Sandra Bullock: New Orleans, Louisiana

Sandra Bullock: New Orleans, Louisiana, A peek inside Sandra’s New Orleans Mansion, courtesy of The Real Estalker.When Sandra Bullock revealed in last month’s jaw-dropping cover story in People that she’d adopted a baby boy from New Orleans, she spoke about raising him there, saying: “It’s his city.” Just a few weeks later, the actor and single mom followed through on that promise. Bullock recently moved herself and baby Louis into a historic Victorian mansion in the city’s Garden District.

The mansion, known as the Koch-Mays house, was built in the 1860s. It boasts 6,615 square feet, five bedrooms, four and a half baths, ornate chandeliers, and a lagoon-like pool in the backyard. Bullock bought the house for $2.25 million last June with her now-estranged husband, Jesse James. (She filed for divorce from James in April.)

Dramatic photos of the mansion, which were posted on a real estate site after her June 2009 purchase of the home, show rooms bedecked with opulent antique furniture, Victorian wallpaper, and huge, gold Gothic mirrors. But Bullock has most likely filled the home with her own décor by now: Moving vans were spotted late last month moving furniture, including a leather sofa, into the mansion.

Jesse James American Chopper

Jesse James American Chopper, Jesse James is ramping up the smack talk as his live American Chopper bike-building battle against Teutuls looms.

With James set to compete against the Junior/Senior team on American Chopper: The Build Off starting Dec. 5, the former Monster Garage star says Discovery gave him the chance to star in Chopper first — and he turned it down.

“I was offered that show first,” James says. “And I turned it down. Because bike building is what I’m supposed to be doing and it’s from my heart and soul. I don’t just bedazzle a bunch of s–t for TV … [my bikes] are outlaw-looking and dangerous … I’ve never needed six motherf—ers to tell me my bike is cool.”

James also explains why he’s doing the live battle and claims he taunted the Teutuls into agreeing using a “Jedi mind trick.” Check it out in this exclusive video below. The best part is that James is inexplicably loading an assault rifle throughout the interview.

Actress Buys House In Garden District

Actress Buys House In Garden District, Actress Sandra Bullock, who has donated generously to Warren Easton Senior High School since Hurricane Katrina, has purchased a historic home in the Garden District from entrepreneur John Russell Lee Sr., whose I CAN Learn educational software was at the center of the Mose Jefferson trial.

The ornate 6,000 square-foot home, replete with gables and iron-work, is near properties owned by actors John Goodman and Nicolas Cage and the home previously owned by writer Anne Rice.

It sold in June for $2.25 million in cash to Big Easy Bebe LLC, which was incorporated a few days earlier by John Chamblee, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, who has represented Bullock in other real estate transactions. Chamblee declined to discuss anything about the corporation.

Bullock, who may be best known for the 1994 movie Speed and the 2000 movie Miss Congeniality, also starred in the Divine Secrets of Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a 2002 movie that was set but not filmed in Louisiana. This fall, she will star in a film written by New Orleans native Michael Lewis called The Blind Side, the true story of financial and racial integration about the destitute son of a crack addict who is sent to an elite private school and becomes a big-time college athlete.

Since Hurricane Katrina, Bullock has become a major patron of Warren Easton, the first public high school for boys in Louisiana. The school, which dates to 1845 and survived going co-ed and desegregating, was having trouble opening after Hurricane Katrina because the storm caused $4 million in damages at the brick Canal Street building where it has operated since 1913.

Mardi Gras publisher and Warren Easton alumnus Arthur Hardy, who serves on the charter foundation’s board, said Bullock learned of the school’s needs from a lawyer in Rex who was working with Warren Easton through the Mardi Gras krewe’s public school philanthropic efforts and who had a mutual acquaintance with the actress.

Since then, Bullock has donated several hundred thousand dollars to the school, helping to renovate the school’s auditorium, buying new Fighting Eagle band uniforms, chipping in for scholarships and helping to fund a new health clinic. “She liked what she heard. That’s how it all started,” Hardy said.

In being inducted into Warren Easton’s hall of fame in May, shortly before buying the house, Bullock said she was “embarrassed” by the federal government’s slow response after Katrina and felt compelled to help the city.

Bullock has called her donations to Warren Easton “the best investment I ever made.” She said she wanted to invest in a school, and Easton’s history and architecture caught her attention. “This school is an architectural gem. .A¥.A¥. It gives the kids a sense of pride.”

Bullock lives in several places but comes to New Orleans frequently, Hardy said. Like other celebrities, she likes the fact that people leave her alone. Now that she owns a home in the city, Hardy believes New Orleans will see even more of her efforts to shine a spotlight on worthy causes. “She loves the city. I think she has other plans for things she’d like to do,” Hardy said.

Her husband, Jesse James, who hosted the Discovery Channel reality show Monster Garage, where teams of people with fabricating experience would modify vehicles into new forms, has also gotten involved in the New Orleans philanthropic spirit.

James, a frequent celebrity guest at Steel Pony Express motorcycle gatherings in New Orleans, wants to open a metal shop in New Orleans where kids can learn art and trade skills that will earn them $20-an hour jobs. James donated an autographed, desk-sized, limited-edition tool box from his West Coast Choppers bike business to a silent auction hosted by Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Co. last month, and raised $6,850 for Warren Easton.

In a May interview about his new Spike TV show, Jesse James is a Dead Man, James talked about opening a branch of West Coast Choppers in New Orleans.

“I kind of had a notion to get a building down there and build a little shop so I can come down there and work part of the year,” he said. “I used to do a lot of riding down there. I love the vibe in Louisiana. It’s like a magnet for me. I feel very calm and relaxed there, and it makes me want to put a stake in that town and live there.”

The 1876 home that Bullock bought has a storied history of its own. It was designed by renowned New Orleans architect William Alfred Freret, who designed dozens of buildings around the country for the U.S. government after the Civil War, and built for James Biddle Eustis, who served in the U.S. Senate and as an ambassador to France.

More recently, it was owned by Owen “Pip” Brennan Jr., who operates Brennan’s restaurant with his brothers and who has presided over the Krewe of Bacchus since it first rolled in 1969. In 1998, Brennan sold the home to Lee, the owner of JRL Enterprises Inc., which makes the I CAN Learn algebra software program.

Last month, a federal jury convicted Mose Jefferson, brother of former Congressman Bill Jefferson, for bribing a former Orleans Parish School Board member to get Lee’s product into local schools. During the trial, former U.S. Rep Bob Livingston testified that he secured a Congressional earmark to help get the program in schools, then became a lobbyist for the software days after resigning from Congress.

Lee, who moved his company’s offices from the Texaco building at 400 Poydras St. to his new, more modest home on Constantinople, said that the sale of his Garden District home had nothing to do with JRL Enterprises and the trial.

Before settling on Lee’s house, luxury-home Realtor Eleanor Farnsworth said that Bullock had been interested in buying a home in New Orleans for some time. The actress looked at one of her listings back on the day in December when it snowed, and was concerned about tracking snow inside.

Jackson Square, New Orleans

Jackson Square, New Orleans, Jackson Square, also known as Place d’Armes, is a historic park in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
Jackson Square was designed after the famous 17th-century Place des Vosges in Paris, France, by the architect and landscape architect Louis H. Pilié. Jackson Square is roughly the size of a city block (GPS +29.95748 -090.06310).

Chartres Street side of Jackson Square in 1842, showing the Cathedral before remodeling and some of the structures later replaced by the Pontalba Buildings. Lithograph from daguerreotype by Jules Lion.

Jackson Square in 1885
Early French colonial New Orleans was originally centered around what was then called the Place d’ Armes (Spanish: Plaza de Armas). After the Battle of New Orleans, in 1815, the Place d’ Armes was renamed Jackson Square after the victorious United States general Andrew Jackson. In the center of the park stands an equestrian statue of Jackson erected in 1856, one of four identical statues in the United States by the sculptor Clark Mills.

The square originally overlooked the Mississippi River across Decatur Street, but the view was blocked in the 19th century by the building of taller levees. The riverfront was long devoted to shipping docks. The 20th-century administration of Mayor Moon Landrieu installed a scenic boardwalk on top of the levee to reconnect the city to the river; it is known as the “Moon Walk” in his honor.

On the north side of the square are three 18th‑century historic buildings, which were the city’s heart in the colonial era. The center of the three is St. Louis Cathedral. The cathedral was designated as a minor Basilica by Pope Paul VI. To its left is the Cabildo, the old city hall, now a museum, where the final version of the Louisiana Purchase was signed. To the Cathedral’s right is the Presbytère, built to match the Cabildo. The Presbytère originally housed the city’s Roman Catholic priests and authorities; at the start of the 19th century, it was adapted as the city hall, and in the 20th century became a museum.

The Place d’Armes was the prime site for the public execution of disobedient slaves during the 18th and early 19th centuries. After the 1811 German Coast Uprising, three slaves were hanged here. The heads from their dismembered bodies were put on the city’s gates.

In the Reconstruction era, the Place d’Armes served as an arsenal. During the insurrection following the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election, in March 1873, it was the site of the Battle of Jackson Square. A several-thousand man militia under John McEnery, the Democratic claimant to the office of the Governor, defeated the New Orleans militia, seizing control of the state’s buildings and armory for a few days. They retreated before the arrival of Federal forces, which re-established control temporarily in the state.

Mardi Gras 2012

Mardi Gras 2012, The idea isn’t so much that teens are the cause of Mardi Gras trouble and arrests, but that people under 16 need to be protected from crime and becoming victims of crime in the French Quarter.

Consequently, children under the age of 16 can’t be on Bourbon Street after 8 p.m. during the Mardi Gras festivals. Some have said the curfew on adolescents is a racist law. The curfew was pushed by the New Orleans city council back in January. Ideally, what happens to adolescents found in the French Quarter by police is that they’re taken to a curfew center.

At the curfew center, police telephone the child’s parents. The parents than come to the center to retrieve their children. As it stands, police ware randomly searching and seeking out adolescents and young people and removing them from the celebrations. During the most recent Mardi Gras celebrations, 170 arrests have been made for violating curfew. That totals 20 percent of all Mardi Gras participants.

Police say that parents aren’t complaining about the curfew now. But in the early stages of the implementing the law, the curfew had its critics. Opponents of the curfew said that minorities would be targeted. Opponents said that historically, minority youth are disproportionately arrested and charged with crimes. Opponents also argued the curfew was unfair because the curfew is only effect in certain parts of the city.

The curfew has been in effect since January. Mardi Gras celebrations began February 4. Adolescents are welcome throughout the Quarter as long as they’re with parents or adults.

New Orleans city council and law enforcement didn’t waver on their curfew decision. Officials don’t believe that there is justification or sufficient explanation to allow children under 16 to witness Mardis Gras’ more risque side.