What “lost” place in Birmingham do you miss?

03.5.2008 by Andre Natta · 26 Comments

Check out this week’s In Love With to see what we mean…

There’s a part two to this question – Is there any place currently in existence that you’d be tremendously upset to find out had closed?

Filed under: Birmingham · general

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Did you know this ramp might go away?

http://visitvulcan.com Claudia

There used to be this awesome Put-Put Golf place on Hwy 31 in Hoover…where Krispy Creme Doughnuts is now. I remember going there as a child and having so much fun, and when it shut down, I was devastated. I miss it…
Kelli

The Ensley Grill.

My grandparents used to take me there when I was really young — probably two or three years before the owner was shot. It was just a cafeteria style place, but the food was awesome, and the people were always so nice.

And I’m with Claudia. I miss Putt-Putt. We used to go to Magic Mountain on Hwy 150, and now there’s not one anywhere.
betsy

Metropolitan Deluxe – Loved their great greeting cards and funky furniture.
George

I miss Ollie’s Bar-B-Que. Ollie’s was to Birmingham what The Varsity is to Atlanta.
StephenS

3 StephenS // Mar 6, 2008 at 10:25 am

I miss Magic Platter. In middle school, we used to skip track to run and buy all the cds we couldn’t get when our parents were around (who thought that Stone Temple Pilots was that controversial…). I also miss Noise in homewood – walking in , I instantly felt like I had left the suburbs and was in someplace unique.

I miss New York Pizza’s old location where cool beans is now. It had an authentic, lived-in feel that the new location, with its generic tables, booths, walls and five TVs blasting sports twenty-four/seven, has lost.

I miss highland coffee too. Why is that place still empty??

Um, and am I allowed to miss all the historic buildings that have been torn down in this city, even the ones I never saw? Terminal Station being at the top, others include the Morris Hotel, the Court House on 4th next to St. Paul’s, the Temple to Vesta on Shades Mtn., etc, etc. I miss them almost everyday, even though I’ve never seen them.
Lindsey

I miss Magic Platter, too, more than I can adequately verbalize. It was my default music store in high school, even though it was a good 25 minute drive from my house (of course, gas cost 97 cents back in those days, so it wasn’t such a sacrifice).

I also miss Celestial Realm in Southside. It was the first coffeehouse I remember coming across in Birmingham and was around long before any Starbucks showed up.
http://bhamterminal.com/ Andre

I miss Highland Coffee Company. Evening runs through Highland just aren’t the same…
Charles Amos Horn

I miss the ingalls iron works facility in Titusville. It was torn down, supposedly to build a “neighborhood center” wal-mart. I loved that place, i spent hours rambling around, exploring, photographing, and fantasizing about things to do with it. There were a number of installations and works by art students out there…in addition to all the graffiti. It was the kind of place that could have became the Tate Modern of birmingham. There were two awesome corporate buildings, too, that were wonderfully terrifying. But it’s all gone now, except for the foundations and one of the corporate buildings…
http://bplonline.org Hope

I miss Berman Mercantile, and now I also miss Massey’s. Their new place just isn’t the same as the old one.
austin

i miss the mill in 5 points. birmingham needs a new brew pub.
Erin

I miss Highland Coffee Company like crazy. It really gave you a “cozy”/”art district” feeling when you got off the exit. That’s right where I live, and I think we all agree.
Jennifer

I miss the 5 points Music Hall. It was a great mid-size venue that hosted some pretty fantastic bands during a unique time for music in Birmingham.
http://www.rollbamaroll.com Todd

I miss Magic Platter as well, but the old Lion and the Unicorn back when it was first where the Golden Temple vegan place is now and then when it moved over to the Pickwick Place was somewhere I went once or twice a week as a kid. The one where Golden Temple is now was sketchy and my parents didn’t ever let me go in there alone, but the Pickwick Place one had more than one light in it and I spent many a time in there buying comic books and just generally being a total nerd/loser. Once it moved out to Hoover and their focus shifted from comics to RPGs and Card Games it was just never the same.
thyme

? Romeo’s (Italian restaurant). We need you Herb!!!! First, just being located downstairs downtown on 7th Avenue South for decades — before everyone could spell l-o-f-t — was really as good as any home-grown dining experience can get, only the better with its bare bones Italian flavor. Second, even the final location on Clairmont Avenue in Forest Park was better than no Romeo’s at all. For all of you out there born after 1969, let me break it down for you: Two brothers and a Mama running the whole show: waiter, cook, check-out, ambience. You could smell the garlic before you entered the building and it felt like Mama calling you home even if you were born a middle-class, white child in the South. Romantic lighting, with tall, dripping candles setting the mood at each table. Tall, red vinyl booths to get lost in and find your love in. Very few items on the menu because it was all made-to-order and all you could ever digest with a wine “helper.” Ugh!! That is as far as I dare go before I start crying in my nostalgic glass of Chianti. Where’s my warm, buttered, garlic bread? Sniff-sniff.
http://brendan.com brendan

I miss Reunion the coffee place and even Highland coffee place too!! What is going on in this town!
http://www.FinalTaxi.com Final Taxi

I miss Brother’s Music Hall- It was across from BrookWood Village.
Great place to see bands that were too small to play the BJCC and too big for a nightclub.

I saw many new acts there- the Police, Pat Benatar, Elvis Costello, Warren Zevon, the Ramones and Tim Curry to name a few.
Terry

I really miss the old Eastwood Mall. Back in my teenage years, everyone would cruise around the mall and just socialize with everybody. It was the place to see and be seen. Then, you could grab a burger at Kelly’s Hamburger’s along Monclair Road.
Additionally, I miss the WSGN Sock Hops at the Oporto Armory. What a time it was…
G Man

Jennifer – I miss the Five Points Music Hall too. I saw some great shows there – Michael Hedges, Galactic, Govt Mule, just to name a few (I missed the infamous Ben Harper concert).

I miss Dugan’s. It was a great place. Food was good (excellent burgers), and at night, it was just a great bar to have some drinks with friends. I spent way too much money there, but I loved it.
Nicole

I miss Dilli’s Deli (I think that was how it was spelled). It was located by Eastwood Mall. HUGE ice cream cones! My mom was pregnant with my sister and she craved a cone. We had to open the sunroof to fit the ice cream cone in the car. (Not the actual cone just the ice cream was piled high on the cone)(:
Steve

This may be ancient history to most of the readers, but I miss all the wonderful “mom and pop” antique shops that dotted our community before the days of the antique super malls. Estelle Shelton’s Anteeks and Junque in Norwood was located in an old house with an iron porch rail made from the legs of treadle sewing machines. Clarice Roddam owned Roddam’s Antiques on 18th Street North and combined unusual collectibles with clothing alterations.

Roberta’s Browse and Buy in East Lake offered a full line of wonderful antiques and collectibles and was willing to work with starving young collectors because she understood our “needs.” Her daughter, Trisha, carries on the tradition in her fascinating shop located on a side street in the heart of Homewood’s business district. I can never get out of there without buying something.

Bryant’s Antiques was located on First Avenue North in Woodlawn in a huge rambling house that had belonged to an Alabama governor. He didn’t even mind young kids exploring the dark dusky rooms piled high with inventory. I bought my first postcard there for a nickle.

There were many others with colorful names and equally colorful owners: The Sewing Machine Exchange, Jim’s Junk, and maybe the most unusual of all, Jim Anderson’s Seeds Four – The Never Before Store. God, do I miss those places!
BrianW

Smith and Hardwick bookstore

Roger’s Army Navy store back when they stocked camping supplies instead of $200 pants

Pacific Islander on Valley Ave where Sammy’s is now. Best sesame chicken ever.

Amen to Ollie’s.
Sharon Howell//Oct.23,2010

I miss the sock hops at the Oporto Armory.I wish there was another place that still held them.
VICKY VINING

YES I MISS ROMEOS THE HIDDEN DOWNSTAIRS SOOO ROMANTIC’
MANCHAS
HOPPERS
DUGANS
LOUIE LOUIE
KELLEYS HOT DOGS
WIG WAM HOTEL
HomewoodParkGirl

I miss Birmingham, period. I was born and raised there but moved away because of my job. I’m SAD to hear some of these places are no longer in business!!
My favorite childhood place was Farrell’s ice cream, Sneaky Pete’s hot dogs (in Homewood) and the Little Professor shop.
Paul

There were once a number of places in the mid 60′s to mid 70′s for young folks to enjoy on the eastern side of B’ham.
The Eastwood Mall, Shoneys, Jacks, Starlight Drive-in, Dairy Queen, Monks, Oporto Armory, Kelly’s, etc. In the waning years there was The New Boom Boom Room, The Village Zoo, and another nightclub at Village East owned by the owners of one in Eastlake on 1st Avenue – Banks Lounge. Village East was given to the local Methodist Church by the Eastwood Mall developer N. H. Waters with the intent that they would use it to extend their elderly care facilities. The church promptly became a competitor to the Eastwood Mall complex and two more malls were built close by for a total of four. I watched all of them being built and saw the entire area gradually go down. Nothing equaled the good times of the original Eastwood Mall – when it was the only mall in the area. WSGN Good Guys sponsoned much at the old Eastwood Mall and there was always good clean fun to be had there. There were even two artesian wells there and one you could fish. The Mall was green before its time with palm trees, jungle plants, the water from thre wells used for cooling, and the large building with it’s indoor pools and fountains with large walkways and ample seating to rest inside – in the advertised 73 degree shelter that was also built to bomb shelter standards. That’s all gone now, including the Coopers home that was in the corner of their property and across Oporto from the Eastwood Mall (below Village East). Nothing is the same, and nothing has been really successful or particularly interesting in the area since the mid 70′s. Crime and peoples attitudes toward crime just changed too much for the area to continue as it was in its heyday. Now you see new buildings, new businesses, etc., but most never last there very long.

I knew everything good was all coming to an end when I walked into the Oporto Armory to see hippies all over the floor and many of them smoking dope with the B’ham police standing there ignoring it. I turned around and walked out never to return – as did everyone I knew that had previously frequented the place. Back when the Tams and other groups played there in my high school years, it was just a good clean place to go and enjoy the music with a date. This was in the days a number of my friends were dying in Vietnam and I was waiting to be drafted – and the hippies calling us everything from baby killers and war mongers to whatever for supporting our country. We couldn’t wear our uniforms without being spit on by the draft dodgers and the subculture of anti-American extremists. Now we have them in our government – still making our lives worse in a country they wouldn’t think of risking their lives for on a battlefield.

Nothing in B’ham has ever been the same, and it’s no longer safe for kids to walk around in most areas there – especially after dark. I can remember riding city buses from school home, and alone at the age of six where I needed to be. I rode those busses enough I knew the bus drivers as friends and by name. Riding those busses today would be extremely risky for even a teenage child today. Back then, I remember even riding the bus downtown, meeting my aunt where she worked, and then taking the old Mize bus to her and my uncle’s home – a 50 mile trip one way, and half of it by myself without worry.
StLouieSusan

Celestial Realm…loved it in the mid-90s when I lived there for a year as a full-time Jesuit Volunteer (think Americorps but with way worse pay). You could go there, hang for hours on a cozy couch and no one got upset if you nursed your tea because you were so broke. Funny, that was the year I graduated college and the show Friends began. We felt so cool because it was like our own Magic City “Central Perk.” Birmingham was a great place to do a volunteer service year back then because there was a LOT of “free fun” I can’t remember the name of the place in Five Points, but it had a patio you could go to after business hours and and you could here the band from the bar next door without having to pay or meet the two drink minimum.

What “lost” place in Birmingham do you miss?

03.5.2008 by Andre Natta · 26 Comments

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