“I love that the New York Times said, ‘Clearly Mr. Rosenthal enjoys going over the line.’ Because I’ve enjoyed going over the line since–- forever–- that’s why I had to leave The Rouge,” says Mark Sam Rosenthal. This month, the Baton Rouge native performs his one-man show, "Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire,” at the Soho Playhouse. It’s Rosenthal’s humorous and moving account of the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina, told through the eyes of Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois. Along with 200,000 other New Orleanians, Rosenthal’s extended family took refuge in the nearby town– his mother had a full house for months.

Rosenthal recently sat down with psychoPEDIA to share some of the city’s lesser-known charms:

Were you born in Baton Rouge?
Born and raised. My parents are from there. My dad’s been dead a long time, but my mom is still there.

Describe Baton Rouge to someone who’s never been.
It’s really hot and humid and flat. It’s not like the old south-- like Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans-- there are a lot of strip malls, it’s a very industrial place. We have one of the largest Exxon refineries in the world. But it’s also so green down there–- it doesn’t get cold so almost everything is evergreen. Palm trees everywhere, it’s tropical–- sub-tropical, so the vegetation is really lush all year. But you pay for it during the nine months when it’s hot as hell. And there are some lovely neighborhoods.

What are they like?
They formed my ideal of what’s beautiful. Even with all the places in the world I’ve been, some of those streets are still the most beautiful. Especially Reymond Avenue. It’s a really wide boulevard with gorgeous live oaks coming over it like a canopy. And the houses, the style down there, even if it’s just a house in town, looks like a plantation-– columns, porches and balconies.

Is there a big nightlife scene?
Not really. It’s not a town that thinks of itself as a city. When I was growing up the downtown was shuttered. Nowadays, there’s stuff downtown, which includes some nightspots.

What did you do at night when you lived there?
In high school? (laughs) I guess I lived at home one summer during college. Well, there were some gay bars. Those were some scary-ass places. One was called Argon-– their slogan was, ‘It’s a gas’– it has since closed. This is the classy nightlife of “The Rouge” as I like to call it. Only those in the know call it The Rouge. One of the two gay bars downtown called George's, is literally under the Mississippi River Bridge; you have to buzz in because someone was once shot there.

Is it still there?
Yeah. But I don’t know if you have to buzz in. I haven’t been in years.

Where do you go when you visit?
The Rouge has great food. All that good Louisiana stuff–- lots of seafood. There are a couple of seafood giants in town. One is Mike Anderson's and the other is Ralph & Kacoo's, which is like 20,000 square feet, Pepto-Bismol pink and right on the Interstate. My mom likes this relatively new place called Parrain's.

Your favorite part of town?
The lakes in the middle of town called the University Lakes-– because LSU is there. It used to be a swamp. In the ‘30s they drained them for a make-work project and made lakes and built houses around them. It’s a place where people go jogging, walking, bike riding. When I was growing up there, my bike was my freedom so I’d go there to be by myself.

Anything you can do there that you can’t do anywhere else?
It’s the only place you can go see an LSU football game. There are 93,000 people there. It’s insane. The whole town comes out. Everyone’s a football fan–- even me. We had season tickets, I mean, there’s no opera.

Does The Rouge have any unique history?
It’s home of the tallest state capitol building in the country-– an Art Deco skyscraper! Huey Long was shot to death in it. He was the Governor of Louisiana in the ‘20s and ‘30s and then he was our senator. He was a populist demagogue, kind of a socialist, but everyone was so poor they loved him.

Who shot him?
A doctor from New Orleans named Carl Weiss.

Kind of like Harvey Milk…
Totally. You can take school trips there and put your fingers in the bullet holes. He’s buried underneath a giant statue of himself in front of the capitol in these huge ornamental gardens. That movie [based on the book] All the King’s Men is a fictionalized account of his life. But my favorite thing about the state capitol building is-– first that it’s a skyscraper-– 34 stories I think, but there’s a gift shop on the observation deck called the Shop on Top.

Do you shop there?
My brother and I have a Christmas tradition to get our grandmother a tacky gift from the Shop on Top. She loves that stuff, and every year we try to get something worse than the year before. It’s the thing we look forward to opening most.

Oh, and the one other thing you can only do in Baton Rouge is watch both your mother and father be king and queen of the Mystic Krewe of Achilles, a local Mardi Gras organization. I’ve seen them both parade around a ballroom to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” wearing rhinestone crowns and waving rhinestone scepters. And in the case of my father– red velvet rhinestone-encrusted knee breeches and stockings. Fucked up and awesome!

~Lisa Germinsky