Beer & Budgets

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - 5:30pm

Little Gem Saloon

445 S. Rampart Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

The Little Gem Saloon, located on the ground floor at 445 S. Rampart Street, effectively restores a nationally significant historic jazz landmark into a spectacular restaurant and jazz club. At the same address upstairs you'll find The Ramp Room.

The Little Gem Saloon was first opened in 1903 on the 400 block of South Rampart Street, which has long been considered the birthplace of Jazz. Early progenitors of Jazz such as Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard and Buddy Bolden performed at Frank Douroux’s Little Gem Saloon in the historic “Back O’ Town” neighborhood that borders the infamous Storyville red-light district. As Jazz became one of New Orleans’ greatest exports, this block of South Rampart, also known as “The Ramp,” was a teeming commercial district that included the Karnofsky Tailor Shop, where Louis Armstrong reportedly worked in his youth, and numerous Jazz clubs including the legendary Eagle Saloon, and The Iroquois Theatre.

Between 1926 and 1949, the building was home to David Pailet’s Loan Office, a combination pawn shop and hang out for musicians. By the 1950s it had turned into Pete’s Blue Heaven Lounge, an R&B club where members of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club began and ended member funerals. By the 1960s, the once thriving district was demolished in order to build a new City Hall, office towers and parking lots. The Little Gem Saloon was boarded up for close to 40 years until its rebirth in December 2012.

The Bazan Family set out to restore The Little Gem in 2012. The group transformed The Little Gem Saloon into a multi-level restaurant and live music venue that harkens back to the days when the venue was truly the jazz corner of New Orleans. More than a century since it first opened its doors, the restoration of The Little Gem Saloon marks the resurrection of this historic area as the new epicenter of New Orleans’ jazz. 

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Join the Committee for a Better New Orleans, the Young Leadership Council, and the Hispanic Young Professionals of Louisiana for a night of networking and conversation about the New Orleans city budget. What would you do if you were the Mayor of New Orleans for a day? Spend more money on local parks? Fill potholes? With the Big Easy Budget Game, we put the power in your hands. We'll give you $602 million local tax dollars to spend on the City of New Orleans, and you decide where it goes. Along the way, you can learn a bit about how we spend money now-- which department receives the most money? What do they use it for? Here's the idea: after you and all of your neighbors play, we'll compile the results of everyone's budgets into a meta-budget: The People's Budget. How do real people spend money differently than city leaders? How are we the same? We'll take the People's Budget to leaders at City Hall this fall so that they can build your feedback into the real city budget for 2017! No need to be a professional accountant to play the Big Easy Budget Game! Average play time is just about 10 minutes and the game is written in plain English for those of us who don't balance the books on a regular basis. Can't make it to the party? That's ok! You can play from home anytime.

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