Subscriber Exclusive: Kingfish Collectibles

If you sign up for a paid annual subscription, you'll receive a digital copy of the "Mafia Kingfish." Upgrade to the Kingfish level and I'll send you a mint condition Carlos trading card.

Nearly seven months ago, on Friday, April 4, 2025, I cranked up the engine of my Substack account and quietly published a piece celebrating the 64th anniversary of Carlos Marcello’s wild ride from New Orleans to Guatemala. Even though my Substack account had been essentially dormant since its inception in late December 2021, I somehow managed to collect nearly 50 free subscribers, and I wasn’t in any particular hurry to expand.

This would be a slow launch, I decided, a way of reestablishing my digital presence as an investigative writer. I named the site “CenLamar 2.0” both because “cenlamar” was the name I’d registered under at Substack (and therefore, already in the site’s address, cenlamar.substack.com) and because I thought the call-back to my first website, CenLamar, was appropriate.

Two months later, having tripled the number of subscribers (184!), I rebranded and relaunched the site, upcycling an old name: Imagine Louisiana.

There was one other major change on the reimagined Imagine Louisiana platform: It would operate largely behind a paywall—an imminently affordable paywall!—and actively encourage readers to become paid subscribers. I’d already switched on the “paid subscriber” feature, though the status didn’t confer any real benefits. On the relaunched site, the vast majority of new content would be free to read in full for a week. After a week, it would hop over the paywall and remain eternally in the archives, accessible only to paid subscribers.

As of yesterday, 47 of the site’s 305 total subscribers are paid subscribers. Not bad.

It’d be nice to finish the year strong. During the next few weeks, I will be expanding the paid archives with exclusive content.

To that end, as a way of thanking our —yes, I know the site is just me—paid annual subscribers and welcoming new paid annual subscribers, here’s a little gift: