The Beer Institute and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) published a report today about the national economic impact of beer. Nationally, nearly 2 million jobs and $62 billion in wages were paid by the beer industry in 2008. (NBWA)

In Louisiana, the beer industry provides $2.58 billion to the economy. This includes almost 30,000 jobs and $745 million in wages. Louisiana’s Gross State Product (which is the sum of value added by all of the industries in a state) is about $216 billion, so this is roughly 1.2%. (Wikipedia) Compare this to $5.2 billion (about 2.4%) from tourism. (DOA) Overall, Louisianians pay 29% of the retail price of beer to state and federal beer taxes. The full report can be found at the NBWA report web site. In Baton Rouge specifically, the total economic impact seems to be hovering somewhere around $0.5 million. You can browse through all of Baton Rouge’s congressional districts on the report web site.

I wouldn’t say that this is anything surprising. Louisiana has a thriving, well-known beer industry. New Orleans is home to a few legendary brewers—e.g. JAX Brewery, which is now a popular tourist center—and many current national brewers are located on the outskirts—e.g. Abita. The New York Times recently published a great article in its Escapes section about New Orleans’ beer industry. You can read this article here.

We’re conducting a survey to determine the most popular radio station in Baton Rouge. To vote, simply send a Tweet with the four-letter call sign (e.g. WABC or KABC) appended with the hastag #btrblog (e.g. “WABC #btrblog”). You can also submit a comment here. Alternatively, just send us an email at the tip line.

We’ll compile the results at the end of the week and publish the results. This isn’t for anything in particular; we’re just really curious.

Nate Silver of the political statistics blog FiveThirtyEight (which became popular when he used statistics to accurately predict the 2008 election) used a regression model to produce a prediction of when each US state would vote against a gay marriage ban. Louisiana has previously voted for a ban on gay marriage and taking into account other factors, including religiosity the percentage of white evangelical christians, Silver predicts that it’ll 2019 before Louisiana votes against a marriage ban. It’s an interesting statistical model that seems, from his evidence, to be quite accurate. What’s notable is that we’re ahead of most of the Southern states with the notable exception of Texas. You can read more about Nate’s predictions here.

What do you think? Is this prediction an accurate characterization of Louisiana? Do you think 2019 is right, or is a decade too long or short? What does it say about Louisiana to be where we are in comparison to other Southern states?

We just received word that LSU has planned an open forum on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 in the Howe-Russell Geoscience building, room 130. It’s sponsored by the Faculty Senate and both LSU Chancellor Michael Martin and Provost Astrid Merget will be present. Since it’s an open forum, the floor will be open for both questions and input from the general population.

We’ll be present at the event, so if you can’t make it and have any questions, forward them our way by dropping a comment or sending us an email.

Baton Rouge is home to many cool people who are doing exciting things within and outside of our great city. To show this, we’re starting a new series that highlights these people and their accomplishments. Our first installment is an interview with Richard Felix, Jr., a rockstar web developer in Baton Rouge.

I sat down to talk with Richard over instant messenger as he was “fighting with a complex rails app install.” Like I said: he’s a rockstar. Richard is a great, down-to-earth guy that I first met at the inaugural Baton Rouge tweetup. I had first heard about him when he was featured on CSS-Tricks, a famous coding community curated by Chris Coyier, when Chris and he released their first web site together called Status. I was thoroughly surprised when I clicked through his site to see he was located out of Baton Rouge. In fact, if you google for a Ruby on Rails developer in Baton Rouge, his company is one of the first to come up. As always, it was a pleasure to pick his brain and learn about some of the awesome things that he’s pumping out.

Thanks for granting us this interview, Richard. Let’s first learn a little about you. How long have you lived in the Baton Rouge community?

I’ve lived here since right before freshman year of high school, yeah, I’ve been here awhile—14ish years?

Wow, so you’ve been here for longer than I have! First, where did you go to high school?

Scotlandville Magnet, back when it was always a competition between us and Baton Rouge Magnet.

I heard somewhere that you were featured in The Advocate. What’s the story there?

I was a late transfer student at SMHS, my freshman year. Since I missed early registration, I was placed in a basic computer class (one where you learned the parts of the computers and how to use them). Within the first 5 minutes, my teacher realized that I didn’t belong in the class (since I already knew everything she had to teach), and so she gave the class some work to do and brought me down the hall to see the advanced computer science teacher. After talking to him for awhile, he decided that I belonged in Computer Science II AP.

Since I skipped the first Computer Science altogether, by senior year there were no more classes for me to take. Since it was a magnet school, we were required to take 7 courses every year, so things were put in place for me to teach a class on web design.

Someone found out about it over at The Advocate, and one of their reporters came in, observed the class and wrote a feature for The Advocate on New Year’s Day, 2000.

Continue reading “Cool People in Baton Rouge: Richard Felix, Jr.” →

Albasha is a Baton Rouge-based restaurant that specializes in Greek and Lebanese cuisine. They have three locations in Baton Rouge and offer conventional American fare—e.g. hamburgers and french fries—which is great for kids and traditional eaters. They take credit cards, offer take-out and are great for groups. You can find out more by visiting their web site.

Menu and Food

When you walk into Albasha, you’re immediately greeted with the incredible smells of foods from afar. When you peruse the menu, each dish has a melliferous name. It’s so entrancing, it’s difficult to know where to begin. But it’s OK—in fact, that’s a good thing. It means that you’ll be coming back again and again to try different dishes. I recommend the friend cheese as an appetizer, which is goat cheese sauteed in olive oil and garlic—delicious! I also recommend the chicken shawarma sandwich. It’s their well-seasoned chicken shawarma wrapped in pita topped with Grecian sauce (which is a homemade yogurt-based condiment). It’s quite delectable and was a welcomed dish even for the newcomers that were with me. I also recommend getting the Lebanese iced tea. It’s part lemonade, part tea and garnished with pine nuts. It’s a wonderful compliment to the cuisine. Of course, their hummus is also fantastic. You’ll always find something incredible to try and it’s always served hot and fresh.

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Waitstaff and wait service

One of the hallmarks of Albasha is their waitstaff. They are a courteous and efficient. When you walk in, you are quickly seated, given menus and the opportunity to order. If you’re unsure of what to order (Mediterranean is quite different from other cuisines), they are helpful and patient. The kitchen is quick, too. I have never gone in hungry and stayed that way for long. On a typical lunch date, I’ve been served my full meal in under 20 minutes; appetizers in less than 5. Thereafter, my drinks and pita baskets have never been lacking. They’re really on top of refilling. I’ve never had a bad experience with the staff and even after all these years I’m still quite impressed with their service.

Waitstaff and wait service rating—

Overall Review

Overall, Albasha is a great quality restaurant. The food is good, cheap and fairly healthy, especially when compared to the typical American diet. There are a few restaurants, so location is convenient and the waitstaff is always great and, importantly, fast—which means it’s always a great place for lunch. We highly recommend Albasha, so it yields a great overall rating.

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Dan Ohlerking from Healing Place Church just contacted us to tell us about the Servolution.

From Dan:

237 churches worldwide (representing nearly 400,000 congregants) are signed on board with baton rouge’s healing place church in their 7 days of servolution. http://Servolution.org. it is churches serving their communities. nearly a hundred community service events will have taken place in the BR area by Easter. one more great thing baton rouge churches have led the way in.

This is an interesting story we’ll continue to develop. More information and pictures expected from the crew at Healing Place Church soon.

Update 4/8/09: We’re also hearing word that Shaquille O’Neal of the Phoneix Suns and former LSU basketball fame has returned to Baton Rouge for this event. More information to come.

The Louisiana State Budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year is, by now, old news. In one of the most controversial moves in his tenure, Governor Bobby Jindal has proposed a cut of $1.3 billion from the previous budget. This is just one of the many unfortunate consequences of the global recession. This post is the beginning of a new, continual series to examine the new budget and put the effects into perspective. This first installment is focused on, ostensibly, the most draconian of all the Governor’s cuts: the arts.

When a tourist comes to this state, they do so to experience our rich culture. It’s definitely su generis to Louisiana and what we pride ourselves in. The arts are just one of the many indelible aspects of our culture and to harm the arts in any way is an egregious act—except during economic downturns. Arguably, this is the only excuse one can imagine to this iniquity. However, is this as appaling as many believe? The answer isn’t as clear as it may seem.

Continue reading “Focus on the Budget: Arts” →

Welcome to the Baton Rougean. My name is Logan Leger and I’m the editor-in-chief and a native Baton Rougean. the Baton Rougean is a new media news venue for Baton Rouge—i.e., a blog. It’s published by the media arm of NewAperio, an internet startup founded here in Baton Rouge. It was conceived and developed and is written, edited and maintained exclusively by Baton Rougeans: the site and all its contents are authentically Baton Rougean.

The concept came to me when I was reading news online. There are a number of good news outlets for Baton Rouge, but all are formal new outlets—e.g. WAFB, WBRZ, the Advocate, et al. None of them were written in the vernacular (all were written in a journalistic tone), none of them was written from a citizen’s perspective and a lot of their content was aggregated from a global news conglomerate. I wanted something different for Baton Rouge, so I started the Baton Rougean.

Louisiana and Baton Rouge specifically are different kinds of locales. We’re culturally diverse and have a rich history, and this continues today. Baton Rouge is a lively city with many great events and a wonderful urban scene, yet it’s still small enough to create a homey atmosphere. This is the other purpose of the Baton Rougean: to share a little bit of our home with the rest of the world.

Beginning today, you’ll have a virtual space to come and read up on the latest happenings around town. Our authors will begin to fill this page with all sorts of wonderful Baton Rouge content. I invite you to get involved as well. You can subscribe to our news via our news feed or email. You can even contribute via Flickr or Twitter. We also take tips for news via email or Twitter and anyone can submit articles for inclusion in our site. If you would like information on advertising, just get in touch.

From all of us, we hope you enjoy the Baton Rougean.