On a recent Saturday night, a person could walk along North Boulevard past sleepy Beauregard Town and find hardly a soul on the way to Third Street, save for a couple aimless sorts parked on a sidewalk bench, whiling the hours away.
Make that turn onto Third, though, and suddenly—bam! Nightlife, in downtown Baton Rouge. The street opens up with activity, from Southern-fried rock coming through the open patio doors of The Roux House, to plaid-skirted barmaids canoodling with customers outside Happy’s Irish Pub.
Up the street, on the balcony of Boudreaux and Thibodeaux, a cover band cranks out a trebly jam. The crowd downstairs spills onto the sidewalk for smokes and chit-chat, while patrons inside dance to Depeche Mode and Devo. The crowd is almost entirely white.
Another block up at M Bar, an Al Green-flavored hip-hop tune by Lil Wayne and Jazze Pha plays on the sound system. Patrons kick back in booths or talk at the bar, accompanied by posters of Ciroc Vodka and its celebrity endorser Diddy. The crowd here is almost entirely black.
Outside, buzzing patrons of various watering holes amble among the options. All the bars seem to have the LSU game on, although attention rotates between the jukebox, TVs and individual tables crowded with revelers. Back at Happy’s, a bartender turns and asks, “What do you think of our Tiiiii-gers?”
“Where is everybody? It’s packed up the street.”
“It’s raining. Usually people come here after the game.”
“It’s busy at the M Bar. They have the game on over there. Different crowd, though.”
“Totally different crowd.”
The weekend scene on Third is a celebrated phenomenon now that downtown is finally overcoming its reputation as a dangerous, decrepit “ghost town” once the workday crowd evacuates, and the sun sets past the tree-lined bank across the Mississippi River.
Bars and restaurants arrive with fanfare in freshly rehabbed buildings, including the eagerly awaited entrée of New Orleans-based Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar and Restaurant and Lafayette-based The Office to the strip. Hotel Indigo will add 93 rooms on the corner of Convention and Lafayette streets nearby. A national drugstore plans to locate at Third and Convention, something absent from the area for decades.
It seems almost every week, the Downtown Development District announces another investment coup to enliven the nascent arts-and-entertainment sector, which boasts Wine Walk Wednesday, the spring and fall Live after Five and Sunday in the Park concerts, the summer Art Melt showcase and other promotional events.
Lurking in the psychic shadows of all the business hubbub, though, is a bugaboo with long tentacles extended deep into downtown’s not-so-distant history: racial segregation. Or at least a perception of racism that steers diverse groups into uniform settings, not unlike how things were mandated a half-century ago, before civil-rights protests on Third Street dropped a social hand grenade into the separate-but-unequal status quo.
That era of “criminal anarchy” led to formal desegregation across the South. Yet polite racism born of white flight, suburban sprawl and a resulting institutional separatism haunts the land, notably in downtown, where people cross that invisible line between predominantly black north Baton Rouge and predominantly white south Baton Rouge and come together.
Or do they?
What we learn from
On most nights, Third Street still is a shadow of what it could become. The sparsely visited, historic city center eagerly seeks prime-time destination status, but that means luring young people to work, play and live there. So far there are jobs and there are bars, restaurants and art galleries, but housing is in scant supply.
When more living spaces do arrive—in the thousands someday, according to DDD Director Davis Rhorer—they could fortify the urban core as the most lively part of Baton Rouge in generations, perhaps since the sky’s-the-limit Eisenhower era, when theaters and shops lined the strip.
Those who remember that time understand how far downtown has come. Yet “how far from what?” is the critical subtext, according to Maxine Crump, a former TV newscaster who works on Third as a consultant for MPower Group. She became the first black student to live on campus when she arrived at LSU in 1964, the year schools were officially integrated across the nation.
She recalls shopping downtown in the ’50s with her father, whom she describes as “moderate to conservative, and very patriotic.” He protected his children from “direct hurts” such as being told no, you can’t try on this dress, and being followed around white-owned stores, steering the family to Jewish-owned Rosenfield’s or Welsh and Levy.
“He said, ‘Kress doesn’t allow blacks to eat at their lunch counter, so they don’t get a dime of my money,’” Crump says.
Soon, sit-ins at the Kress store’s infamous “colored” lunch section led to pickets of other downtown businesses, activists going to jail and thousands of protesters from Southern University marching on the State Capitol. About the same time, when the Bon Marché Mall opened in 1960, blacks and whites alike took their money eastward.
“The energy and the life of the city was scattered out,” Rhorer says. “It certainly went east and south.” Crump agrees, adding, “We were kind of tired of the experience on Third. By the time I was in college, Third was no entertainment district.”
Instead, stores left, the Paramount Theatre closed and the area entered a decline that lasted until the push to revitalize the district began in the ’80s and ’90s, leading to a nightlife renaissance, a town-square plan, a proposed library renovation and the promise of more ahead.
“A downtown is the heartbeat and the culture of your city. If I go to a town or a city, I want to see that,” Crump says. “It tells me a lot about how they handle their heritage. You should never throw away your history, and you should never be ashamed of it. It’s what we learn from.
“Baton Rouge let its Third Street die because it was moving away from desegregation and those issues. It is now coming back because there is a whole generation of young people that hardly know that history. I do see a lot of separation still happening along Third Street. Have the businesses come far enough to outrun that heritage?”
‘That side of the ?street’s awful dark’
Karen Dean is a true believer in downtown. The music booker for Boudreaux and Thibodeaux lives in an apartment in the club’s renovated Third Street building—“It’s 24-7 for me,” she says—and regularly encounters locals who are surprised to find so much to do in a place that was all but abandoned in the lean years.
“I’ve met a lot of people who ordinarily do not get an opportunity to come downtown, natives who had not come downtown for 10 years because of the old reputation,” she says. “They were amazed by how beautiful it was. Ten, 15 years ago, the place was ratty, it was known for having vagrants and being crime-ridden, old and decrepit.
“What amazes me is that people who grew up here, they have no idea what’s going on. They assume the nightclubs are all for young people. Every bar up and down the street caters to every demographic.”
To be sure, there is diversity among the imbibing options. For example, The Wine Loft at Laurel and Third streets woos young professionals with tastings of international grappa, while M Bar around the corner serves martinis [hence the M] to a gussied-up set. Nearby are Punchers sports bar and Red Star a half-block west for younger, grungy guzzlers.
As for her club, Dean says she seeks to entertain all age ranges and cultures, booking everything from rock bands to blues artists such as Cedric Burnside. When zydeco is on tap, she says black music lovers turn out in good numbers.
“I think that we are an anomaly. We get everybody in here,” she says, “a total mixed crowd. It’s because this club specifically caters to the Louisiana joie de vivre. It’s about loving and living and music and fun. It’s about coming as yourself.”
However, she adds, “Up a block you’ve got a whole different story happening.”
That is where M Bar holds sway, and Dean says some of her patrons express anxiety over the default black club on Third with its sentinel bouncers out front.
“There is a certain mentality or energy that makes them uncomfortable. You hear that a lot from young women,” she says. “Women will drive in their car and park on the other side, rather than walk that block. I don’t know if that’s in their head. I guess it’s how you’re raised, how secure you feel as a person.
“A lot of people seem to be intimidated by the fact that you have black security guys, football-player size, protecting that part of the street. I think it’s the vibe that they’re putting off out there. You hear people talk … ‘That side of the street’s awful dark.’
“Baton Rouge has got to explore all of its horizons, and that means accepting all races if we’re really going to grow the downtown. We have to befriend everybody. One or two incidents have really put fear in people. People don’t forget. That hurts the whole city as long as people hold onto those old fears.”
Tense moments linger
Those old fears center of late on a couple of well-recalled moments of violence and tension, including shootings during the Fourth of July bash in 2007 at the levee and a face-off between police and 200 people on Third Street in March 2008 outside Avoyelles and M Bar.
In the first incident, Devin Deon Collins and Marvin Brown got prison time for their involvement in the shooting of two bystanders that left the victims disabled. In the more recent conflict, Quintin Alonzo Williams was Tased by police and found to have a loaded AK-47 in his trunk after he refused to turn his music down and move on, then got out of his car and into a scuffle with an officer.
An LSU linebacker also wound up with a court summons in the tussle, which took place after a party let out of Avoyelles at closing time and led police to prevent Schlittz & Giggles patrons from leaving until the street was cleared.
“The only major problem that we’ve had downtown is that night,” Police Chief Jeff LeDuff says. “Revelry is a part of Baton Rouge, particularly at Mardi Gras or during football season. We will only tolerate part of it, regardless of who does and doesn’t follow the rules. It didn’t take long to remind them.”
He says the city’s decision to lease space for a police substation in the Third Street Parking Garage is not a reaction to any particular troubles. “This is not about a fear factor,” he says. “It’s about growing with the downtown. We just didn’t have a place to call our own, and now we do.”
He says the space, which will be shared with an art gallery in a move that underscores the city’s enthusiasm for arts to the neighborhood, will not be staffed 24 hours, but will accommodate the six bike officers, four community-service officers and two or three mounted police who patrol the area at peak times.
“We’ve not been blindsided since we starting paying attention to the growth in downtown,” he says. “Our officers get to know people down there, and they get intel as well.”
A hop-skip from M Bar is Punchers, co-owned by Michael Labat. He says he considered locating in the South Sherwood Forest Boulevard area, but chose Third instead because it lacked a sports-centric pub.
“There’s no doubt that Third Street is kind of becoming the melting pot of Baton Rouge,” he says. “That’s the challenge we face here and all over the South. That’s something the country faces. I’m comfortable at this point—tension, yes; uncomfortable, no.”
Of Avoyelles, which is open to private parties run by independent promoters, he says: “They may bring more of a hip-hop genre or feel which then brings a very distinct target audience, like crews on the street with loud music. Then tensions could rise.”
Jack Warner, who is involved as an owner with Happy’s Irish Pub, The Roux House and Schlittz & Giggles, says troublemakers who mar Third Street can’t be pegged by race.
“It’s more of a class issue of when the ‘undesirables’ come down the street, that have no intention of frequenting any of the businesses or restaurants or bars,” he says. “They could be red, yellow, black, green, orange, white. It’s their intention, or lack of intention.”
In terms of promoters attracting wild-card crowds, he says: “It’s definitely toned down. We want downtown to be a viable, vibrant community. And not one where people are getting nervous or gun-shy from coming down. At the end of the day, perception is reality. It just takes one bad incident.”
No excessively baggy clothes
Around the corner from Punchers is The Wine Loft, an upscale venue with a sign at the entrance listing a strict dress code. It prohibits headgear, sunglasses, Bluetooth headsets, athletic wear, sweat bands, hooded sweatshirts, excessive jewelry and excessively baggy clothes. The translation might as well be “no hip-hop,” which one could perhaps interpret to mean “no blacks.”
General Manager Scott LeJeune says that would be a mistake. “I have seen a few smirks at it,” he says of the sign. “From all types of people. I even once recently found the sign in the garbage can. We do know what the majority of our clientele is. That’s who we’re catering to. We just want to make them comfortable.
“We get a good mix of people, different ages, different ethnicities. You will get the students that will come in because they want to dress up and take a date out. It is one of the few places that you can go that’s got this type of atmosphere. You don’t want to be serving someone in cargo shorts and flip-flops.”
For him, the dress code is not about race or class, but style. He says the club gets overflow from M Bar around the corner and that “as long as they do meet what we consider just normal dress code, they are more than welcome to come in. My staff is not told to wait on anyone differently.”
People discussing nightlife on Third Street are apt to bring up atmosphere, be it the ambiance a bar markets itself with or simply the friendliness of a place on entering.
“I want all of us to have a welcoming downtown,” Crump says. “What the atmosphere is matters. I’m not quite sure what it takes to make that atmosphere what it needs to be. It certainly outruns the ’60s, without a doubt.”
Regarding that Wine Loft sign, though, she says: “It definitely seems to be sending a message. It doesn’t come out clear what they are doing. The idea of a certain look being a dangerous look seems to be prevalent in the city. I do go there; I get treated fine.”
Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar and Restaurant, which hopes to open an offshoot of its New Orleans location by the end of the month in the former D’Agostino’s Restaurant building, is wedded to a mellow, open sensibility.
General Manager Deborah Schumacher, who works at the Tchoupitoulas Street location in New Orleans, says the chain considered Perkins Rowe—another melting pot that, like the Mall of Louisiana, has seen some tense moments among youth groups—but chose Third because it is “well-traveled by the business community” and should benefit from the arts district push.
“We haven’t found any problems with a crossover with any culture,” she says. “Anyone who’s ever been to the beach can go, ‘Wow, this is a really laid-back, cool, fun place.’ Regardless of the north-south thing.”
Erin Monroe Wesley, president of Forum 35, says the young leadership group’s cultural diversity initiative has looked into concerns by members about visiting Third Street businesses, although she did not detail which establishments have ruffled people’s feathers.
“Our purpose is just to begin that dialogue,” she says. “There have been some issues not just on Third, but throughout the community … where people weren’t engaged when they came in, or members felt they weren’t treated appropriately.”
Eric Lewis, board president of the Baton Rouge Black Chamber of Commerce, says he hasn’t heard formal complaints from members of feeling unwelcome at Third Street clubs. “It’s important that we have venues that everybody feels comfortable to come to,” he says. “We need to have an entertainment district that everyone can frequent.”
Also concerned with a welcoming Third Street is Rhorer of the DDD, whose mission for more than two decades has been to nurture downtown, including its year-and-a-half-old Arts & Entertainment District around Third.
“We are in a location that is equal distance north and south. It’s a reflection of the city,” he says. “I certainly want to feel that everybody can claim downtown Baton Rouge as their own. We promote everybody to go into every establishment. Money is green.”
Owning our history
For all the social and economic progress of the last 50 years, many people have been left behind in Baton Rouge. A recent American Human Development Project report described the city as either the best or worst place to live in the state, depending on whether one resides in the 70% white area to the south and east, or the 88% black area to the north.
“Baton Rouge has tried to hide its history. It’s not talked about openly very often,” Crump says. “And when it is, people smile about it uncomfortably. Who has conversations about it? It shouldn’t silence a room when it’s mentioned if we’re really owning our history. And it does.”
Last year, she gave a Forum 35 talk— “What Color is Third Street?”—about what has changed and what has yet to be fully dealt with from the past. She sees hope in the multitude of business owners who have come from elsewhere to set up shop on Third.
“They seem to bring an openness that I’m excited about,” she says. “Bistreaux 333, the owner’s from New Orleans; he has quite a diverse staff, and it’s beautiful to see that. It says something opening and welcoming to those of us who like that. Stroube’s, they seem quite open to me. They’re upscale. You don’t even have to put up a sign that says ‘no baggy pants.’”
The Kress store once was a landmark of segregation, yet today the restored Kress at Third & Main symbolizes progress: It is set to bring housing, retail and office space to the once-decimated strip—and another nightlife option, 1887 Bistro. Downtown’s business climate is in bloom, but what that portends for the community at large is still developing.
Theo Richards, a program assistant with the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations, says he and other 20-somethings tend to view Baton Rouge as colorblind. Still, he talks out issues of generational and cultural acceptance as a regular at Forum 35’s discussions at the Lyceum Dean ballroom on the south end of Third Street near North Boulevard.
If young people feel unwelcome for any reason and head off to more tolerant climes, he says that will endanger the local economy and the ideal of making Baton Rouge “the next great American city.”
“We are glad there is a place in Baton Rouge where all walks of like can come and intermingle,” he says of downtown. “It’s essential to have that venue to retain young professionals. I’m glad to be a part of that.”
