PRENTISS SMITH CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST
Shreveport is a wonderful place to live and an even better place to raise a family.
There, I said it, and it’s not hyperbole. That’s right, I am someone who likes Shreveport. I am someone who likes the people of Shreveport, and I am someone who knows that people are fickle and change like the weather in Louisiana in the winter time. It is easy to criticize, rather than try to make things better. Shreveport is not perfect by any means, but it is certainly not the dystopian wasteland that some people on social media make it out to be. Shreveport is a great place to live, work and raise a family.
Over the last several months, I have listened to and engaged in verbal exchanges with some of the people on social media and elsewhere who speak negatively about Shreveport. Some of it is warranted with respect to the spike in crime, specifically homicides in the city, but most of it is unwarranted and untrue.
The fact is that all cities have problems, and crime is the most important problem that any city must address. Shreveport is addressing the problem, and the mayor appears to be more focused on the crime problem than he previously was. The jury is still out on the new chief, but as I have said in the past, he deserves a chance to do his job.
Shreveport, a city of 200,000 people, is just the right size. It’s not too big. It’s not too small. It’s easy to get around town, and there are rarely, if any, traffic jams, unless you are trying to take your family out to dinner on a Friday evening to one of the fine restaurants that line Youree Drive, which can bottleneck at times. Those fine restaurants are not just limited to Youree Drive. They are all over town from Brotherly Love on Greenwood Road to Earnest’s Fine Foods just on the edge of downtown and many more.
Finding tasty food in Shreveport is not a problem. In fact, Shreveport is the go-to place for many people within a 100-mile radius from Longview to Texarkana to Minden for a night out with the family.
Shreveport is also the home of one of the best private colleges in the country, Centenary, which has consistently been featured by Forbes Magazine as one of America’s best schools. The medical school in Shreveport is also one of the best in the south and has produced some of the country’s finest doctors. Formerly known as LSU Medical Center, it is a topnotch trauma center that has continued to serve the people of Shreveport and surrounding communities with professionalism and excellence.
Shreveport is also the home of Southern University and LSUS, both of which have steadily grown in enrollment and importance to the educational infrastructure of the city.
As someone who was born and raised in Ruston, I am proud to call Shreveport my home. Ruston is my hometown, but Shreveport is my home. It is the place where I worked on a job for 30 years and retired. It is the birthplace of my wife and three of my children. It is where I planted my roots and where I have some of the fondest memories of my life. It is home. It is the place where my children received excellent primary and secondary educations and have all gone on to do well for themselves. The story of my family is the story of thousands of families in Shreveport whose lives have been a part of the fabric of this great city.
Shreveport is also a good place for entertainment. Outside of New Orleans, Shreveport is the best place to celebrate Mardi Gras. Thousands of people come from near and far to watch the parades and enjoy the party.
Every year the city hosts one of the best festivals in the South — the Red River Revel, which attracts vendors and participants from all over the region. Then there is the Mudbug Madness Festival, which is always a big draw for the city. The Good Times Roll Festival also attracts a large following every year.
The Independence Bowl has been a great venue to showcase the city of Shreveport to the country, and this was a great Independence Bowl year for Shreveport. And there is also the African-American Parade, which lays claim to be the largest parade of its kind in the country. I haven’t talked about the Robinson Center or ArtBreak or the aquarium or the primate sanctuary. I could go on talking about the good things Shreveport has to offer, but I will stop there. This is the Shreveport I know and love.
I have lived here for almost 40 years, and I know what Shreveport was when I came here, and I know what it has become. It has become a place where people like me can be proud of being from.
Yes, there are problems with crime and deteriorating infrastructure and other maladies, but those problems can be overcome with a little more optimism and a lot less pessimism from those who can only find fault.
Effective leadership and a commitment to making the city work for all its citizens is a good place to start for all of us who love this city and want it to prosper and succeed. In other words, Shreveport is a great place to live, work and raise a family. And that’s my take.