Consider the responsibilities of owning a pet before giving one as a holiday gift ä 4G
THE C ESCENT CITY
ADVOCATE
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WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 16, 2015
JEFFERSON • NEW ORLEANS • PLAQUEMINES • RIVER PARISHES • ST. BERNARD
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THENEWORLEANSADVOCATE.COM
Eva Jacob Barkoff AROUND JEFFERSON
Volunteers needed for Christmas lunch The members of St. Rita Catholic Church in Harahan will once again provide and serve lunch to the residents and staff of Covenant House on Christmas Day. And if you have some extra time, volunteers are needed. “We feel blessed in many ways at St. Rita, and once again, we are paying it forward by providing Christmas lunch to the residents and staff of Covenant House in New Orleans,” said Maria Blanchard, one of the organizers. “The more than 100 homeless and abused teens who live at Covenant House are working to rebuild their lives and their futures. “We are asking area residents to help us by preparing a dish for the luncheon or perhaps volunteering to serve on Christmas morning.” St. Rita parishioners have been serving Christmas lunch at Covenant House since 1984, Blanchard added.
Photo provided by NOLA ChristmasFest
Holiday decorations and thousands of dazzling lights are part of the fest.
Gliding into the holidays Ice rink the new star of NOLA ChristmasFest
äSee BARKOFF, page 9G
BY CATE ROOT
Lynne Jensen
Special to The Advocate
THROW ME SOMETHIN’
It’s pawty time with Grunch and the Bunch Here’s a holiday-time pawty and reunion combo open to “ya mamma ’n nem, ya paw paw, ya chirruns ... even Metry people.” So says organizer and Yat-in-charge Benny Grunch, ready to mingle at the “sort of” annual Lakeview/Velvet Swing reunion from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday at Lakeview Harbor, 911 Harrison Ave. “Just come on; there’s no cover charge,” Grunch said. His band, Benny Grunch and the Bunch, will entertain, along with chawmin’ chanteuse Kathy Savoie. This is the fourth reunion of folks who remember the popular watering hole called the Velvet Swing, where Lakeview Harbor now stands. Grunch, 70, was a student at St. Aloysius High School in the 1960s when he started hanging out at the neighborhood haunt. Sure, it was a bar, he said, but parents figured their teens would be safe because it was close to home and a cop was on hand to keep the peace. The worst fights ended with flying fists and a bloody nose or two, he said. It was a simpler time and place, Grunch said, recalling the “real girl” who held court swinging from the rafters on that red velvet swing. The reunion is a celebration “of kids äSee JENSEN, page 9G
Advocate file photo by REBECCA RATLIFF
More than 60 Christmas trees have been decorated by New Orleans businesses.
New Orleans isn’t known as a winter wonderland. The chances for a White Christmas are about as good as your shot at catching Santa stuffing the stockings above a nonfunctional fireplace. But organizers of NOLA ChristmasFest are bringing sleigh-loads of the holiday spirit to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. NOLA ChristmasFest, formerly known as Christmas in the District, will deck the halls (OK, just Hall B) of Morial Convention Center daily from Friday through Dec. 27. The festival’s figurative star on top of the tree is an indoor ice rink. New Orleanians and visitors alike are invited to lace up their skates and glide on top of the 50-by-80-foot hunk of real ice. “Every year, we’ve done something different,” said Diane Lyons of NOLA Christ-
masFest. “This is the first year we’ve had an ice rink — the first time an ice rink with ice real has been put inside since the 1980s,” referring to the former ice rink at the Plaza at Lake Forest Mall in New Orleans East. “Children and adults learned to skate back Tips on ice in the Plaza, and soon they’ll skating for have the opportunity to have beginners a new ice rink in downtown ä 2G New Orleans for the first time.” Organizers hope to attract 20,000 people to NOLA Christmas Fest, and the ice rink should prove to be a popular attraction. Building a frozen ice sheet in a climatecontrolled setting takes some doing, explained Bob Johnson of the Convention Center. The engineer and ice-rink setup arrive in New Orleans a little more than a week before NOLA ChristmasFest opens. The underlying structure beneath the ice uses a portable refrigeration system to pump cold liquid through bulkheads and pipes laid on the floor and covered with sand, Johnson said. After the structure is äSee HOLIDAYS, page 2G
Amazing Acro-Cat troupers always land on their feet BY KIM SINGLETARY
The Amazing Acro-Cats Meowy Catmas in Mew Orleans
You’ve heard a difficult task described as “like herding cats.” Well, Samantha Martin has been doing exactly that for 10 years — not only herding them, but getting them to literally jump through hoops. Martin is the trainer and “chief executive human” behind the Amazing Acro-Cats, a traveling cat performance troupe that calls New Orleans home to its annual “Meowy Catmas in Mew Orleans” show at the Theatre at St. Claude — playing now through Dec. 21. Boasting the world’s only all-cat rock band, the show includes impressive feline feats, from balancing on balls, to riding skateboards, to Alley the cat demonstrating her Guinness World Record-holding “longest jump by a cat.” It also, by necessity, features a
WHEN: 7 p.m., Dec. 16-21; 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. Dec. 19; 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Dec. 20 WHERE: The Theatre at St. Claude, 2240 St. Claude Ave., New Orleans TICKETS: $22, general admission; $27, front row; $19 children. MORE INFORMATION: Circuscats.com
Special to The Advocate
good amount of improv. “Cats are notorious for being hard to train, but I’ve always liked a challenge,” Martin said. “Even with all the training, I know that each time a cat comes on stage, I’m at their mercy.” It’s true, the cats can be divas. During a performance last month on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” about half the cats decided to do their own thing — stretching, grooming or running off. Martin just rolled with it, and the crowd didn’t seem to mind at all.
Self-described Acro-Cat groupie and New Orleanian Lisa Picone Love confirms that even when the cats decide to be, well, cats, it does nothing to dampen the show. “I love them because each time it’s guaranteed that I’m going to be just giggling for over an hour, whether they do all their tricks or not,” she said. “Who doesn’t want to spend an hour laughing?” From its inception, the show has been a hit. “We started performing 10
Photo provided by The Amazing AcroCats
äSee ACRO-CAT, page 9G Tuna, the star of the Amazing Acro-Cats, leaps over a hurdle.