Tag Archives: AL

It’s College Colors Day in Alabama!

Gov. Riley signs College Colors Day proclamation

Photo: Office of the Governor of the State of Alabama.

As you’re getting ready for work this morning, you may want to take advantage of Governor Riley’s declaring today as College Colors Day as an excuse to show your support for your school. Yes, there’s a monetary purpose behind it, but who doesn’t want to support college scholarship funds – though it officially means that trash talking season is upon us…

On the agenda: a lot actually

This morning’s City Council meeting is going to be interesting. Two new establishments that we’ve recently written about, Bonedaddy’s (soon to be Sweet Bones Alabama) and Black Market Bar, are on the consent agenda currently for receipt of their restaurant retail liquor licenses. For those that haven’t figured out where The Black Market will be, the address is 3411 Colonnade Parkway, Suite 800.

Several city agencies that have contracts with the city including Urban Impact, Main Street Birmingham and the BIrmingham Business Resource Center are poised to have them renewed. The biggest news that will come out of this morning’s meeting will probably not be what’s on the agenda, but what is not. Mayor Langford is prepared to ask the council to support a proposal for electronic bingo – an item that is currently legal in 6 of the counties in the state. In addition, he is asking the council via an addendum item to support a grant application to implement a Civil Rights Trail in the city.

We’ll see what happens.

Keeping L.R. Auditorium closed down

Birmingham City Council filed a request for a temporary restraining order, asking a judge to keep a downtown teenage hot spot closed for good.

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Michael Graffeo will hold a hearing on the request Thursday.

The L.R. Hall Auditorium was closed last week, under the advisement of Mayor Larry Langford and Police Chief A.C. Roper. They have called the venue a public safety threat, saying there have been numerous police calls and hundreds of complaints of vandalism and gunshots.

Come out and get a Taste tonight

Taste of the Nation logoWe are still under a flash flood watch this evening in parts of the metro area, but we’re hoping that folks still take a moment and attend tonight’s Taste of the Nation event at the McWane Science Center. We’d like to thank those of you that entered the contest and those of you that visited the event’s website to learn more about this important cause. I’ll be there this evening and I hope that I’ll get a chance to meet some of you.

You may also want to venture over to Timetable just in case you aren’t able to attend tonight. Whitney’s gives readers a head’s up on a great show at The Bottletree while Andrea Walker reminds us that we can check out some of the art before ArtWalk invades downtown in early September.

WordCamp Birmingham – come on over

Late Friday evening, we announced that we would be serving as an organizing sponsor for WordCamp Birmingham, the first WordCamp that will be held in the Southeastern United States. The conference will take place on September 27 & 28. A quick primer – WordCamps are informal gatherings of WordPress enthusiasts, users and developers to talk the popular, open source software used to run several million blogs and websites (including this one).

I’ve got some interesting reasons for why we’re doing this and if you head over to My Birmingham today, you’ll get to read them all.

Skaters get creative in Birmingham

Working on a new skate ramp

Photo: GAL Photography

Those of you that use the 5th Avenue North ramp to access Interstates 20/59 or 65 may only have a second to notice that there’s been a few changes in the landscape over there in recent weeks because of the removal of the skate park from Homewood’s Central Park in July.

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If you didn’t think Larry was serious…

Readers of The New York Times in the Big Apple woke up on this last morning of the Summer Olympics in Beijing to this overview of Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford’s wanting to bid for the 2020 Olympics (NOTE: registration required to view the full article). Granted, it was on page A17 of the New York edition, but it IS the Sunday New York Times, so folks are going to see it while they’re drinking their coffee and getting ready for the first round of the U.S. Open.

It’s all there, the pros, the cons and a comment or two towards the end that resembles the crux of what I wrote about it back when it was first announced in June.

Photo credit: Bob Farley/f8Photo