04/12/2013 12:58pm
Frank Jackson started the soda shop in Slidell, Louisiana, in the late 1980s. He remembered as a kid hanging out at pharmacy soda fountains, like Waterbury’s Drug Store at the foot of Canal Street in New Orleans, and was inspired to recreate that childhood setting. Beginning with a 1955 model Bastian Blessing stainless steel fountain — the type that dispenses soda water out of gooseneck heads — he converted a World War I-era building in Slidell, on the suburban side of Lake Pontchartrain, into a classic, Eisenhower-era luncheonette.

Jackson knew little about the business — and had never made an ice-cream soda before. But thanks to patient and loyal clientele and a lot of research, he has become a world-renowned keeper of the soda shop tradition.

“I decided if we were going to do it, it should be more historically correct,” he says.

Jackson quickly found out that old-school soda jerking was a calling. “A first-class soda jerk working in New York in 1919 commanded a salary of 40 dollars per week,” Jackson quotes from one of his reference books. “A licensed pharmacist working at a chain drug store was paid 50 dollars a week. The fact that a full-time soda jerk could earn 80 percent of a pharmacist’s salary was a clear indication of their importance to the drug store.” Continue

03/04/2013 10:17am

Slidell — The vibrantly colored mosaic murals that grace the walls of the former Community Feed Store in Olde Towne represent artist Stephan Wanger’s vision, but many more hands were involved in creating his artistic tributes to Louisiana life.

Thousands of students have worked to create the murals, beginning with those at Rudolph Matas Elementary School in Metairie and Andrew Wilson Charter School in New Orleans and now spreading to other schools and other towns in Louisiana. And the 42-foot-by-8-foot night scene of the New Orleans skyline — the largest such piece in the world — is made up of 1.5 million beads placed in part by thousands of tourists who came through Mardi Gras World when Wanger was creating it late last year.

The Slidell display, which will run through April 5, will give art students in eastern St. Tammany Parish the same opportunity to take part in creating murals that salute their area. Wanger plans a swamp scene, a depiction of the Old Town Soda Shop and a piece that will show the eye of a hurricane passing over Slidell’s historic center.

Students as young as 6 can participate in the work, cutting and sorting beads and gluing them to the murals under Wanger’s guidance.

He sees the project as a way to teach children about Louisiana — each series has paid tribute to different aspects of the state. For example, the Rudolph Matas’ pieces celebrate “Tastes of Louisiana.’’ One mosaic is vivid with red beads, matte and shiny, bringing a crawfish boil to life; another employs muted grays, whites and beiges in a piece titled simply “Oysters.’’ Another mural, created in Franklin Parish, shows the snowy heads of cotton bolls growing in the field. Continue Reading

 

02/19/2013 10:55am
Now that the Mardi Gras season is over, many of us are faced with a familiar question: What do we do with all of those Mardi Gras beads that have accumulated around our necks, in our cars, and eventually about our homes. This year Slidellians will be able to put those beads to good use by donating them - and a bit of their time - to an art project.

Stephen Wagner,  a New Orleans-based artist, will bring his Bead Town exhibit and community art project to Olde Towne Slidell. Bead Town is exactly what it seems to be - mosaics made from Mardi Gras beads. But the expansive pieces created by the artist and the locals he enlists do more than just make use of something we might otherwise discard. The pieces celebrate the uniqueness of local culture in a way that makes the communities from which they are generated and sustained a partner in its representation and preservation. Read More

01/08/2013 12:09pm
When Hurricane Katrina flooded most of south Slidell in 2005, Olde Towne took a heavy hit. A vital part of the area’s post-storm recovery came when city leaders decided to rebuild municipal buildings that had always been in Olde Towne instead of moving elsewhere. Continue Reading