(((New Orleans. A great breeder of American eccentricity.
Whether it's underwater, or not.)))
href="http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/al_copeland_dies_in_germany.htm
Link: Al Copeland dies in Munich, Germany -
New Orleans News - NOLA.com .
Al Copeland, a hard-charging, high-living entrepreneur who built an empire on spicy fried chicken and fluffy white biscuits, died Sunday in Munich, Germany, of complications from cancer treatment. He was 64.
He had gone to Munich for treatment of his illness, which had been diagnosed in November, said Kit Wohl, his spokeswoman.
Born in poverty, Mr. Copeland burst onto the scene in 1972, when he opened his first Popeyes fried-chicken stand. The Arabi restaurant was the start of a franchise that, under his leadership, had 700 outlets, in the United States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Kuwait.
The money he earned led to public displays of opulence such as speedboats kept in a glass-walled showroom along Interstate 10 when he wasn't racing them, a Lamborghini sports car parked outside his corporate headquarters and, of course, the massive Christmas displays that required sheriff's deputies to direct the traffic outside his Metairie home. (((I got a mighty hankering for fried chicken suddenly, even though the fast-food king there died suspiciously young.)))
There also were over-the-top weddings with such touches as fireworks and a model of Cinderella's pumpkin coach. These weddings ended in equally spectacular divorces; the divorce proceedings from his third wife wound up bringing down the original judge hearing the case as part of a massive federal investigation of courthouse corruption. (((If you're the king of fried chicken, you want a divorce big enough to dent the legal system.)))
During Carnival, Mr. Copeland not only sponsored parade floats in Jefferson Parish but also rode, said Peter Ricchiuti, a Tulane University finance professor who saw Mr. Copeland in one such procession.
Ricchiuti said he overheard this exchange between two other spectators: One man dismissed the spectacle as an indication of new money, but the other man replied, "If I had money, that's what I'd do."
Not even bankruptcy, the result of buying Church's Fried Chicken Inc., stopped him. Although Mr. Copeland lost ownership of his chicken outlets, he retained control of the company making the distinctive spice mixture, and he went on to open restaurants bearing his surname, as well as establishments featuring California cuisine, wrap sandwiches, cheesecake and Asian fare. (((("The spice must flow.")))
One such restaurant, Straya on St. Charles Avenue, triggered a noisy public feud in 1997 with novelist Anne Rice. She used her voice-mail message and a series of full-page advertisements in The Times-Picayune to attack the restaurant's decor, which included tasseled black curtains and a pair of sleek black-leopard sculptures flanking the entrance to the rest-room area.
"The humblest flop house on this strip of St. Charles Avenue has more dignity than Mr. Copeland's structure," she said in her opening salvo. (((I'd like to say that I'd back a fantasy novelist against the fried-chicken guy, but quite frankly I've eaten more fried chicken than I'll ever read vampire novels.)))
One reason she felt so passionately about the building at 2001 St. Charles Avenue was that she said that the Vampire Lestat, her dominant character, left her there, before Straya opened, after seeing his reflection in the window of what had been a Mercedes-Benz dealership. Rice also said she had planned to open a restaurant, Cafe Lestat, in a Magazine Street building she owned, but that never materialized.
Mr. Copeland's response, also in a full-page ad in The Times-Picayune, was good-humored, offering to treat her to dinner and to help her find Lestat. He even spoke of launching a monthlong "Find Lestat" promotion and dressing his staff like vampires. (((Actually, if you look at this guy from the point of view of a chicken, a mere vampire would be low-key by comparison.)))
But he also filed suit, claiming that she had defamed him and that she violated fair-trade laws because "her comments were made in the context of her being a business competitor," Mr. Copeland's lawyer said.
Civil District Judge Robin Giarrusso threw out the suit. Mr. Copeland, accepting defeat, invited Rice to dinner. Rice, who did not accept his offer, moved to California in 2004, settling in Rancho Mirage after brief stints in San Diego and La Jolla. Straya, a phonetic spelling of "strella," the Spanish word for star, has become a Cheesecake Bistro.
This wasn't Mr. Copeland's only high-profile skirmish. In December 2001, he got into a fist fight with Robert Guidry, a former casino owner, and his sons in Morton's The Steakhouse, an upscale restaurant.
The two multimillionaires had been rivals for a riverboat-casino license in 1993. Mr. Copeland lost, and he blamed Guidry. Guidry, who had built much of his fortune on tugboats, contended Mr. Copeland had relied on connections to delay his hearing for the license.
Guidry eventually won the license with the help of then-Gov. Edwin Edwards, but only after paying an Edwards aide $100,000 a month, amounting to more than $1 million. Guidry, who pleaded guilty to an extortion conspiracy and was a key prosecution witness against Edwards, was sentenced in January 2001 to three years' probation and ordered to pay $3.5 million in a fine and restitution.
Each man accused the other of starting the brawl, in which Mr. Copeland suffered a blow to his left cheek. Guidry and two of his sons spent the night in jail. No charges were filed, and customers requested the Copeland and Guidry tables for months after the fight...." (((Got an awesome tabloid-TV proposal for you here: "Brawling Celebrity Millionaires." Throw a few novelists in, man, the sky's the limit!)))
