Jose Fernandes grew up under a fascist regime in Portugal.

Jose came to Hammond, of all places, on a tennis scholarship, almost 40 years ago. In the interim, between then and the current rise of fascism, Jose has been a stock broker and a door-to-door furniture salesman – the latter for something like 20 years – before devoting himself to photography. Now, with his wife, Jose is the owner of the 818 Gallery  that features his worldwide photography, at 818 Royal Street. So, if you want to know anything about the rise of fascism and how to recognize it, you’ll find a resident expert on Royal Street.

Lori Carcich is  the kind of person you read about in Forbes magazine or you hear about on CNBC, but you’d never expect to actually meet someone like this. Lori was a perfectly normal woman, wife, and mother, living in Orange County California when she decided one fine day that she was going to create a new, better tasting whisky. The result is Country Smooth. It’s a whisky that’s smooth and born out of a love of country music and Americana. This brief description doesn’t do the story justice – you have it hear it in this conversation in Lori’s own words – and the upshot of the whole thing is, if it’s not enough to start your own whisky brand from scratch, how about also launching your own music festival from scratch? That would be the Country Smooth Fest, kicking off in New Orleans this weekend.

Blake Quick was one of the founding members of Flowtribe, and was doing just fine, till the day the rest of the band kicked him out. Now he has his own band, The Quickening. Their new album, Begin Again, is available wherever you prefer to steal music, and you can hear Do Your Thing, a song off of the album, in this Happy Hour.

Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.