Tag Archives: Birmingham

Preservation Training hits the Magic City

07162006 Atlanta Life Company neon sign.jpgThere are a bunch of preservationists who’ve been visiting Birmingham since Saturday and tomorrow they want to show you what they’ve learned. Tne National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation and Main Street Birmingham have been conducting the current Preservation Leadership Training session in downtown’s Historic 4th Avenue Business District focusing on the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge. Participants will use what they’ve learned in workshops, lectures, tours, team projects and role playing to develop plans for rehabilitating the building. You may want to venture over to the Lodge tomorrow (Friday) evening at 5:30 p.m. as the proposals are presented for what can be done to best preserve and use this historic structure.

If you want an idea of what some of the attendees are thinking about their visit and their experiences, check out this post on the Trust’s official blog courtesy of Dr. Kimberly Ellis of Pittsburgh’s Historic Hill Initiative.

Photo: Alabama Life neon sign on Lodge building. acnatta/Flickr

Birmingham talks about race in the NYT

Race seems to have captured the nation’s (and the world’s) attention recently. Our own Bob Farley recently shot some photos as part of a piece that is currently on The New York Times‘ website entitled, “Talk About Race? Relax, It’s O.K.“. His photo of Christophe Jackson, a Ph.D. candidate at UAB, was used for it and you can see it if you visit the site (and get by the registration if you need to).

I was interviewed by a member of France 24‘s team for a story that will run sometime in the near future. We’ll let you know when it’s up. Is the conversation getting easier?

More lists, always with the lists

The latest list to appear comes from Birmingham, AL based Southern Living. Readers will be able to check out the list of the best places in the South in the January issue – or there is another option.

Jackie Hutcherson over at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch decided to review and share the lists over on Hit the Road, Jack. While we didn’t make the best city list (and FYI – Charleston got top honors there), Homewood made the list of best neighborhoods to shop. Highlands Bar and Grill and the Birmingham Botanical Gardens made lists too; you should hop on over and see which ones.

A sleeping website awakes

I think that The Terminal will take some advice from one of our readers who hinted that he didn’t want to see another year in review story or predictions about Birmingham, AL for 2009…

Those who’ve survived this year behind the scenes here will leave that job of interpreting up to you over on Magic City Question, starting today.

What I will do is take a few moments to explain the site’s recent silence over on My Birmingham (but only after giving a quick shout out to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights for their victory in the Papa Johns.com Bowl!).

Johnathan Austin appointed to City Council

The newest face among Birmingham City leadership is now its youngest. A majority of City Councilors voted to appoint 29-year-old Johnathan F. Austin to fill the vacant District 5 seat of William Bell.

Vickii Howell of Birmingham View describes it as “an Obama-like moment when the community organizer and relative political newcomer was chosen from among four other better-known candidates, sworn in and seated within an hour of Tuesday’s vote by Councilors Valerie Abbott, Carol Duncan, Joel Montgomery and President Carole Smitherman.”

She reported that Steven Hoyt and Miriam Witherspoon voted no and Roderick Royal abstained.

You can read more of Vickii’s account of this morning’s events on Birmingham’s View’s News Portal as well as the Birmingham News’ breaking news blog.

A local Tweetup group? Maybe…

A local user of Twitter has taken it upon himself to create a group on Facebook for folks in town who use the popular microblogging service. He’s also called a Tweetup for December 29 at Urban Standard from 4-6 p.m. So if you can escape work early that first day after the Christmas holiday, you may want to go on over, check it out and let us know how it goes.

BTW, We’ll have information about our first Terminally Happy Hour of the New Year (on January 8) available soon – plenty of time to wind down from the long holiday season.

A new ‘Cities’ list, an interesting result

Women’s Health Magazine recently unveiled its list of the Best and Worst Cities for Women. While Birmingham was ranked near the bottom of the list overall (92 out of 100), it did get recognized as being the best city with the most OG-BYNs.

Check out where other cities landed on the list as well as in specific categories.