While driving home from New Orleans, Louisiana, a booming, vibrant city where there's everything in the world to do, to a small town called Boaz, Alabama where there's nothing in the world to do, I was forced to detour into Birmingham, Alabama due to the fact that the interstate was mysteriously broken for an unknown stretch of miles. I believe that my love of New Orleans is closely tied in with my hatred of Birmingham. It's far and away the worst city in the South, quite possibly the worst in the country, and in competition for one of the least attractive tourist destinations in the entire world.
Let me explain to you the difference between Birmingham, Alabama, and say a New Orleans, or a St. Louis, Missouri, or a Seattle, Washington, all lovely cities by the way that I've been very fortunate to see. In New Orleans, there are districts, and within those districts there are boundaries for which certain establishments and attitudes and vibes are acceptable. You will never see any other fast food chain besides a Popeye's, a New Orleans original, poke its way onto Magazine Street, what I consider to be the cultural epicenter of the city. You won't see it. That street in and of itself has a set of standards to uphold and Popeye's is the exception that proves the rule.
I preface with that to tell you this: if a Titlemax, or an E-Z Pawn, or a Cash America Pawn, or a Pay Day Advance, or any of those places where just the absolute lowest common denominator of society gravitates toward were to attempt to poke itself onto Magazine Street, it would be shot down in half a second. It would be whispered about in hushed conversations for about a week, "Hey do you hear they're trying to open up a Titlemax where Blockbuster went out of business?". And the reaction would be a sincere "ew"; it would be the reaction, justifiably so, of someone starting to gag. That's because there is a standard set in those neighborhoods that hey, this is where small local business came not to die but to thrive, and there's a class of people around here that appreciate that, and that's something we should all be able to respect.
Let me tell you how it works in Birmingham, Alabama. ANY neighborhood, ANY time, right next door to the one restaurant that's not a carbon copy of a million other places all over the country, there it is, big neon letters: EZ PAWN. Sell your watch. Sell your car title. Sell your kid. Just a big beam of light saying RIGHT THIS WAY, WHITE TRASH. Pay no heed to the people who find you grotesque. THOSE OF YOU WHO WEAR BASEBALL CAPS TO NICE RESTAURANTS- STEP RIGHT UP.
Birmingham is a bare mimimum skyline where a few banks and other corporations have regional offices, and then just miles and miles of fast food and other soulless crap repeating itself. It's like the same quarter of a mile loop filmed on a projector in a car chase scene shot in studio in a movie. It is a city in which plight, and trash, and low rent housing and disgusting apartments are vastly the norm, whilst anything of cultural significance receded into the darkness years ago. As I drove through it yesterday, I felt sorry not only for the people that lived there, but for the people who drove through there and that's the only really developed area they've ever seen. "If this is city life, they can keep it,". It gets SO much better than that, I promise. Birmingham isn't even a city- what I think happened is five neighboring small towns each hitched their respective slum districts to trailers and they all drove into each other and met in the middle. That's Birmingham, a conglomerate of ghetto, slum filth.
Anything of cultural significance that tries to make its way to Birmingham DIES on impact almost immediately. Like a bug flying into a zap light. Professional sports? Take a look at the history of "professional sports" in the city- it's just one sad, embarrassing failure story after another. Because the people of this town wouldn't know how to embrace something of any cultural significance if the NFL set up shop there tomorrow with a winning team. They don't want it. They want to eat the same Waffle House breakfast every morning, not make eye contact with any strangers, go to work, go home, and go to bed. MICHAEL JORDAN played baseball in Birmingham and it was BARELY news. Anywhere else in the world, that would have been HUGE! Do you know what would have happened to New Orleans if MJ had gone to the Zephers? Are you kidding me?
Pictured at the right here is a perfect slice of Birmingham culture. It is a city filled with the absolute worst of the worst. Lazy, desperate, confused, backwards, half the city is Rick Santorum, and the other half is Barack Obama. Most of these newspapers probably wind up in garbage cans every day while Birmingham citizens flock to TMZ.
When you think of Birmingham, Alabama, picture a big, surly bouncer at a gate outside the city keeping everything that's relevant and cool OUT, and trapping things like Jeff Foxworthy IN. That Vulcan statue might as well have a cartoon bubble coming out of its mouth that says TURN BACK, IT'S NOT TOO LATE. It is a failure vacuum in a sadness tunnel on a road of dashed hopes and shattered dreams, populated entirely by those with the mental capacity for nothing more than the basic instinct to survive, which is lucky considering if they evolved to a higher function- they might wake up and realize they're in Birmingham.
That's it for me, folks! I am reading 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg, I'm listening to Thunderstruck by AC/DC, and I'm watching all the episdoes of The Office I missed while I was away. Don't forget to subscribe- I might do this more often if you do. Discussion question for the future of the blog: What are your favorite and least favorite cities in America? See you next time.
Birmingham is a bare mimimum skyline where a few banks and other corporations have regional offices, and then just miles and miles of fast food and other soulless crap repeating itself. It's like the same quarter of a mile loop filmed on a projector in a car chase scene shot in studio in a movie. It is a city in which plight, and trash, and low rent housing and disgusting apartments are vastly the norm, whilst anything of cultural significance receded into the darkness years ago. As I drove through it yesterday, I felt sorry not only for the people that lived there, but for the people who drove through there and that's the only really developed area they've ever seen. "If this is city life, they can keep it,". It gets SO much better than that, I promise. Birmingham isn't even a city- what I think happened is five neighboring small towns each hitched their respective slum districts to trailers and they all drove into each other and met in the middle. That's Birmingham, a conglomerate of ghetto, slum filth.
Anything of cultural significance that tries to make its way to Birmingham DIES on impact almost immediately. Like a bug flying into a zap light. Professional sports? Take a look at the history of "professional sports" in the city- it's just one sad, embarrassing failure story after another. Because the people of this town wouldn't know how to embrace something of any cultural significance if the NFL set up shop there tomorrow with a winning team. They don't want it. They want to eat the same Waffle House breakfast every morning, not make eye contact with any strangers, go to work, go home, and go to bed. MICHAEL JORDAN played baseball in Birmingham and it was BARELY news. Anywhere else in the world, that would have been HUGE! Do you know what would have happened to New Orleans if MJ had gone to the Zephers? Are you kidding me?
Pictured at the right here is a perfect slice of Birmingham culture. It is a city filled with the absolute worst of the worst. Lazy, desperate, confused, backwards, half the city is Rick Santorum, and the other half is Barack Obama. Most of these newspapers probably wind up in garbage cans every day while Birmingham citizens flock to TMZ.When you think of Birmingham, Alabama, picture a big, surly bouncer at a gate outside the city keeping everything that's relevant and cool OUT, and trapping things like Jeff Foxworthy IN. That Vulcan statue might as well have a cartoon bubble coming out of its mouth that says TURN BACK, IT'S NOT TOO LATE. It is a failure vacuum in a sadness tunnel on a road of dashed hopes and shattered dreams, populated entirely by those with the mental capacity for nothing more than the basic instinct to survive, which is lucky considering if they evolved to a higher function- they might wake up and realize they're in Birmingham.
That's it for me, folks! I am reading 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg, I'm listening to Thunderstruck by AC/DC, and I'm watching all the episdoes of The Office I missed while I was away. Don't forget to subscribe- I might do this more often if you do. Discussion question for the future of the blog: What are your favorite and least favorite cities in America? See you next time.
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