⚜️ Bayou Boogaloo Comes Back to Mid-City

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This Week's Edition

he 20th anniversary of Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo returns to Bayou St. John May 15-17, celebrating two decades since the neighborhood festival was born from Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. From floating parties on the bayou in New Orleans to Jazz & R&B in Natchitoches to classic cars in New Iberia, Louisiana celebrates music, chrome, and community.

Bayou Boogaloo Comes Back
Your Area Code
The World's Fair That Went Bankrupt

Guess the Parish
Where Big Al Guards the Gumbo
Heritage Video Giveaway

May 12-18, 2026

The 20th Anniversary of Bayou Boogaloo Comes Back to Mid-City

Bayou Boogaloo returns to Bayou St. John for its 20th anniversary

This is the week Bayou Boogaloo comes back to Mid-City.

The 20th anniversary of Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo runs May 15-17 along the banks of Bayou St. John. Live music, food vendors, craft markets, kayakers cruising the bayou, and the kind of laid-back neighborhood energy that makes New Orleans feel like home even if you have never been there before. Founder Jared Zeller started the festival in 2006 to bring Mid-City neighbors together as they rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. Twenty years later, it is one of New Orleans' most beloved neighborhood festivals.

Natchitoches hosts the 29th annual Jazz & R&B Festival May 15-16 on the downtown riverbank with over 15 bands across three stages headlined by multiplatinum country superstar Joe Nichols. Houma celebrates the Louisiana Blackberry Festival on May 16. Baton Rouge hosts the Louisiana Cann Festival. New Iberia brings classic and muscle cars to Cruisin' Cajun Country May 14-16.

Perfect spring weather. Music everywhere. And from Bayou St. John to Natchitoches to New Iberia, Louisiana is celebrating the way it does best—with music, food, and community. Here is what is happening across the state—May 12 through 18.

What's Happening in Your Area Code

🎭 New Orleans / Kenner / Metairie - 504

One of New Orleans’ most beloved spring festivals returns

Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo

Bayou St. John, New Orleans · May 15-17, 2026

The Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo runs May 15-17 along the banks of Bayou St. John. One of New Orleans' most beloved neighborhood festivals with local music, cold drinks, food vendors, and the kind of laid-back bayou-side energy that makes New Orleans feel like home even if you have never been there before.

🎉 Baton Rouge Area - 225

Louisiana Cann Festival

Baton Rouge · Saturday, May 16, 2026

The Louisiana Cann Festival lands in Baton Rouge on May 16. A growing cultural event celebrating music, arts, and community in the Capital City, drawing a diverse crowd for a full Saturday of live entertainment and local vendors.

🎶 Lafayette / Acadiana Area - 337

Music, chrome, and spring festivals take over Louisiana this weekend

Cruisin' Cajun Country

New Iberia · May 14-16, 2026

Classic and muscle cars cruise into the heart of Louisiana's Cajun Country May 14-16 in New Iberia. A car lover's paradise set against the backdrop of one of Acadiana's most charming cities, with food, live music, and chrome as far as the eye can see.

🚤 Houma / Thibodaux / Bayou Country - 985

Louisiana Blackberry Festival

Houma · Saturday, May 16, 2026

The Louisiana Blackberry Festival hits Houma on May 16. A sweet, family-friendly celebration of one of South Louisiana's most beloved wild fruits, with live music, food vendors, arts and crafts, and the kind of small-town community spirit the Bayou Country does better than anywhere.

🌲 Shreveport / North Louisiana - 318

Natchitoches Jazz & R&B Festival

Downtown Natchitoches Riverbank · May 15-16, 2026

The 29th annual Natchitoches Jazz & R&B Festival features over 15 bands across three stages headlined by multiplatinum country superstar Joe Nichols, with jazz, R&B, country, rock, soul, gospel, blues, and zydeco all represented. Set on the scenic downtown riverbank of one of Louisiana's most beautiful historic cities. This one is a genuine must.

The World's Fair That Went Bankrupt

When New Orleans Threw a Party and Nobody Came

The 1984 World’s Fair became the only one in U.S. history to go bankrupt during its run

May 12, 1984, New Orleans.

Governor Edwin Edwards stood at the opening ceremony of the Louisiana World Exposition on the Mississippi River waterfront. The fair cost $350 million. The theme was The World of Rivers: Fresh Water as a Source of Life. Edwards said, Laissez les bons temps rouler, let the good times roll.

The fair featured exhibits from 95 countries. A 20-story Ferris wheel. A gondola that carried people 300 feet above the Mississippi River. A monorail. The Wonderwall, a massive post-modern structure designed by architect Charles Willard Moore. A 14-foot Neptune statue with bare-breasted mermaids at the entrance. Aquacades. An amphitheater. The Italian Village. The German beer garden.

Organizers expected 11 million visitors. Only 7.3 million showed up, and two-thirds of them were from Louisiana. The fair opened 100 years after New Orleans hosted the 1884 World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition. But in 1984, it competed with the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Epcot in Florida, and the Republican National Convention. Tourists spent their vacation time and money elsewhere.

Paychecks started bouncing. The fair declared bankruptcy in August 1984 while the gates were still open. It became the only world's fair to declare bankruptcy during its run. By the time it closed on November 11, losses totaled $121 million. Contractors lost millions. Some creditors were paid as little as eight cents on the dollar. Bankruptcy proceedings continued until 1993. It was the last world's fair held in the United States.

But the fair left a legacy. The Louisiana Pavilion became the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The Riverwalk Marketplace opened. The Warehouse District was revitalized. The monorail was moved to Zoo Miami. Neptune and his alligator now greet visitors at Mardi Gras World on Tchoupitoulas Street. And locals remember the fair fondly—the Wonderwall, the gondola ride, the music, the food, the ambition of throwing a world's fair that nobody came to see.

Name This Louisiana Town

Can You Name This Louisiana Town?

This Louisiana town was originally named Vermilionville when it was founded in 1821.

Jean Mouton, the son of an exiled Acadian, and his surveyor John Dinsmore Jr. laid out a cross-grid town with streets named for presidents. They named it St. Jean du Vermilionville after the Vermilion River that runs through the area. The name was eventually shortened to Vermilionville.

By 1765, Acadian refugees expelled from Nova Scotia by the British during the Seven Years' War were arriving in Louisiana. The Spanish government awarded land grants to new settlers on the condition that they would clear the land and help build and keep up levees, bridges, and roads. The first land grants in the area were on waterways because there were few roads. Prairie areas were settled later.

In 1823, the Louisiana Legislature carved off the western half of St. Martin Parish to form a new parish. The parish was named after the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American and French Revolutions. But the town's name remained Vermilionville because the name Lafayette had already been given to a suburb of New Orleans.

In 1884, New Orleans incorporated that suburb into its boundaries. The town of Vermilionville was finally able to change its name. A legislative charter renamed the town Lafayette in honor of General Lafayette, who fought with and significantly aided the American Army during the American Revolutionary War.

The answer: Lafayette

Lafayette grew from a small Acadian settlement into the heart of Acadiana

Where Big Al Guards the Gumbo

Where a 14-Foot Alligator Guards the Gumbo

Prejean's Restaurant — Where Big Al Welcomes You to Cajun Country 3480 NE Evangeline Throughway, Lafayette (now also in Broussard)

In 1980, Robert BikerBob Guilbeau opened Prejean's Restaurant on his grandfather Walter Prejean's property in Lafayette. He built it as a theme restaurant celebrating Cajun culture. The entrance is a replica of a bayou with cypress trees and a small bridge. A 14-foot alligator named Big Al greets visitors at the door. Taxidermied swamp critters hang from the rafters. Spanish moss drapes from mock foliage. A giant stained glass mural sits behind the bandstand.

Prejean's paired classic Cajun seafood with live music and dancing. Crawfish étouffée, gumbo, fried alligator, frog legs, boudin-stuffed quail, and seafood-stuffed bell peppers filled the menu. Live Cajun and zydeco bands performed every night from 7 to 9 PM and during weekend brunch from 11 AM to 1 PM. Big names like Beausoleil, Wayne Toups, and Chubby Carrier played regularly. The booming oil economy of the 1980s ate it up. Tourists took note.

In the mid-1990s, Chef James Graham arrived from Montana and elevated the food. He created a dark roux duck and andouille gumbo that won first prize at the New Iberia World Championship Gumbo Cookoff seven years in a row. The gumbo became a Jazz Fest staple for 28 years, drawing lines of devotees and wowing artists from Jimmy Buffett to Lady Gaga. Graham left in the mid-2000s for other projects and passed away in 2006 at age 46.

In November 2020, Tim Metcalf, Greg Metcalf, and Ken Boudreaux bought the restaurant and closed it for a 10-week, nearly $1 million renovation. They brought back oysters on the half shell, added fresh baked pistolettes from Lejeune's bakery in Jeanerette, and recommitted to quality sourcing and made-to-order cooking with local crawfish, alligator, and greens from St. Joseph's Homestead in Cankton.

Today, Prejean's is run by the third generation of owners, still serving live Cajun music every night, still welcoming visitors with Big Al at the door, still cooking crawfish étouffée and duck gumbo the way Louisiana is supposed to taste. Forty-six years after it opened, it remains a Lafayette institution.

Big Al still welcomes visitors to one of Acadiana’s most iconic Cajun restaurants

⚜️ Bayou Boogaloo Comes Back to Mid-City

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