BATON ROUGE - Flamingo-themed festivities will look a little different this year when the annual Spanish Town Ball comes to the Raising Cane's River Center in February. Due to a scheduling conflict with the United States Bowling Congress, a "split ball" will be held between two rooms.President of the Society of Preservation for Lagniappe in Louisiana Robert King said the last time this happened was in 2012.The ball will have 116 ten-top tables in the hockey arena, and another 121 tables in the River Center ballroom. Because space is limited this year, they had to cut 87 tables from the program.Security will be cracking down on "free-roamers" who do not have a designated table to put their ice chests and belongings. "That puts us at 237 tables and usually we have 324," King said. The amount of tables being reduced by a third has also put a dent in their pockets for donations to local charities. King said the organization donates between $90,000 and $100,000 annually, but this year that number will be around $60,000 since they cannot sell as many tickets to the ball. King said planning the split ball has been a complicated matter. Difficult decisions were made when having to hire two more bands, schedule an extra royalty introduction ceremony and keep a head count of the amount of people in each room to comply with Fire Marshal capacity limits.Still, King is confident things will work out. "I don't think it's gonna be that big of a problem but it's just kind of a logistical nightmare with the size of the River Center, getting people where they need to be," King said. This year's is "In Smiley town, Smiley says..." in honor of the iconic Advocate columnist Smiley Anders who passed away last year.Anders was an essential part of the awards process for past parades. "Smiley would let us do the judges meet at his house after the parade to figure out who won what award and everything else and then we'd give it to Smiley. And Monday morning, everyone would run out and get a paper," King said. The Spanish Town Ball will be held on Feb. 15. It is a ticket-only event and not open to the general public. Permalink| Comments