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H&M to open first N.O. location in French Quarter on Oct. 31

“It is a significant achievement for H&M to open our first location in a city known for its deep routed culture and triumphant spirit”

Really? Seems like you wanted to sell high-end to tourists.Listen-it’s understandable, just say it, okay?

H&M to open first N.O. location in French Quarter on Oct. 31 | wwltv.com New Orleans.

here is a piece I found when searching the internet about this store:

“Our business idea is to offer fashion and quality at the best price,” Håcan Andersson, a spokesman for the company, tells Ecouterre, before referring us to information listed on the company’s website. But company mission aside, at a time when the apparel industry is getting thrashed by price hikes, H&M’s move remains an audacious one. $4.95 dresses? $20 trench coats? What universe does the Swedish retailer live in? And more important, how is H&M getting away with it?

“It just means they are squeezing the stakeholders in their supply chain to pull this off,” says Howard Brown, co-founder of Stewart + Brown, a Los Angeles-based pioneer in sustainable fashion. “Their copycat competitors will do the same. If this trend has any staying power then we might as well kiss the American apparel manufacturing sector, and those hundred thousand are so jobs that are still left, goodbye.”

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A serious renovation begins on Royal Street house

(original post from 2013)
This is a nice little house in the 1000 block of Royal Street between Ursuline and St. Philip. The family that owned for the last 80 years sold it after using it as rental property for much of that time. The new owner is reportedly from New Orleans and is moving back to live in this house, once renovated.
Literally, the house has been taken down to its front and side outside walls and will be expanded over the next year or more. That back house has been empty forever and they will deal with it after the front house is done.

Stay tuned for more pictures over the next few months….

The front of the house as of 10-18-2013

The front of the house as of 10-18-2013

looking into the house from the back.

looking into the house from the courtyard

 

The long abandoned house at the back of the property in the courtyard.

The long abandoned house at the back of the property in the courtyard.

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Not seven hills, just seven districts in our history

Another practical history lesson from Richard Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane School of Architecture and a Monroe Fellow with the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, is the author of “Bienville’s Dilemma,” “Geographies of New Orleans,” and the forthcoming “Bourbon Street: A History” (2014). He may be reached through rcampane@tulane.edu or @nolacampanella on Twitter.

Until just a few years ago, each of the seven districts elected its own assessors, who staffed their own offices and assessed taxes independently — a system unique in the nation. It took civic intervention after Hurricane Katrina to finally consolidate those political redundancies.

Plantations, faubourgs, Creoles, Anglos, competition, expansion, drainage, politics, taxes: embedded in that seemingly mundane map are sundry episodes in the human geography of New Orleans, going back 200 years.

Seven

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Rising Tide 8 at Xavier this Saturday

The activist blogger conference held annually since Hurricane Katrina will be held this coming weekend at Xavier.

The Rising Tide Conference is an annual gathering for everyone who loves New Orleans and is working to bring a better future to all its residents.
Leveraging the power of bloggers and new media, the conference is a launch pad for organization and action. Our day-long program of speakers and presentations is tailored to inform, entertain, enrage and inspire.
We come together to dispel myths, promote facts, highlight progress and regress, discuss ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a “real life” demonstration of internet activism. Exciting programming announcements are updated regularly, so please check the Schedule page of our website for specific information about this year’s program. This year we are excited to have Retired LT. General Russel L. Honore as our Keynote speaker.

Rising Tide tickets

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Dreamy Weenies

Polish dog with mustard, ketchup, onions and sauerkraut on the corner of Saint Ann and Rampart.

20130908-094554.jpg

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Tree Inventory underway (again!)

French Quarter Block by Block is a project by community organizer and writer Dar Wolnik to catelogue details and share history for every block of the French Quarter. In 2011, friends and colleagues began to help with her Tree Inventory: mapping trees in the public space of the French Quarter including identification of native or unique trees with the end goal of a paper map and a GPS site of all of the trees. Tree inventories such as these assist neighbors, arborists and planners with new tree planting projects and with city wide tree canopy assessments.
The project was shelved temporarily after the initial identification and will be remapped in 2013. The Quarter is broken into four quadrants on the map and each block will be walked within each quadrant to re-check the initial map and to circle any native or unique trees for later identification.

Tree Inventory underway.