2012 By ejensen In Culture

Bring on the iced tea and straw hats, y’all, because it is HOT AGAIN. And it’s only going to get hotter. While hydration is paramount and air conditioning is definitely not optional, there is nothing quite as effective – and enjoyable – as submerging yourself fully in some good old H20. Here are my top picks in and around New Orleans for living the life aquatic:

1. The Country Club

The truest spirit of the mullet manifests itself in this fine dining in-the-front, nude swimming in-the-back Bywater establishment. The pool area is way less scuzzy than you might imagine – the facilities are actually quite beautiful, although certainly not a stop on the list for Grandma’s next visit. Enjoy a frosty beverage at the cabana bar, cool off in the pool, or relax in the large sauna. Just leave your prude pants at the door – the Country Club is best experienced with an open mind. And if you need help loosening up, Saturday and Sunday brunch offers $10 bottomless mimosas.

634 Louisa Street. Pool passes range from $8-15, depending on time and day; clothing optional.

2. Hotel Pools

For the sake of keeping these sacred places accessible, I will not name names. But ask around and you’ll discover that many hotel pools in New Orleans are extremely easy to sneak into. Not only will you be soaking up rays in a super nice pool, you’ll also be drinking in the sweet sinfulness of being somewhere you’re not supposed to be. I’m not saying it’s not illegal…but I’m not saying it’s not awesome, either.

3. Blue Bayou

This Baton Rouge water park boasts five of the world’s largest water slides, including the super-badass VooDoo and gargantuan Azuka. The trip north and price of admission is worth the aquatic smorgasbord that awaits you, with everything from mega-slides to a wave pool and a lazy river. Concession stands offering fried chicken and Dippin’ Dots round out this blast from teenage past (as do the actual teenagers who populate Blue Bayou in abundance). But you ignore those belly-button pierced ghosts of age bracket past. We all deserve to shoot screaming through a giant tube propelled by hundreds of gallons of water every once in awhile! So treat yourself.

18142 Perkins Road, Baton Rouge, LA 70810. $36.99 grants access to Blue Bayou and amusement park Dixie Landin’.

4. Wayne’s World Tubing

Ah, tubing. Nothing is quite as fine as lying belly up on a giant yellow flotation device, guzzling cheap beer, and forgetting your obligations to civilized humanity for a few hours as you float through bitchin’ natural beauty. It’s also a relatively inexpensive way to become one with water, which is what sweltering summers in Louisiana require of us. Wayne’s World is my favorite tubing spot – reliable, flexible, and on the incomparable Bogue Chitto River. Happy floating!

11697 Hunt Rd. Franklinton, LA 70438. (985) 795-2004. $15 tubing trip, $5 for a tube to float your ice chest.

5. Audubon Park Pool and Cool Zoo

If you end up on babysitting duty this summer, load up the little rascals and haul ‘em out to Cool Zoo at Audubon Zoo. It is a rad water park for kids, and they allegedly have beer in the food court – can you say Best Day Ever? Audubon Park also has a free, public access swimming pool that can be either awesome or overcrowded depending on the day. Just do a little scoping and planning to ensure optimal enjoyment of this gratis watering hole.

Cool Zoo admission: $7 for non-members, $5 for members. The Whitney M. Young pool is not open yet for the warm season; check the website for updates.

Bar Focus: Carousel Bar

April 10, 2012 By ejensen In Food and Beverage

By: Emily Jensen

Along the entire circumference of the Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone, a gleaming 25-seat contraption that rotates on 2,000 large steel rollers around a handsomely stocked liquor shelf, there is not a single gap. Which begs the question…how do the bartenders get out?

“We don’t,” our bespectacled barkeep shrugs from behind the slick black counter. For the most part, until their shift is over, they are trapped under the glittering lights of the circus-inspired structure, with a 1/4-horsepower motor thrumming below their feet. At the end of the night they just hop right over the bar, which has hosted the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner since its installation in 1949.

The unusual entrapment of these expert mixologists deepens the general sense of time-warp hanging over the Carousel Bar. It’s not just the old-school drink menu (whose highlights include the classic Vieux Carre, invented by a Carousel bartender, and the surprisingly not-gross Brandy Milk Punch) or the live jazz echoing in from the adjacent lounge that distorts ones sense of time at this French Quarter bar – it must be, more than anything, the heady mystique of circling the room involuntarily while drinking strong cocktails. It’s a strange, wonderful feeling; and knowing that literary legends once took the same bizarre ride will make you feel unreasonably cultured and intellectual. This one ought to be on every New Orleanian’s bucket list.

The Carousel Bar is located to the right of the main entrance at Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal Street.

P.S. Check it out back in 1968 before its remodel.

Foburg Fest Party Photos

March 16, 2012 By ejensen In Culture, Events, Music, Muthaf*kin Party Pics

The moments when I feel most in awe of the magic that is New Orleans always take me by surprise. I’ll be simply going about my day when suddenly something extraordinary happens – a second line interrupts my dull commute home; I wake up to a brass band outside my door; a mighty, jaw-dropping thunderstorm rattles me into clarity. Those moments make you stop and appreciate why you decided to move to (or remain in) this city in the first place. I had one such moment at the WTUL/InvadeNOLA Foburg Fest showcase party, which featured an insane array of great music, both local and from around the country. The space where our all-day onslaught of tunes was held, Michalopoulos Studio on Elysian Fields, is one of those NOLA gems makes you feel like a roughneck teen breaking into an abandoned warehouse – its dusty exposed walls are adorned with giant torch-bearing hands, and window frames hang eerily from the rafters. It was a sublime spot to soak up some live shows, and I fell head over heels for Tennessee’s Carolina Story, a husband and wife Americana duo who gave me nonstop chills through their whole set. Check out their video at the end of this post, and peep some of my photos from the first part of the day below. I didn’t get to catch every act, the ones I did see were pure sonic euphoria. If you didn’t make it out this year, don’t miss the next time around!

My Experience at NOLA Fashion Week

March 16, 2012 By ejensen In Events, Fashion

People who walk around in high heels amaze me. I’ve stood just under 5’8 since high school, so I never really learned how to do it and the very concept BLOWS my mind. Especially here in New Orleans, where walking down a sidewalk can be akin to off-roading at a construction site. So imagine my endless amazement at NOLA Fashion Week, where audience members and models alike strutted around in ridiculously high heels everywhere from slippery marble floors to French Quarter cobblestone. Planted firmly in my cowboy boots, I just stared in awe.

I have to admit, I’ll never understand runway fashion. As much as a dig channeling rock icons and bygone eras in my everyday wardrobe, I don’t think that proper high fashion looks are my jam. I’m pretty utilitarian when it comes to apparel – I’m a girl who wears shorts under dresses in case I encounter an unexpected set of monkey bars, and Chuck Taylor is still my shoe designer of choice. But I loved checking out the fashion shows this last week – the three shows I saw at Martine Chaisson Gallery in the CBD were a gorgeous peek at the world of classy fashionistas. Loretta Jane was my favorite – the label was started in Nashville, and when its creator Kelli Cooper fell in love with New Orleans in 2010 she decided to migrate here permanently. Her clothes have a fantastic old Southern vibe, and super wearable. “I want girls to feel confident and look effortlessly chic and sexy when they wear my clothes” she told NOLA Fashion Week reps, “and I absolutely love seeing someone take a piece from my collection and put their own unique spin on it.” Gotta love that!

AVEDA’s Eco Fashion Day in Washington Artillery Park was super rad and definitely more my style – a live DJ pumped vintage tunes while models showed off an outrageously cool collection of 70′s inspired garb. Most of the gallery below features those pieces, all from local vendors like H.I.P. Vintage and Time Warp. The bold colors, deliciously obnoxious patterns, and unusual textures made this show edgy and fun. Plus, the location was amazing, with the Mississippi River on one side of us and the St. Louis Cathedral on the other. Attendees received reusable shopping baskets filled with treats from Whole Foods – chocolate, energy bars, organic dish soap samples, and more. Definitely the highlight of my Fashion Week.