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April 27, 2005
There Ain't No Ham Like the Birmingham
Lessons learned from a trip to Birmingham last night:
1. If a mid-label band (say, Iron & Wine) is playing a ramshackle dive (say, the Hi Note) and no tickets are being sold online, it's probably safe to say the natives have snatched them all, and you shouldn't bother to drive 140 miles to find out for sure.
2. The good people of Alabama do not repave their Interstate highways. I think it's against their religious convictions or something. I have never been so happy to see Georgia road construction again.
3. Birmingham is, it seems, a distribution point for beer shipping, which means imports are just as cheap as domestics.
4. On a related note, I love Kirin Ichiban.
5. If anyone in this burg has a lick of sense, they'll open a club/bar/music venue in the Southside. Bumming around B'ham, it's quickly obvious that each mildly hip neighborhood (there seem to be two or three) has a social square, with tons of packed restaurants, situated around a little music hall. Why on earth wouldn't this work perfectly on the segment of Market Street north of Main? The restaurants -- St. John's, The Meeting Place, Bellagio, heck, even Porker's -- are already there. Market Street is just begging to be mini-Williamsburg, people. I want to see Sam Beam in Chattanooga, instead of driving to central Alabama to not see him.
6. Not that this has anything to do with anything, but you should listen to the new Mountain Goats track, "This Year." Then go buy the album. There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year.
| By mesh | 02:42 PM
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