On Wednesday night of last week, we drove down to Burlington, VT so we could catch the 6:15am flight to Atlanta. Yes, flying direct would have been easier, but by driving to the US first we saved twelve hundred damn dollars, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, Air Canada. Everything was completely on time, and we hooked up with Jack in the Atlanta Airport a few hours later. Jack was one of the folks we met on our Australia/New Zealand cruise, and one of the reasons we’d come to Atlanta in the first place. Great guy; friendly like you’ve never seen, easy going, with a natural curiosity about pretty much everything. We picked up our rental car, and then drove off towards Birmingham. Before arriving though, we made a stop at the Waffle House for breakfast. The Waffle House—if you’ve never been—is a crazily ubiquitous chain in the south. I mean it’s at every single exit off every highway. Sarah’s a little obsessed with the place, FYI. We had a decent breakfast—I tried grits (not bad with the addition of salt and butter), Sarah had a delicious pecan waffle, and Jack used a “these people came all the way from Canada” line (not for the last time) to score us free Waffle House pins. After this, it was back on the road.
As mentioned previously, Sarah likes to have visited more US States than her current age, so Alabama puts the total up to thirty-two. I don’t know that I had any prior notion of what Birmingham would be like, but both Jack and Sarah were surprised, expecting it to be more depressed, I suppose. Well, the downtown section at least is (and I know I overuse this word but I’m gonna go ahead and use it one more time…) lovely. Just a good looking city, with insanely friendly people. Thank God we were traveling with a southerner, because otherwise we would have looked like a couple of stuck-up arses. In Birmingham (at least in my experience,) you say hi to every single person you pass on the street. Totally unnerving at first, but after you’ve done it a few times you’re like, “Why don’t we do this back home?!? This is awesome!”
Anyhow, we were a little peckish around this point, and after some searching we ended up at Chick-fil-A. It’s a place I only knew though a Ben Folds song, but it turns out that it’s a pretty big fast food chain in the south. Decent chicken, I’ll admit, but what was really interesting was the sales pitch we got (post purchase) from the manager. The gist: Chick-fil-A is all about family values. We aren’t open Sundays and we don’t serve alcohol. (Then Jack informed us that Sundays-off started when the founder and his wife worked 115 hours between Monday and Saturday and had to take one day off to stave off death… and as for the no alcohol thing: kudos, fellas. That’s just so refreshing compared to all those jagerbombs I've been served over at the KFC.)
Next we went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. As I always say, it’s easier to write about the dumb things: things you didn’t enjoy, things that are terrible or boring. So of course, it’s
very hard to describe the things that move you or haunt you. Like this did. While there are sections that deal with civil and human rights issues globally, the main focus of the institute is the American Civil Rights movement in the deep south in the 50s and 60s. Immersing yourself in it, there’s always so much you realize you never knew. Over to Sarah for the historic details: It was shocking to be confronted with the sickening amounts of intolerance and hatred that happened only years before your birth. The institute itself is right across the road from two key locales: the 16th Street Baptist church where 4 little girls will killed by a KKK bomb in the fall of 1963, and from Kelly Ingram Park, where in May 1963 Birmingham’s batshit crazy racist police commissioner Bull Connor (who had been removed from office but was refusing to leave) turned fire hoses and dogs on black children who had gathered and were singing religious protest songs. One of the most wonderful parts was an auditorium where they played the entire “I have a dream” speech. We were so used to only seeing clips of it that we were taken aback again by how powerful and articulate that man was. Barack Obama is surely chann
eling Dr. King when he speaks. I would recommend that any visitor to Birmingham not miss this spot. - S
We stayed at the Hotel Highland at Five Points South, which was a very cool little boutique hotel in the entertainment district not too far from the UAB. Sort of retro modern. We finished the night at the hotel’s martini bar where the waitress mixed up about three free drinks for no good reason, and that just spells good times.
(Almost forgot: for a pre-dinner snack we stopped into a place near the hotel for an order of fried green tomatoes. If only I’d eaten some chicken-fried steak, I would have complete a southern food triumvirate, between this and the grits.)
As mentioned previously, Sarah likes to have visited more US States than her current age, so Alabama puts the total up to thirty-two. I don’t know that I had any prior notion of what Birmingham would be like, but both Jack and Sarah were surprised, expecting it to be more depressed, I suppose. Well, the downtown section at least is (and I know I overuse this word but I’m gonna go ahead and use it one more time…) lovely. Just a good looking city, with insanely friendly people. Thank God we were traveling with a southerner, because otherwise we would have looked like a couple of stuck-up arses. In Birmingham (at least in my experience,) you say hi to every single person you pass on the street. Totally unnerving at first, but after you’ve done it a few times you’re like, “Why don’t we do this back home?!? This is awesome!”
Anyhow, we were a little peckish around this point, and after some searching we ended up at Chick-fil-A. It’s a place I only knew though a Ben Folds song, but it turns out that it’s a pretty big fast food chain in the south. Decent chicken, I’ll admit, but what was really interesting was the sales pitch we got (post purchase) from the manager. The gist: Chick-fil-A is all about family values. We aren’t open Sundays and we don’t serve alcohol. (Then Jack informed us that Sundays-off started when the founder and his wife worked 115 hours between Monday and Saturday and had to take one day off to stave off death… and as for the no alcohol thing: kudos, fellas. That’s just so refreshing compared to all those jagerbombs I've been served over at the KFC.)
Next we went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. As I always say, it’s easier to write about the dumb things: things you didn’t enjoy, things that are terrible or boring. So of course, it’s
very hard to describe the things that move you or haunt you. Like this did. While there are sections that deal with civil and human rights issues globally, the main focus of the institute is the American Civil Rights movement in the deep south in the 50s and 60s. Immersing yourself in it, there’s always so much you realize you never knew. Over to Sarah for the historic details: It was shocking to be confronted with the sickening amounts of intolerance and hatred that happened only years before your birth. The institute itself is right across the road from two key locales: the 16th Street Baptist church where 4 little girls will killed by a KKK bomb in the fall of 1963, and from Kelly Ingram Park, where in May 1963 Birmingham’s batshit crazy racist police commissioner Bull Connor (who had been removed from office but was refusing to leave) turned fire hoses and dogs on black children who had gathered and were singing religious protest songs. One of the most wonderful parts was an auditorium where they played the entire “I have a dream” speech. We were so used to only seeing clips of it that we were taken aback again by how powerful and articulate that man was. Barack Obama is surely chann
eling Dr. King when he speaks. I would recommend that any visitor to Birmingham not miss this spot. - SWe stayed at the Hotel Highland at Five Points South, which was a very cool little boutique hotel in the entertainment district not too far from the UAB. Sort of retro modern. We finished the night at the hotel’s martini bar where the waitress mixed up about three free drinks for no good reason, and that just spells good times.
(Almost forgot: for a pre-dinner snack we stopped into a place near the hotel for an order of fried green tomatoes. If only I’d eaten some chicken-fried steak, I would have complete a southern food triumvirate, between this and the grits.)
Comments
In less depressing-about-the-state-of-humanity news, based on what the women from Texas with whom I was hanging out at BlogHer, I thought fried chicken cooked in lard was the ultimate southern food?
What sucked was being a brown kid in Brampton before Brampton became India II. Obviously not as horrible as the South, but still shocking when you think about how "tolerant" people are up here in Canuckle-Land.