Latest news with #BigEasy
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
L.A.'s bar scene runneth over. 21 new spots to check out ASAP
In L.A.'s bars you can find it all — and with the city's latest openings, you're going to find a lot of fun. Now you can enjoy baijiu punch and dim sum in a space inspired by Chinese apothecaries and family recipes, experience matcha in martini form, slip into what feels like a raucous downtown house party (red Solo cups included), and sip a rainbow of margaritas from a team that landed on the World's 50 Best Bars are rooftops prime for sunshine sipping near the beach, technique-driven cocktail destinations with sultry playlists, and bars with food so good it's tough to say what's better: the bites or the beverages. In the last few months and at the tail end of 2024 a number of seasoned vets also branched out with new bars: The Thunderbolt team launched a neon-disco drinking den, pasta impresario Evan Funke debuted a cocktail lounge inside Mother Wolf restaurant, and the Little Jewel of New Orleans owners leaned into their Big Easy ode with potent hurricanes and charbroiled oysters. Here are 21 of L.A.'s best new places to grab a drink, with a vibe — and cocktail — for everyone.
The Guardian
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘There's New Orleans before and after': revisiting Hurricane Katrina in a new docuseries
Earlier this year, NFL fans from across the country descended on New Orleans for the Super Bowl. But even as the Big Easy rushed to put its best face forward for the big game and quickly turn the page from a New Year's Eve attack on its famed tourist district, there was no way of concealing the derelict homes, watermarked buildings and other ravages of Hurricane Katrina. 'On the surface, New Orleans is still the New Orleans of our imagination, where there's Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and you're drinking in the middle of the day outside,' says the Oscar-nominated director Traci A Curry. 'But for the people of this place, the people who know it, there's New Orleans before Katrina and after Katrina. A lot of us who experienced it as spectators think of it as something that happened to America – and it wasn't.' Curry's solo directorial debut, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, re-examines the epic storm 20 years later. The five-part series, which was made for National Geographic and counts Ryan and Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian as producers, isn't a requiem in the vein of When the Levees Broke – Spike Lee's superlative series that was just one of many works that informed this project – Curry says. Rather, it's a tragedy thriller told through forensic analysis. The biggest jump scares come in the hindsight revelations. The first episode provides a refresher on Hurricane Pam – the multi-agency, worst-case scenario planning exercise that was conducted a year before Katrina and essentially predicted everything that would happen, down to the reports of violence breaking out across the city. In Race Against Time, the clock runs down quickly while counting down the hours until the storm makes landfall, and then ticks slowly on for days as storm victims and lifesavers wait for 'the cavalry to come'. While bingeing the five-hour series, a two-year production effort, I found myself edging from horrified to heartbroken to furious as opportunistic politicking and rashes of misinformation sabotaged rescue efforts time and again. With a mix of home video and archival video footage (Curry is a former cable TV producer), the docuseries confidently stitches together a range of perspectives on the mushrooming calamity – from city leaders to emergency managers to residents who saw their lives and loved ones washed away. 'Initially our team combed through the hundreds of hours of archival material, identifying Katrina survivors who we found compelling, in the hopes that we might track them down,' Curry says. 'There were quite a few people we were unable to find, and some we found only to realize they had passed away.' Viewers will be heavily invested in the plight of Shelton Alexander – a spoken word poet who rode out the storm inside the Superdome and recorded the entire experience; a lot of his digicam footage made the final cut. 'I was fully equipped, with three batteries charged up,' he says. 'It was one of those things where I was like, I don't know what's about to happen, but I do know the water is going to come.' Race Against Time is not a story told from the top down. Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, who was made a scapegoat for the Katrina aftermath, was one high-level authority figure that the production team pursued for the film – but ultimately he declined to be interviewed. Also left out is Kanye West's George W Bush slam or other impressions from pop culture that might reframe the disaster through that lens. Any digression in that direction, tempting as it surely must have been, probably would have distracted from Race Against Time's central thesis: that Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were born from a series of compounding failures, starting with the failure to protect Louisiana's coastline. Ivor van Heerden, a respected marine scientist who warned the public and government officials about the region's potential for a devastating hurricane long before Katrina hit, blames the booming oil and gas industry for hollowing out the wooded wetlands that once gave New Orleans some natural cover. That left the city's levee system, the slapdash work of the US army corps of engineers, to absorb the brunt of the wind and storm surge. But long before those barriers gave way to river and lake water that wound up submerging 80% of New Orleans, Nagin could have helped himself and so many others by not waiting until the 11th hour to evacuate the city – essentially leaving New Orleans' many elderly, infirm and poor residents scrambling. And yet: as shockingly bad as Nagin was in the moment, he still has nothing on Mike Brown, the smug face of the inept federal response. In one damning email chain unearthed in the series, it's revealed that Brown was literally dining out in Baton Rouge while storm victims and first responders went hungry. Worse, Brown had the nerve to relate his frustrations about New Orleans evacuees contributing to long restaurant wait times and local traffic. Twenty years on, there's still no forgiving Brown – but Race Against Time does extend a measure of grace to some Katrina crisis managers. Police superintendent Eddie Compass certainly didn't help the situation by telling the media that snipers were shooting at rescue helicopters. But even that huge blunder becomes somewhat easier to appreciate once you see Compass himself as storm victim who was only reacting to the game of telephone that disrupted the information chain when the storm knocked out power throughout the city. 'One of the things I said to the team early on is that we really want to make sure we approach everyone as a human being in the series,' Curry says. 'By the time we get to episode four, there's a lot of state abuse of force and violence against citizens.' Curry also goes to lengths to show how the Katrina narrative became perverted. Many TV news outlets covered the fallout from Bourbon Street and waited dutifully for the scenes to snap into focus. When their cameras picked up on people breaking into stores for food, clothes and other supplies, Katrina went from being a human story about an unfathomable crisis on American soil to an excuse for Brown and right-leaning commentators to scold Black New Orleanians for looting businesses and damaging property. Desperation that seemed so palpable to those watching from afar was somehow lost on the actual news gatherers who should know it when they see it. 'There's a clip I think in episode four that I remember watching in real time of Wolf Blitzer as images of masses of Black people [are on screen] and he goes, 'They're so poor. They're so Black.' And yes, there were a lot of poor, Black people – but it just felt so dehumanizing and just deindividuated Black suffering. I really wanted to dismantle that, like, no, these are individuals with a life, with a story, with family, with feelings, who experienced a loss.' Race Against Time doesn't turn away from strong imagery. There are shots of lifeless bodies and talk of dying babies, but none of it is ever offered up for entertainment's sake – hardly a given in the documentary game these days. 'NatGeo was mindful that staying through five episodes can be a big ask for viewers,' Curry says. 'But overall they were very supportive of my intention to tell the story in a way that did not feel exploitative of the Katrina survivors or sensationalize the story in any way.' Eerily, the clock doesn't stop running once Race Against Time is through. The final episode is careful to point out the welter of climate crises that have continued to strike the US since Katrina's passing, and even includes footage from the recent Los Angeles wildfires taken by a producer who lost her home. Each disaster is a reminder of not only how ill-prepared we are for such events, still, but also of how hesitant we remain to reckon with the root causes that are only going to make future weather catastrophes that much more devastating – especially in Black and low-income communities, which are still suffering in the aftermath of Katrina. 'I hope this series makes us realize the urgency of recognizing that these things are going to continue to happen,' Curry says. 'I know this is sort of a dirty word these days, but we need to think about equity in the way we approach preparation for disasters. Because if we center the needs of the most vulnerable people, it's going to help everybody.' Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premieres on 27 July on National Geographic and will be available on Disney+ and Hulu afterward This article was amended on 28 July 2025 to correct the name of one of the film's producers. He is Sev Ohanian, not Alexis Ohanian as stated in an earlier version.
The Guardian
27-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘There's New Orleans before and after': revisiting Hurricane Katrina in a new docuseries
Earlier this year, NFL fans from across the country descended on New Orleans for the Super Bowl. But even as the Big Easy rushed to put its best face forward for the big game and quickly turn the page from a New Year's Eve attack on its famed tourist district, there was no way of concealing the derelict homes, watermarked buildings and other ravages of Hurricane Katrina. 'On the surface, New Orleans is still the New Orleans of our imagination, where there's Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and you're drinking in the middle of the day outside,' says the Oscar-nominated director Traci A Curry. 'But for the people of this place, the people who know it, there's New Orleans before Katrina and after Katrina. A lot of us who experienced it as spectators think of it as something that happened to America – and it wasn't.' Curry's solo directorial debut, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, re-examines the epic storm 20 years later. The five-part series, which was made for National Geographic and counts Ryan and Zinzi Coogler and Alexis Ohanian as producers, isn't a requiem in the vein of When the Levees Broke – Spike Lee's superlative series that was just one of many works that informed this project – Curry says. Rather, it's a tragedy thriller told through forensic analysis. The biggest jump scares come in the hindsight revelations. The first episode provides a refresher on Hurricane Pam – the multi-agency, worst-case scenario planning exercise that was conducted a year before Katrina and essentially predicted everything that would happen, down to the reports of violence breaking out across the city. In Race Against Time, the clock runs down quickly while counting down the hours until the storm makes landfall, and then ticks slowly on for days as storm victims and lifesavers wait for 'the cavalry to come'. While bingeing the five-hour series, a two-year production effort, I found myself edging from horrified to heartbroken to furious as opportunistic politicking and rashes of misinformation sabotaged rescue efforts time and again. With a mix of home video and archival video footage (Curry is a former cable TV producer), the docuseries confidently stitches together a range of perspectives on the mushrooming calamity – from city leaders to emergency managers to residents who saw their lives and loved ones washed away. 'Initially our team combed through the hundreds of hours of archival material, identifying Katrina survivors who we found compelling, in the hopes that we might track them down,' Curry says. 'There were quite a few people we were unable to find, and some we found only to realize they had passed away.' Viewers will be heavily invested in the plight of Shelton Alexander – a spoken word poet who rode out the storm inside the Superdome and recorded the entire experience; a lot of his digicam footage made the final cut. 'I was fully equipped, with three batteries charged up,' he says. 'It was one of those things where I was like, I don't know what's about to happen, but I do know the water is going to come.' Race Against Time is not a story told from the top down. Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, who was made a scapegoat for the Katrina aftermath, was one high-level authority figure that the production team pursued for the film – but ultimately he declined to be interviewed. Also left out is Kanye West's George W Bush slam or other impressions from pop culture that might reframe the disaster through that lens. Any digression in that direction, tempting as it surely must have been, probably would have distracted from Race Against Time's central thesis: that Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were born from a series of compounding failures, starting with the failure to protect Louisiana's coastline. Ivor van Heerden, a respected marine scientist who warned the public and government officials about the region's potential for a devastating hurricane long before Katrina hit, blames the booming oil and gas industry for hollowing out the wooded wetlands that once gave New Orleans some natural cover. That left the city's levee system, the slapdash work of the US army corps of engineers, to absorb the brunt of the wind and storm surge. But long before those barriers gave way to river and lake water that wound up submerging 80% of New Orleans, Nagin could have helped himself and so many others by not waiting until the 11th hour to evacuate the city – essentially leaving New Orleans' many elderly, infirm and poor residents scrambling. And yet: as shockingly bad as Nagin was in the moment, he still has nothing on Mike Brown, the smug face of the inept federal response. In one damning email chain unearthed in the series, it's revealed that Brown was literally dining out in Baton Rouge while storm victims and first responders went hungry. Worse, Brown had the nerve to relate his frustrations about New Orleans evacuees contributing to long restaurant wait times and local traffic. Twenty years on, there's still no forgiving Brown – but Race Against Time does extend a measure of grace to some Katrina crisis managers. Police superintendent Eddie Compass certainly didn't help the situation by telling the media that snipers were shooting at rescue helicopters. But even that huge blunder becomes somewhat easier to appreciate once you see Compass himself as storm victim who was only reacting to the game of telephone that disrupted the information chain when the storm knocked out power throughout the city. 'One of the things I said to the team early on is that we really want to make sure we approach everyone as a human being in the series,' Curry says. 'By the time we get to episode four, there's a lot of state abuse of force and violence against citizens.' Curry also goes to lengths to show how the Katrina narrative became perverted. Many TV news outlets covered the fallout from Bourbon Street and waited dutifully for the scenes to snap into focus. When their cameras picked up on people breaking into stores for food, clothes and other supplies, Katrina went from being a human story about an unfathomable crisis on American soil to an excuse for Brown and right-leaning commentators to scold Black New Orleanians for looting businesses and damaging property. Desperation that seemed so palpable to those watching from afar was somehow lost on the actual news gatherers who should know it when they see it. 'There's a clip I think in episode four that I remember watching in real time of Wolf Blitzer as images of masses of Black people [are on screen] and he goes, 'They're so poor. They're so Black.' And yes, there were a lot of poor, Black people – but it just felt so dehumanizing and just deindividuated Black suffering. I really wanted to dismantle that, like, no, these are individuals with a life, with a story, with family, with feelings, who experienced a loss.' Race Against Time doesn't turn away from strong imagery. There are shots of lifeless bodies and talk of dying babies, but none of it is ever offered up for entertainment's sake – hardly a given in the documentary game these days. 'NatGeo was mindful that staying through five episodes can be a big ask for viewers,' Curry says. 'But overall they were very supportive of my intention to tell the story in a way that did not feel exploitative of the Katrina survivors or sensationalize the story in any way.' Eerily, the clock doesn't stop running once Race Against Time is through. The final episode is careful to point out the welter of climate crises that have continued to strike the US since Katrina's passing, and even includes footage from the recent Los Angeles wildfires taken by a producer who lost her home. Each disaster is a reminder of not only how ill-prepared we are for such events, still, but also of how hesitant we remain to reckon with the root causes that are only going to make future weather catastrophes that much more devastating – especially in Black and low-income communities, which are still suffering in the aftermath of Katrina. 'I hope this series makes us realize the urgency of recognizing that these things are going to continue to happen,' Curry says. 'I know this is sort of a dirty word these days, but we need to think about equity in the way we approach preparation for disasters. Because if we center the needs of the most vulnerable people, it's going to help everybody.' Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premieres on 27 July on National Geographic and will be available on Disney+ and Hulu afterward
IOL News
11-07-2025
- Sport
- IOL News
Friday Challenge: Let's play 20 questions and see how much you know, or don't about our beautiful country
Test you knowledge with these 20 questions to broaden and deepen your general knowledge Questions: 1 Which South African Olympic swimmer went on the become the Princess of Monaco? 2 Where was the first Football World Cup played? 3 Who was first black captain of the Springboks? 4 Who is the teams' current captain? 5 Which star middle-distance athlete was recently found not to have violated world athletics rules? 6 How many months of the year end with 31 days? 7 What is the name of the national highway that stretches from Cape Town to Beitbridge? 8 What is the lowest denomination of currency currently in use in South Africa? 9 What is a guavadilla? 10 Which PSL team was know as 'the Swanky Boys' or Matsatsantsa a Pitori? 11 What came first: the chicken or the egg? 12 What is the capital of Lesotho? 13 What are the three most popular types of bunny chow? 14 Where is Putsonderwater? 15 Who is the editor of this newspaper? 16 What is a one-humped camel called? 17 Who was known as the 'Mother-of-the Nation'? 18 What is the fastest land animal? 19 Which precious mineral is South Africa the world's largest producer of? 20 Which famous South African golfer is know as the known as the 'Big Easy'?
Daily Record
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
World-renowned jazz artist to perform at 240-year-old Scottish hotel
Jazz star Dom Pipkin will launch Cronies Piano Lounge at Stirling's historic Golden Lion Hotel on July 9 A world-renowned jazz and blues pianist is set to bring his signature New Orleans sound to one of Scotland's most historic hotels next week. Dom Pipkin, hailed as 'one of the world's greatest exponents of New Orleans piano,' will perform at the Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling on Wednesday, July 9. The intimate gig will mark the launch of Cronies Piano Lounge, a new live music and cocktail space inside the centuries-old venue. The 66-bedroom Golden Lion has stood in the heart of Stirling for nearly 240 years and is famously linked to Rabbie Burns, who stayed there during a visit in 1787. According to legend, the poet was inspired by the dilapidated state of Stirling Castle to write his controversial 'Stirling Lines' and etched them into a pane of glass in his second-floor bedroom, only to later return and smash the window with the butt of his riding crop. Hotelier Gary Atinson said he was delighted to be welcoming Pipkin to such a storied venue. 'We're thrilled to have a true British jazz legend tinkling the ivories as we create Cronies Piano Lounge – a new home for superb music and classic cocktails,' he told Herald Scotland. 'My partner Ros and I have had the pleasure of seeing Dom perform initially in Ronnie Scotts in London, with Morcheeba in Cologne and, of course, in our Aberdeen hotel a few times. Once he dons that iconic hat and starts to play his unique mix of Big Easy sounds and songwriting with blues, it simply takes your breath away.' Pipkin's impressive career has seen him share stages with legends like Ray Davies and David Byrne, tour as a member of Morcheeba, and lead his own acclaimed band, The Ikos. He's a regular performer in New Orleans and is considered one of the UK's most respected interpreters of the city's musical traditions. Alongside his musical career, Pipkin has also made appearances on screen, including roles in Netflix's Black Doves and A Thousand Blows , the gritty historical drama from the creators of Peaky Blinders . His performance in Stirling won't be a one-off either. The hotel plans to build on the momentum by hosting regular lounge sessions, with top pianists lined up for Friday evenings, Saturday afternoons and nights, and relaxed Sunday jazz lunches. Pipkin himself is set to return for more performances later in the year. The Golden Lion stands on the site of The Gibb's Inn Tavern and Lodgings, rebuilt in the 1780s by Stirling businessman James Wingate and designed by the renowned Scottish architect Gideon Gray. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. It sits proudly on King Street, formerly known as Quality Street, renamed in 1820 to honour King George IV. Outside the hotel lies the historic 'New' Port Gate, a marker of Stirling's medieval past. It was here, legend says, that around the year 900 a wolf's growl alerted guards to a Danish Viking raid, helping to save the town. The wolf still features on Stirling's coat of arms as a symbol of its survival. Overlooking all of this stands the Golden Lion statue, a fixture of the cityscape for nearly two centuries. 'It has presided over many changes in our city, the ups and downs, the comings and goings,' the hotel says on its website. 'However, one thing remains constant: we continue to strive to provide a valuable service to visitors and travellers to and from Stirling alike.'
