City Hall — Larry’s Kingdom Come

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Larry’s Kingdom Come

Mayor Langford starts his tenure with a bang.

November 29, 2007

On inauguration day, it soon became clear that the new mayor wasn’t kidding when he repeatedly opined during his campaign that what Birmingham needs a “crazy man” to run the city. After Alabama Congressman Artur Davis saluted Birmingham because “a city that lives on a hill can never be hidden,” Larry Langford took the microphone to address several hundred people gathered at Boutwell Auditorium on November 13 for his mayoral swearing-in ceremony.

Langford’s theatrics were on display for the constituency that voted him into office without a runoff in a field of nine candidates. (During the inaugural speech he boasted that he could have beaten 40 because “If God be for you, who can be against you?”) As he addressed the crowd, a Hispanic interpreter desperately tried to decipher Langford’s every sentence; the new mayor’s Baptist preacher oratory and the interpreter’s frantic Spanish frequently collided.

“We pay $120 for a pair of sneakers for a 12-year-old. They can’t jump any higher with a $20 pair than with a $100 pair. . . . When was the last time Tommy Hilfiger was at your house?” —Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford

Langford choked down sobs as he told the crowd about a woman dying of cancer in Calera whose final requests included meeting the new mayor—a wish Langford was more than happy to oblige. He warned the crowd, “If in the next few minutes I say something you do not like, I want you to know that in my heart I do not care! . . . I’m not coming out to patch your streets. We are coming out to rebuild your community.” He acknowledged that Birmingham is currently losing 5.6 percent of its population yearly. “If we [the city] were a patient in the hospital, they would put us in intensive care,” he said. Regarding crime, Langford urged parents to raise their children with more discipline: “I cannot hire enough police to keep us from killing each other . . . It’s nothing that a good ol’ fashion butt-whipping [won't solve].” A man in the crowd yelled approval: “Larry ain’t playin’!”

Langford derided city residents, asking, “When did we lose our mind? We pay $120 for a pair of sneakers for a 12-year-old. They can’t jump any higher with a $20 pair than with a $100 pair. . . . When was the last time Tommy Hilfiger was at your house?” The crowd responded enthusiastically, shouting, “Amen!” Langford was on a roll: “Our children are direct carbon copies of us . . . I don’t want to deal with no 50-year-old teenagers!” He added that he would “not tell the city or council how to set the table without bringing something to the table.” Another supporter loudly sighed, “Larry’s crazy!”

• • •

On November 19, the Birmingham City Council met with the new mayor to dissect his big spending plans for improving the city. Langford has asked for a 100 percent increase in business license fees and another 1 percent boost in sales tax (increasing it to 10 percent) to raise a projected $72 million to finance a domed stadium, the transit system, economic improvement, street and sidewalk refurbishment, police and fire department upgrades, and a student scholarship program. A separately proposed $7 million expenditure would be used for the scholarship program as well as purchasing laptop computers for city schools. It’s the additional $7 million request on which the council was taking an “in-concept, in-theory” advisory vote (as described by Council President Carole Smitherman) on this particular afternoon. The vote was not binding. Councilors Carol Duncan, Steven Hoyt, Miriam Witherspoon, and Maxine Parker spoke enthusiastically in favor of moving ahead with Langford’s ideas.

Langford was more subdued at the November 19 meeting than he was at his inaugural, but not by much. He addressed councilors (all but Joel Montgomery were present): “Just once in this community I want to see somebody say something positive about Birmingham without the ‘buts,’ the ‘ands,’ and the ‘conjunctions’ [added] to it. We keep buying into people who are painting this city with a broad brush. . . . Yes, we have a crime problem in this community and we will address it. Let me just be straight up about it. Black-on-black crime in this community: we have to speak out on it as you have been doing, only with a louder voice. We’ve got to get into our churches and get the faith-based communities involved in this deal. Because if we don’t do this quickly, we are going to run the risk of being the only race of people in the history of civilization to kill itself off.”

Langford believes that scholarships are a first step to avoiding the picture of impending doom he had just painted. “When you put scholarships in these children’s hands, now they’ve got something to say ‘yes’ to. We keep telling them to just say ‘no.’ Give them something to say ‘yes’ to. Now those Mommas and Daddies are gonna have to read and [be] with their children because the light at the end of the tunnel won’t be a train coming to run over them!”

As a sign of support for fighting crime, Langford had already ordered that mayoral staff cars be turned over to the police department. “I have pulled in every car that’s on the mayor’s staff,” Langford said. “I’ve never used a city car, I will never use a city car. I want my own car. I want to be able to go and come as I please without somebody following me and saying, ‘Oh, you stopped off at T’s.’ If I wanna stop at T’s, I’ll stop at T’s.”

Langford was appalled that police officers are riding one per vehicle. “Tell me why you would send a single police officer into a crime hot spot by himself,” he demanded. “We have narrowed these little beats down so small that it requires taking the officers and splitting them apart and buying twice as many cars as you need rather than giving them a defined beat area and put two officers in the car, for the officers’ protection as well as for the protection of the crook.” Langford said that he personally would not drive into some of the crime areas if he were a lone policeman. “That’s why it’s taken 35 or over 40 minutes for them to answer some of these calls,” he observed. “They’re scared!”

Councilor Valerie Abbott said that she needs more information about Langford’s proposals, whereas Councilor Roderick Royal expressed concern that small businesses will not be able to afford the proposed doubling of the business license fee. Councilor Duncan said that she had been talking to residents and independent business owners in her district and has found few objections to Langford’s notions. Duncan added, “Education? The laptops and funding the schools? I’ve been in here six years, I think we’ve given them what, about $40 million trying to keep them from going belly-up! $7 million sounds like a bargain to me.”

“You can’t be against laptops and you can’t be against giving school scholarships,” Councilor Royal said outside the council chambers. “[But] I was in the army and you don’t make major moves in the army, as an army officer, without an op order. It’s a five-paragraph kind of thing. And that’s what’s happening today. You have a mission that you’re going on, but there is no op order. There is no command and control, in my opinion. There is no objective. . . . Yeah, okay, you want to build a dome, those kind of things, yes, you have goals but how do you get there?”

#147;I couldn’t be happier. It made this whole campaign worthwhile,” Langford said of the council’s reaction to his proposals during a press gathering after the meeting. When asked to comment on the morning headlines that Birmingham is now the sixth most dangerous city in America, the mayor replied, “To deny the numbers, you can’t do it. It is what it is. . . . That’s why I was pushing today for scholarships and for improved street lighting and improve the police department and in talking about economic development. You’ve got to give people hope right now. That’s what’s lacking in this community.” Langford elaborated on the computers for schoolchildren. “These are exceptional computers! For those who say, ‘Well, it’s a computer, but . . .’ Where’s your 15,000 computers? If you don’t like this 15,000, give us 15,000. Let’s see if you’ve got something to say other than just lip service.” Langford added that he is sick of critics who offer no help. “We’re gonna go ahead, we’re gonna move forward, we’re gonna help our children, we’re gonna do the things we have to do. And this council is on board and I love it! It is what it is!”

At the next day’s weekly City Council meeting—Langford’s first—he was anointed by the pastor from Council President Smitherman’s church, More Than Conquerors Faith Church. The ceremony took nearly 10 minutes. The council later set up public hearings for the following week to hear citizens’ feedback on the mayor’s proposals. &

Free Agent

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Free Agent

Wernher von Braun’s journey from Nazi scientist to U.S. hero.

By Ed Reynolds

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November 01, 2007

Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War

By Michael J. Neufeld




Dr. Wernher von Braun, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, points to a television screen in the Saturn blockhouse at Cape Kennedy on February 16, 1965. The screen showed the Saturn I vehicle carrying the Pegasus satellite into orbit. (click for larger version)

Knopf; 608 pages; $35.

The story of Wernher von Braun (pronounced “brown”) is the curious adventure of a German-turned-American hero who transformed fantasies of outer-space voyage into realities. However, that story is framed by the often blurred boundaries of good and evil. Despised by some as the Nazi engineer primarily responsible for the V-2 rockets that killed 7,000—mostly in London and Antwerp near the end of World War II—von Braun followed whatever route was available to fulfill his childhood aspirations of space flight. He had dreamed of men one day flying to the Moon and finally realized his ambitions with the development of the Saturn V rocket that launched astronauts into lunar orbit in 1968.

Searching for von Braun’s soul, which is embedded in a history haunted by the Third Reich, author Michael Neufeld has penned a brutally honest, in-depth biography. It chronicles the life of a pioneering rocketeer and one-time Nazi SS officer who became an icon by seducing the American public (thanks to Walt Disney) with notions of space exploration.

Von Braun’s harshest critics insist that he was guilty of war crimes, not only for his primary role in creating the V-2 ballistic missile that intimidated Europe but also because he used prisoners of war laboring in deplorable conditions to build the weapons. More than 20,000 POWs enslaved indirectly under von Braun died at the Mittelwerk rocket facility and its Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. The underground rocket factory where prisoners lived and worked was a maze of cold, damp, and poorly lit tunnels infested with excrement, lice, and fleas. Prisoners wore rags, and toilets were large metal oil drums cut in half and never cleaned. Disease and malnourishment were rampant, and POWs dropped dead at a rate of 20 per day.

To his defenders, von Braun is a victim of Adolf Hitler’s oppressive authority, a serf of sorts who had no options other than to bow to the Führer’s commands. According to Neufeld, von Braun’s own words in a 1950 New Yorker profile reveal the engineer’s mercenary nature. One afternoon, during a gathering of his amateur rocket club in the early 1930s, a black sedan drove up carrying three German military personnel who made von Braun’s group an offer they could not refuse. Von Braun recalls: “They were in mufti [civilian clothes], but mufti or not, it was the Army . . . That was the beginning. The Versailles Treaty [which disarmed Germany after World War I] hadn’t placed any restrictions on rockets, and the Army was desperate to get back on its feet. We didn’t care much about that, one way or the other, but we needed money, and the Army seemed willing to help us. In 1932, the idea of war seemed to us an absurdity. The Nazis weren’t yet in power. We felt no moral scruples about the possible future use of our brainchild. We were interested solely in exploring outer space. It was simply a question of how the golden cow could be milked most successfully.”

Von Braun claimed no knowledge of the Nazi extermination of Jews. In the 1960s, he told his good friend, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey), “I never knew what was happening in the concentration camps. But I suspected it, and in my position I could have found out. I didn’t and I despise myself for it.” Commenting on the confession to Clarke, Neufeld is skeptical about von Braun’s defense: “Knowing what we know now about his direct encounter with SS prisoners starting in mid-1943, the first sentence of his statement could be interpreted as a bald-faced lie.” Quoting historian Ian Kershaw, Neufeld adds, “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but was paved with indifference.”

In his sworn affidavit to the U.S. Army in 1947, von Braun said that he was forced to join the National Socialist Party in 1939. In actuality, he had joined the Nazi Party in 1937, though he was no doubt pressured to do so.

Later in life, von Braun often bolstered his claim that he was not a true Nazi by telling of his and a few associates’ arrest by the Gestapo in 1944. The rocket engineer was a “heavy social drinker.” One night he and his intoxicated comrades had talked loudly at a party about the war not going well, wishing that their rocket development could be used to build spaceships instead of weapons. They were arrested within days. Problems that delayed final production of the V-2 had prompted speculation that perhaps von Braun had actually been arrested for suspected sabotage. There was even some talk that he and the others might be executed. They were freed after a couple of weeks, because Hitler desperately needed them to finish the V-2. Von Braun knew he had to produce a successful rocket quickly or else, which forced him to place an order for more POW slave labor at the Mittelwerk. (Peenemünde had been the first principal rocket factory before it was bombed by the British in 1943.)

During his surrender to U.S. Allies in 1945, von Braun exhibited the same charisma, self-confidence, and luminary quality that would later charm the American public. He and his fellow engineers were hiding out in a ski resort in the mountains on the German-Austrian border at war’s end, trying to decide what to do. Two days after Hitler’s suicide, they drove to an Allied-occupied Austrian town to turn themselves in, where von Braun boasted to his captors that he was the “founder and guiding spirit” of the Peenemünde rocket facility, all the while acting like a dignitary.

“One member of the 44th [Infantry Division, to which von Braun surrendered] later said that ‘[von Braun] treated our soldiers with the affable condescension of a visiting congressman,’” writes Neufeld, adding that von Braun posed “for endless pictures with individual GIs, in which he beamed, shook hands, pointed inquiringly at [American soldiers’] medals and otherwise conducted himself as a celebrity rather than a prisoner.” Von Braun even bragged to a reporter for the Beachhead News “that if he had been given two more years, the V-2 bomb he invented could have won the war for Germany.”

• • •In America, von Braun soon became frustrated that he could not interest the U.S. government in space travel. His purpose in being brought to the United States was to develop missiles as weapons. Von Braun decided he would have to personally get the American public excited about space flight, prompting him to write a novel called Mars Project that he tried to get published in 1950. The book was rejected by 18 publishing companies because it was too technical and featured little storyline. One publisher said that all the novel was good for was to “build a rocket ship.” Eventually, a publisher in West Germany became interested after it was rewritten as a drama by a former Nazi propaganda writer.

The publication of space exploration articles in the early 1950s by von Braun for Collier’s magazine (illustrated with futuristic renderings of rockets) caught the public’s attention. This led Walt Disney to ask von Braun in 1954 to appear on Disney’s ABC network television show “Man in Space.” The rocketeer’s narration of a segment in 1955 was the first time that America heard his voice. Von Braun and a couple of German rocket engineers were prominently featured in the series, but the show’s producers questioned if it was wise for the program to be dominated by German accents. “The Disney crew had in fact discussed whether it was a problem that all three experts were German. But their very accents fit an American cliché of scientific gravity, and as for the Nazi issue, Walt Disney was the quintessential conservative, Midwestern middle American and seems to have given it little thought.”

One month after the first broadcast of “Man in Space,” von Braun legally became an American citizen in Birmingham, along with a hundred of his German colleagues and their spouses. Von Braun told the press gathered for the occasion, “This is the happiest and most significant day of my life . . . Somehow we sensed that the secret of rocketry should only get into the hands of people who read the Bible.” However, to his parents he reported, “It was a terrible circus, with film crews, television, press people and the usual misquotations.”

Profiles in Time and the West German equivalent Der Spiegel did not mention von Braun’s Nazi party membership. Reporters did not have a clue. Instead, a film about his life that von Braun agreed to participate in began the unraveling of his past. I Aim at the Stars began filming in 1959. Von Braun was paid $24,000, and Columbia Pictures kicked in another $25,000 plus 7% of the net profits. With his newfound wealth, he traded in his American car for a Mercedes-Benz. The movie was initially predicated on the image of von Braun as “a space dreamer persecuted by the Nazis and given a second chance by the United States,” though the script was later changed to portray him more accurately as striking a Faustian bargain to go into space. Still, the film was considered a whitewash job. Ironically, the screenwriter was a 1933 refugee from the Nazis who introduced fiction into the script to make the story palatable for an American audience.

At the Munich premier of the film, three unarmed tactical nuclear missiles were on display in front of the theater. U.S. military brass attended in full uniform. Ban-the-bomb demonstrators were also on hand. At a press conference, von Braun answered British critics of his American success: “I have very deep and sincere regret for the victims of the V-2 rockets, but there were victims on both sides . . . A war is a war, and when my country is at war, my duty is to help win that war.” The film was panned and poorly attended. Antwerp, which suffered more V-2 rocket hits than London, banned the movie. Comic Mort Sahl coined the greatest putdown of von Braun’s career when he quipped that I Aim at the Stars should have been subtitled But Sometimes I Hit London.

A year after NASA was created, in 1958, von Braun was appointed chief of the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, and was no longer working for the army. Pressure was applied by NASA on von Braun to hire more black engineers and technicians, but many were reluctant to move to Alabama at that time. Von Braun did not appear eager to get involved when Governor George Wallace stood in a schoolhouse door to prevent a black student from registering at the University of Alabama, yet he publicly condemned segregation when a black MSFC employee enrolled without incident at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Not long afterward, Governor Wallace visited MSFC and witnessed a rocket test. Von Braun addressed an audience that included the governor, and stressed that it was imperative that Alabama move on from its segregationist past. After the speech, he chatted with Wallace and asked the governor if he wanted to be the first person on the Moon. Wallace replied, “Well, better not. You fellows might not bring me back.” &

Shops of Horror

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Shops of Horror

Where to find unique costumes for Halloween.

By Ed Reynolds

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October 18, 2007

For those who indulge in Halloween, there is a grand spectrum of fantasy accessories available in the greater Birmingham area ranging from the terrifying to the hilarious in the form of imaginative costumes, gags and props, rubber masks, and other magnificent horrors.




	Some of the costumes available at Backstage Florist & Gifts

Backstage Florists & Gifts has a fascinating selection of costumes for rent (cost: $25 to $150). “We’ve got pretty much anything you want to be,” says Hank Ponder, the engaging owner of the 23-year-old shop. The store’s impressive selection includes Renaissance costumes represented by European royalty and Shakespeare-era garments; Old South apparel including Confederate uniforms and Southern belle hoop skirts; and various cartoon mascots who, for copyright reasons, must be referred to as Cat with the Hat, the “Purple Dinosaur,” etc.

Ponder explains that the costumes can’t be taken to a dry cleaner. “The sequins come back missing and the velvet can be eaten away by the chemicals they use. We have a woman who specializes in cleaning them.” Interestingly, Ponder says that after the September 11 attacks, a letter was sent from the federal authorities stating that civil service and other similar costumes could no longer be rented out. “That includes police, firemen, stewardesses and pilots,” says Ponder, adding, “We can’t even rent astronaut costumes!”

Backstage Florist and Gifts offers garb from the 1920s to the 1970s. The 1980s are represented only by mullet wigs. Ponder says that pirate and Batman costumes are currently the most popular. The Batman outfit is an impressive latex uniform that includes a cape with a ten-foot span and a retractable frame. “The flapper outfits, that’s a popular one. Women love the flapper. She’s a staple in the industry,” he says. “We also have Tippi Hedren in The Birds,” grins Ponder as he pulls from the rack a floral-print dress with several stuffed blackbirds attached to it.

Paper Works Outlet offers witches’ brooms ($2.95), human skull candles on sticks, plastic barbed wire garlands ($4.95), and a set of large paper replicas of two famous paintings with a sinister touch: “Mona Lisa” appears as a vampire with fangs and blood drooling from her mystical smile; “American Gothic” features a farmer as a rotting cadaver missing an eyeball and his wife a vampire with a bloody lip and fangs. A dozen squishy fake eyeballs are available for $1.99.

Hoover’s Party City has the creepiest and naughtiest collection of costumes and props. For 99 cents each, the store offers wall-clinging objects: Sticky Body Part 1 (a gelatinous-looking red glob); Sticky Body Part 2 (a six-fingered hand); Sticky Body Part 3 (it appears to be a splattered eyeball). Perhaps most disturbing are the authentic-looking rubber body parts on bloody paper towels in Styrofoam containers, wrapped in cellophane. They are sold for $9.95 as Cannibal Meat Market products. Body parts include a bloody severed hand and a bloody heart. Each is stamped “USDA Prime” and contains nutritional information. Cinema Secrets sells an adhesive rubber strip that looks just like a slit throat for $9.99. Its packaging touts “used by professionals.”

If you want your five-year-old to look like a pimp this Halloween, pick up the “Mac Daddy” costume ($29.95). The outfit includes a black coat with mock leopard-skin lapels and a huge, gold dollar sign medallion worn around the neck. There’s also a “rapsta” outfit, consisting of the requisite baggy pants, ridiculous hat, and the aforementioned gold dollar sign pendant.

Sexuality remains a popular Halloween theme. There’s the Big Daddy “self-adhesive hairy chest” ($6.95), which can be used interchangeably with the 1970s Disco Stud, Macho Man, and Caveman costumes. And, of course, the Hospital Honey nurse accessories that include fishnet stockings, garters (“with realistic-looking hypodermic” attached), and a plastic nurse’s bag that can carry all kinds of interesting things. &

Backstage Florist & Gifts

2233 6th Avenue South

324-2535

Paper Works Outlet

3700 1st Avenue North

324-2117

www.paperworksoutlet.com

Party City

1615 Montgomery Highway

824-0750

Open Season

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Open Season

Southside’s entertainment districts have become a hunting ground for muggers, car thieves, and murderers.

By Ed Reynolds

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October 04, 2007

Even as the mayor apparently refuses to recognize that Birmingham is becoming an increasingly dangerous place to live, crime continues to haunt the city’s merchants and residents. Mayor Bernard Kincaid speaks of a “perception of crime” as he seeks re-election on October 9. Candidates vying for Kincaid’s job and Birmingham residents, however, believe differently.




Über-bohemian: Per criminology’s “broken window” theory, some feel that Five Points South has become so riddled with “colorful” characters that a signal is being sent to potential criminals that their crimes will go largely unnoticed. (Photographs by Mark Gooch.) (click for larger version)

In Five Points South, recent robberies of patrons walking to their vehicles from various establishments have drawn attention to the area. But not many owners or employees at bars and restaurants are willing to share crime anecdotes. One exception is bartender Cat Hawkins at Dave’s Pub, who says that the area seems to be getting more dangerous. Hawkins says that female patrons at the bar are now escorted to their cars by a security guard after dark.

James Little is president of the Five Points South Merchants Association. Little constantly chases away vagrants from the sidewalk in front of the area coffee shop he manages. While talking about the problem in front of the business on a recent afternoon, he confronted street people, then returned to explain, “Certain people—transients, vagrants—know that [Five Points South] is an area where they can go and can hang out and drink, do drugs, panhandle, harass . . . Because nobody will say anything to them. Nobody will question them.” Little says that such behavior is not tolerated in Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Hoover, or Homewood. Panhandlers actually come into his business and ask customers for money. Little has urged police to tell vagrants that they must leave the area instead of simply sending them across the street, where they continue to loiter. “I know a lot of businesses in this area are hurting right now,” says Little. “This area could possibly be like Woodlawn in a couple of years.”

Frank Stitt, owner of Highlands Bar & Grill, says the city must address problems in the area. “City Hall needs to re-energize their emphasis on making Five Points a secure, a safe, an attractive, a clean area—whether it’s the street departments, whether it’s more policemen, whether it’s more lighting, whether it’s security cameras. We need all of that. We also need the police to actually be accountable for not allowing these street criminals, transients, vagrants, and drug dealers that hang out here. The church [Highlands United Methodist] invites them all for coffee and donuts and washing laundry every morning, and then they just pretty much use the Five Points South area as their home base. I think the church certainly has good intentions. . . . But to leave them here so half of them can deal drugs and just get into trouble all day long is a bad end result . . . City Hall and the police department have not followed through on helping make Five Points a secure and attractive area.” Stitt admits that the police have a difficult job, but notes that other municipalities in the county do not allow such activity.




“These aren’t narcotics, just muscle relaxers”: One homeless man shares meds with another in an alley near Five Points South. (click for larger version)

On August 19, after a man was found shot to death in the 1200 block of 20th Street South near Bell Bottoms nightclub on Highland Avenue, the department said that police presence would be beefed up in Five Points South. On September 22, a man stabbed his wife several times on a Saturday afternoon in front of the fountain across the street from The Grape restaurant.

• • •T.C. Cannon has owned the bar TC in the Lakeview entertainment district for the past two decades. Before that, he and his brother operated the Upside Down Plaza near Five Points South for 25 years. Cannon has decided that he’s had enough of the local criminal element. He has put TC up for sale and has given up plans to open a bar in a building he recently purchased, the former Battery Warehouse a block from TC. “It was going to be my last bar, a super-duper bar,” says Cannon. “But I’m heading north somewhere. . . . Crime is out of control.”




(click for larger version)

In the middle of the afternoon six months ago, Cannon drove to the Battery Warehouse building only to find two men dismantling one of his vehicles he had parked in front. He got out with his .38 pistol and confronted the thieves, who fled. According to Cannon, police were called but it took half an hour for a lone officer to arrive.

Cannon has watched the neighborhood deteriorate for some time. A little over a year ago, a dead body was found in a parking lot adjacent to TC in the early morning hours. “Here in Lakeview, it’s getting like Five Points South. If it wasn’t for valet parking, the nice restaurants would not exist at all,” said Cannon. “Now it’s personal. The thieves, when they see a golden opportunity walking down the street, they sit in the shadows and wait on some good victims. . . . Why break into the car when you’ve got them?”

Kelly Pierce has been a bartender at The Oasis in the Lakeview district for more than six years. In 2005, she and two employees were robbed at gunpoint while closing the nightclub. Pierce says that automobile break-ins have been the primary problem in the past year. She does not feel as secure as she once did. “I used to close that bar by myself and be fine with it. But I would not want to do that again,” says Pierce. “It’s been scarier the past two and a half years.”

Pierce had her 1984 Chevy truck stolen twice on Southside. The first time, Bessemer police recovered it in a Lowe’s parking lot with “a ball joint broken out,” said Pierce. When she went to pick up her truck, there was another license plate on it, presumably stolen. When she asked the Birmingham police officer present if he wanted the plate, Pierce said she was told to “just throw it away . . . don’t worry about it.”

The truck was stolen a second time in May of this year from in front of her apartment on Idlewild Circle, where she moved after the first truck theft occurred.

• • •South Avondale resident Brent Marshall told mayoral candidates at the Redmont Community mayoral forum on September 20 about crime in his neighborhood. Marshall and his family returned home from a vacation this past summer to find a bullet beneath the window of his three-year-old daughter’s bedroom. In an interview, he elaborated on crime in his neighborhood, especially the questionable activity at a nearby apartment complex on Fifth Avenue South.

“There’s lots of gang activity . . . I [often] hear gunfire,” he says. “There’s not enough of a police presence.” Marshall’s home has not been burglarized, but his neighbor’s house has been broken into twice, and several other houses on the block have been burglarized over the past two years. He says that residents willing to revive neighborhoods deserve better treatment. “People take an interest in Birmingham,” said Marshall. “People take a risk to move into an area like this and try to establish a community. People are on the verge of leaving—especially people with children and families.” &

Scientific Suds

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Scientific Suds

The McWane Center explores the science of beer.

By Ed Reynolds

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October 04, 2007

On October 11, the McWane Center—a hands-on science museum that is a destination point for kids—will offer scientific amusement for adults: the opportunity to sample exotic beers at McWane’s “Science Uncorked: The Science of Beer.” Beers that will be available for tasting include Rodenbach Grand Cru (a Flemish sour ale), Ommegang Witte (a pale golden wheat ale with a hint of citrus), Lindemans Lambics, and a sampling from Germany’s Ayinger brewery. There will also be some seasonal beers on hand, such as Abita Pecan Ale, Shipyard Pumpkin, and Paulaner Oktoberfest.Brewers from the Siebel Institute of Technology and World Brewing Academy will be on site sharing expertise in the brewing sciences. The Chicago-based Siebel Institute has been in operation since 1872, when Dr. John Ewald Siebel began his brewing research. Over the next two decades, Siebel wrote more than 200 books and articles on the fine art of making beer. He passed away one month before Prohibition, when the institute was forced to expand its curriculum to include baking, refrigeration, engineering, milling, and the making of carbonated beverages. The school’s focus returned to brewing in 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The Science of Beer will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 11. Admission is $10 for the general public and $5 for McWane Center members. “Heavy” hors d’oeuvres will be served. The beers can be sampled only by those age 21 and older. Music will be provided by The Spots. Reservations are strongly encouraged. Tickets may be purchased online at www.mcwane.org or by calling 714-8414.




	(Illustration by Emily Flake.) (click for larger version)

Networking Crime

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Networking Crime

Victims create a MySpace page to draw attention to Birmingham crime.

By Ed Reynolds

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September 06, 2007

After being mugged near Five Points South (at the corner of 12th Avenue South and 18th Street) on April 27, Southside residents Lydia Simpson and Greg Martin decided to create an internet forum where other crime victims could share their stories. The resulting site, “Victims of Birmingham Crime” (www.myspace.com/birminghamvictims) began with a recounting of their experience. Soon other stories were posted, detailing terrifying holdups at gunpoint and an often indifferent attitude by Birmingham police officers.

“Response [to the site] was kind of off and on [at first],” says Simpson, who also had her automobile broken into last December during the day (as have two other employees at the Five Points location of Bailey Brothers Music, where both Simpson and Martin work). “But It’s developed a real community feeling to it, where people come together to talk about possible solutions and make other people aware of what’s going on.”

In the case of Simpson’s experience, she and Martin had left Bailey’s Pub late at night and returned to their car when two men pretending to panhandle approached the couple. Simpson was already sitting inside when one of the strangers jumped into the car before Martin could get in. One assailant shoved Simpson against the door, grabbed her by the throat, and yelled, “Give me your purse, bitch, give me your f***ing purse, bitch.” He also burned Simpson’s arm with a cigarette. Outside, the other attacker was punching Martin after knocking him to the ground. After the men fled with Simpson’s purse, a policewoman who had been flagged down by the couple chased the muggers. That’s when a second group of men hanging out in a nearby parking lot began approaching Simpson and Martin, yelling at them. The couple immediately headed toward Bailey’s Pub but the second group of thugs caught up with them and gave Martin another beating. He and Simpson eventually broke free and ran back to the club.

Simpson was not happy with the comment made by the officer who arrived to fill out a report. According to Simpson, “The response by one of the officers was, ‘I guess that’ll teach you to stay out of Southside.’” However, she is quick to defend Birmingham police officers in general. “In the first interview that we did with CBS [local affiliate CBS 42] . . . the angle had been that the police are discouraging people from reporting crimes, and that’s why the statistics are skewed. So when CBS asked [the police] for a comment, they basically just denied it outright. The sergeant in charge at the Southside precinct can’t possibly know exactly what all of his officers are saying at all times. I don’t think it’s necessarily a departmental policy; they’re just overworked and underpaid. When it comes down to doing the paperwork for something that they see every day, they’re just burned out.”

Another account on the site is from a couple who were returning to their car around midnight on a Friday night. The vehicle was parked a block away from Bell Bottoms nightclub in Five Points South. Two men ran toward them and surrounded the car. The female was already seated behind the wheel. Her companion was not yet inside when one assailant thrust what was believed to be a 9mm pistol into the man’s stomach, demanding money as he began counting backwards from “three.” By the time the attacker reached “one,” the male victim had his cash out. The panicked woman screamed for the assailant not to shoot, at which point he aimed his gun at her and demanded her money and phone. The other mugger then grabbed her purse, but an oncoming automobile interrupted the robbery before the car keys could be handed over.

The couple walked to the nearby Ruby Tuesday restaurant and found two police officers who wrote a report but “seemed not to care,” suggesting that the robbers had probably disappeared into a club.

At the MySpace site, Simpson, Martin, and others are often defiant about not yielding control of their community to thugs. Yet they offer safety tips such as wearing practical shoes “that will not hinder you from being able to escape an attack,” apparently indicating that visitors to Southside should be combat-ready. “I see women walking around Southside in stilettos,” Martin noted, shaking his head. “And it’s a good way to get hurt.” The 37-year-old Martin has watched Southside evolve into an area far more dangerous than the one he remembers from his youth. “I used to hang around the fountain when I was young.” he said. “But I wouldn’t let my child hang around there today. &

Elvis in Context

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Elvis in Context

Elvis Presley on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”

By Ed Reynolds

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August 23, 2007

On Sunday night, September 9, 1956, more than 72 million Americans (80 percent of the country’s television audience) tuned in to the “Ed Sullivan Show” to watch a cultural phenomenon named Elvis Presley. Presley had already appeared on several national television programs, but none as popular as Sullivan’s. The performance transformed Elvis into a controversial icon, creating the generation gap in the process.




	(click for larger version)

Image Entertainment has released a DVD set of the three complete Sullivan shows on which Elvis appeared in 1956 and 1957. While most Elvis fans have seen these legendary performances, the opportunity to see these shows in their entirety is what makes this set unique.

On January 27, 1956, RCA released the single “Heartbreak Hotel.” The next day Elvis appeared on Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey’s “Stage Show,” a low-rated national television program. A week and a half later, Presley was on “The Milton Berle Show.” Ed Sullivan was watching that night and dismissed Elvis’s seductive leg movements as “unfit for family viewing.” Later that summer, Presley was booked on NBC’s “The Steve Allen Show,” which went head-to-head with the Sullivan show on CBS. That night Ed Sullivan devoted his entire program to director John Huston, whose film Moby Dick premiered that week. Steve Allen’s show trounced “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the ratings. Sullivan soon adjusted his definition of “unfit for family viewing.”

The night of Elvis’ Sullivan program debut, Sullivan was recuperating from a recent automobile accident. British actor Charles Laughton was the guest host. Sullivan asked the dignified actor to open the show with some poetry to “give a high tone to the proceedings,” according to Laughton. The actor chose a tasteless poem: “Willie in the best of sashes, fell in the fire, got burnt to ashes. Though the room got cold and chilly, no one liked to poke poor Willie.”

Sullivan’s was a true variety show, featuring eclectic acts that included acrobats, Irish children’s choirs, opera singers, and a couple of hilarious ventriloquists, Arthur Worsley and Señor Wences. A young Carol Burnett also made an unforgettable appearance.

The commercials are fascinating time capsules. One features a stunningly gorgeous woman behind the wheel of a 1957 Mercury convertible. “One touch of her pretty little finger to Mercury’s keyboard control” is all that’s needed to begin the dreamy ride, says the announcer as he’s chauffeured around a Universal Studios lot. Then, to exhibit the ample room available in the backseat, the car stops at a medieval castle on a Universal movie set where three knights in full armor awkwardly climb in.

A Real Character

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A Real Character

Lily Tomlin brings her one-woman show to the Alys Stephens Center.

By Ed Reynolds

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October 18, 2007At YouTube.com you can find a couple of clips of confrontations that occurred during production of the movie I Heart Huckabees, an irate Lily Tomlin flips off both director David O. Russell and co-star Dustin Hoffman as she angrily shouts “Fu** you.” After viewing them, I was a little nervous about speaking with Tomlin. However, the actress and comedienne was completely charming in relating anecdotes about Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, her family’s Southern heritage, and summers spent on her cousins’ farm in Kentucky. Her laughter is the same genuine, infectious cackle she has let loose on late night talk shows for decades.

Black & White: I read that you were once a pre-med student.




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Lily Tomlin: Oh, kind of. You know . . . I was, technically, but that doesn’t mean much. It just means you take a lot of science courses, or start to. I never graduated college and I never did very well in college. I sort of had textbook narcolepsy. You open one and the aroma from the page or something just knocks you out. You crash forward.

Do you remember when you felt confident that you could consistently make someone laugh?




	Tomlin as Ernestine. (click for larger version)

I did it all through my childhood because I always put on shows and things. I lived in an old apartment house in Detroit . . . You know how Southerners are. [Her parents and relatives are from Kentucky.] Everybody in the family—at least from that generation—was so quirky and had their own little personality. People were so colorful, [including] all my aunts and my uncles, and my dad and my mom, too. My mom was witty and adorable. My dad was just kind of a character, he was a street character. I went to the bars with him and the bookie joints. He was a factory worker but he always wore a suit jacket to work and a hat and he wore Florsheim shoes. And he always had a big roll of money on him because he gambled. My mom was, of course, the total opposite. She was a good Southern woman who had a good house.

Every summer I went to Kentucky and lived on the farm with my aunt and uncle and all those old cousins, with whom I’m still close. I have a real bond with family. As differently as I was raised, being in the inner city of Detroit and growing up in a black neighborhood . . . I just had a whole richness of experience with all kinds of different people. And, of course, then I would be on the farm when I was a little kid. I’d see animals copulating and I’d go back to kindergarten and paint it! I knew it was something I wasn’t supposed to talk about or illustrate. But I liked holding court, you know? Getting a little rise out of people.

Did your kindergarten teachers ever scold you?

No, I could see they would be a little bit shocked and a little bit amused. And so then I would just pursue it. I don’t ever remember really being suppressed. Maybe a kind of omission of praise. I was just more amused by it. I knew it caused a charge, a little charge in the room. And I must have liked the theatricality of it.




	Tomlin as Edith Ann. (click for larger version)

I read that you studied under Charles Nelson Reilly.

I knew Charles, he was a friend. I only studied with him a couple of weeks because I got on “Laugh-In” and went to California. But the couple of classes I had with him—let me tell you, he was so inventive I feel like I missed out by not having a full course of study with him. He was just absolutely incredibly inventive.

Did you know Paul Lynde?

Oh yes [laughing], I knew Paul. I lived around the corner from him for a long time. I’d walk my dog up around his house and I went to his house many times for dinner. And I also went to a couple of Thanksgivings at his sister’s house. He was a scream [Tomlin does a quick Paul Lynde impersonation] . . . It was well-known that Paul was not a very, uh, happy drinker [laughs]. So if he got too abusive, rooms usually cleared. It was because he could be wicked. He had a real quick, acidic tongue.

Didn’t you upset some television executives when you gave Richard Pryor a big kiss in 1973 on your CBS special?

They had sent down word from the executive offices: “Don’t kiss Richard goodnight.” And we couldn’t believe it. It was certainly not for any show or anything. In fact, I kissed everybody, I kissed all my guests . . . Of course, Richard had his hair corn-rowed on that show. And he came on the set the morning we were gonna shoot and people hadn’t seen corn-rows very much. It was sort of a new thing. And he had it wrapped with white leather and he was making remarks like, “Well, imagine these came from certain Caucasian people.” He said they were wrapped in “human skin,” which wasn’t going over too well, either. But Richard was so brilliant. Actually, that was the show that we did the soul food piece that got a lot of play, a lot of attention. He played a junkie and I owned a soul food restaurant.

Did any of your characters originate from your early days spent performing in coffee houses?

Yes. One character, definitely: The World’s Oldest Living Beauty Expert. Of course, I was conscious of how women had to be younger and better-looking and the pressure on women to be like that. And I was fascinated because Helena Rubinstein and all the old queens of beauty—Estée Lauder and Elizabeth Arden—were so old. They were in their 80s. You never really saw photographs of them except early photographs.

And Helena Rubinstein had that ad on TV with these hands and great fingernails and great big rings she had, and she’d say [Tomlin claps her hands twice loudly and adopts a thick German accent] “I am Helenor Rubinshteim!” But you’d only see her hands and they would show her products. So I was just fascinated by that whole thing, and that was sort of my reaction to the obsession with youth and beauty, because she’s an old beauty consultant and her face is all deteriorated, as you can’t avoid with time and gravity. And then she rejuvenates it, and then she sneezes and it all falls down again. That was one of my first monologues.

Tell me about your experiences on Flip Wilson’s show.

That was one of the first guest shots that I got to do after I was on “Laugh-In” and was well-known. He was so big at that time. In those old days you had those half-dozen variety shows and everybody would do guest shots. You don’t have that anymore.

Flip and I did this whole routine where Ernestine is teaching Geraldine how to be a phone operator. [Flip and I] did a thing about date-matching and we’re in the lobby together and we’re getting along so well. And this is a very innocent, sweet kind of sketch from those early days. My God, this goes back 40 years, almost. And you can see that we’re just sort of meant for each other but then we go in and, of course, we’re not gonna be paired, partly because of the racial thing at that time. But that’s never spoken of but it’s implied.

Are you ever offended by comics like Sam Kinison or Andrew Dice Clay?

No, I’m not offended but it depends. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it. Now, Sam used to tickle me a little bit. That one thing he had when he talked about people starving to death [in Africa]. He’d say, “There’s no food there, go where the food is!” That sort of incredible black irony. But I couldn’t even quote very much of what Sam did onstage. Who knows why people get up the persona they get to do what they do? I’m much more attracted to the more humanistic. I greatly adored Pryor. Because his material was so human, so vulnerable. He was so vulnerable himself. I’m more drawn to character portrayal. I’m not a big fan of scatological stuff.

Has Ernestine [Tomlin's telephone operator character] been approached by the Bush Administration to perhaps assist with wire-tapping in the past few years?

When the whole NSA thing surfaced, a lot of editorial cartoonists went back and used Ernestine. They had her in the White House phone room with those little slit eyes, listening. She constantly resurfaces. In recent times, she has a reality-based webcast chat show called “Ernestine Calls You On It, and You Better Have an Answer.” Wherever she can have power. Not too long ago she took a job at one of the HMOs so she could decline all the requests for life-saving healthcare. [laughs]

Didn’t you and other cast members snub John Wayne when he appeared on “Laugh-In”?

[Laughing] Well, I didn’t get my picture taken with him ’cause I was so anti-war at the time, and so anti-Nixon and the White House scene. And then once a very sad thing happened. You know, when you’re young like that, instead of engaging John Wayne in some way . . . to me it was more juvenile, but in those days—or any day—it seems like that’s how you took a stand. But I’m not saying it’s productive. It’s not a very good tactic.

Anyway, so Martha Mitchell [the wife of Nixon attorney general John Mitchell who frequently leaked to reporters information about her husband's Watergate activity] came on the show. You know how she was always calling journalists at night. She was known for that, her phone activity. So I was supposed to do a phone call with her. And I did but I only did it on the split screen, you know? It was just stupid [not to appear on the set with Mitchell]. I mean, I really see it as stupid.

And then later, when all that terrible stuff happened to her with John Mitchell—many people think she was really, really suppressed, both physically and verbally. Many people think she was taken prisoner in a sense, or sedated. And then in her autobiography she talks about that, on one of the very earliest pages. And I only read it after she died. And she said how deeply hurt she was that I snubbed her at “Laugh-In.” And she would be exactly the kind of woman that I would be able to communicate with. She’s just like a family member—flamboyant, Southern, plenty to say, and kind of has that engaging innocence. It was something I totally regretted.

What was your reaction when you discovered that the clips from I Heart Huckabees, where you and director David Russell are cursing one another, were on YouTube?

Well, first of all, they were old. They were like four years old, and I had never really seen them. But they had made the rounds of the agencies here at the time. We’re [Russell and Tomlin] still friends. In fact, we were friends probably 10 or 15 minutes after one of those things happened. But it was the same week that poor Britney Spears was in that incredible, uh, you know, uh, crotch shot—I’m trying to choose a word for “crotch shot”—on the internet. Those words [on the YouTube clip] were inside of me and I said them. People are going to have to realize that maybe I’m not the perfect, well-behaved, well-spoken person they might imagine I would be. And some guy in China made a rap song to it . . .

Would the type of confrontation you had with Russell ever have happened between you and Robert Altman?

Noooo, God, no . . . David’s pretty volatile, anyway, and it was just the nature of what was going on that day. And you saw me. I said, “I’ve had it up to here!” [laughs] And I was pretty upset that day from all kinds of circumstances. You can’t hear David. He’s yelling at me outside the car, saying all kinds of things. But you can only hear me, unfortunately.

Altman, he was one of a kind. Even when we were making A Prairie Home Companion, he was getting chemo. But you would never even think about it, other than that he was kind of frail. But he was completely Altman, he was completely in charge without being in any way authoritative or overbearing. He was just so cool. Actors just adored Altman because he was just incredibly human, available, unpretentious. And if you made Altman laugh, that was really awesome.

Let me tell you this story because it didn’t get in the movie, because his cameras are floating all the time. A lot of times you do something and it’s not really being photographed. So when Meryl Streep and I would talk [in the film] about our mother when we would sing, and we’re talking about the old days and how Momma was scrubbing the floor and how our singing made her smile and all that, and what hard times we had. This is a story about my own father and his family. And I love this story so much that I was always thinking, “Now where can I get it into [a movie]? This is the perfect movie.”

So I said [to Streep's character], “Well, all our times weren’t hard. Remember when we as kids were acting up and Momma would boil an ear of corn and put it down on the floor and we’d all root around and eat it like we were pigs? Those were happy times!” And Altman laughed . . . It wasn’t on film and I never repeated it. If I’d known it wasn’t on film, believe me, I would have repeated it. &

Lily Tomlin appears Saturday, November 3, 8 p.m., at the Alys Stephens Center. Tickets are $28-$62. Details: 975-2787 or www.alysstephens.org.

Hog Heaven

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Hog Heaven

Professional and amateur barbecue teams compete at Sloss Furnaces’ annual Stokin’ the Fire barbecue festival.

By Ed Reynolds

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August 09, 2007

On August 24 and 25, Sloss Furnaces will host the third annual Stokin’ the Fire BBQ Festival, featuring professional and amateur cooking competitions plus live music by acts such as Alejandro Escovedo and Southern Culture on the Skids. The professional competition is sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) and will include cooking teams from around the country.

Unfortunately, this event is similar to others of its kind, such as Memphis in May, in the fact that most of the competitors do not sell their barbecue to the general public. Instead most devote all of their efforts to impressing the judges (and winning a portion of the $20,000 in prizes). However, three of the professional championship teams will be selling their wares: Governor’s BBQ from Nashville; Arlieque from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee; and Willy T’s from Hildebran, North Carolina.

Troy Black is a former Southern Living magazine editorial staff member who is now a full-time competitor on the barbecue circuit. A KCBS board member, Black has been competing professionally for two years. “The payouts . . . have gotten really good. . . . We’re starting to see full-time barbecue competitors out there.” Black is sponsored by Southern Living and travels with a 40-foot trailer that includes two smokers, a kitchen, and living quarters. At Sloss, Black will give cooking demonstrations, and offer samples, at the Southern Living site at noon and 3 p.m.

Mary Head, marketing director at Sloss Furnaces, rhapsodizes about the artful cooking techniques of the pro competitors. “Not to say that Jim ‘n’ Nick’s and Dreamland and everything isn’t wonderful, it is,” she said. “[But] they’re cooking for the masses. I mean, the pros sit with their ribs all night long, starting, like, on Thursday night, you know? So it’s a totally different kind of level of barbecue than you would get at a restaurant.”

Head explains that entry dishes are never passed from hand to hand; rather they are placed onto a table before a judge will pick it up. “The main reason is to avoid jostling a box, because if you hand it to a KCBS judge and they drop it or something . . . You turn it in, set it down, and from there it’s in our hands. It’s fun to watch these guys that have been baby-sitting their ribs all night long. They’ll often put the ribs in a box and then turn them around 15 times so they’ll look pretty.”

“Competition barbecue is nothing like restaurant barbecue,” explains Carolyn Wells, executive director of the KCBS. “No restaurateur could stay in business giving as much TLC as you have to for competition barbecue. Right now, we seem to be in a sweet cycle. Almost everybody will use a dry rub on things, and then they will glaze it at the end.”

James Blumentritt, general manager of Tria Market in Homewood, finished eighth in the amateur competition in 2005. “We had a great time. Had a lot of fun out there cooking that day,” says Blumentritt. “But I discovered that there were certain things that I think appeal more to judges than other things. My experience was that they tend to like a lot of sweeter style sauces on things. . . . If I were going to do it again, I would definitely put more sauce and a sweeter sauce on my ribs.”

Those who wish to enter next year’s amateur competition should be forewarned: Though professional KCBS judges rate the pros, local “celebrities” are drafted to judge the Back Yard competition. When pressed for names, Head would say only, “We hope we can get some city councilors and some, uhh, Jefferson County folks.” (So, before you consider slaving over a hot grill for a day, remember that your fate may be in the hands of a bunch of news readers from a local television affiliate—or a Birmingham city councilor.)

KCBS rules and regulations are used in judging both the professional and the amateur—or Back Yard—division. Tenderness and texture, appearance, and taste are the three criteria for judging, says Wells. Surprisingly, taste makes up only half the score. Appearance is slightly less then a quarter of the scoring, while tenderness and texture make up a little more than a quarter of the points accumulated.

The Grand Champion prize is $3,000 cash, while Reserve Champion wins $2,500 as the runner-up. Category winners (pork, chicken, brisket, and ribs) receive $1,500 for first and $700 for second place. Back Yard payouts are $250 for first place and $150 for second. &

The festival will be held at Sloss Furnaces on Friday, August 24, from 4 to 11 p.m., and Saturday, August 25, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Admission is $15 for a weekend pass or $10 per day ($5 per day for children 5 to 12; children under 5 are admitted free). Details: 324-1911 or visit www.slossfurnaces.com.

Band line-up

Friday, August 24

Band of Moose 5:00

The Sudden Rays 6:15

Eliot Morris 7:30

Alejandro Escovedo 9:00

Saturday, August 25

Beyond Me 11:30

Erin Mitchell Band 12:30

Newgrass Troubadors 1:30

Hightide Blues 2:30

Warm In the Wake 3:45

Moses Mayfield 6:00

Jason Isbell 7:00

Southern Culture on the Skids 9:00

City Hall — Summer of Love

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Summer of Love

The mayor and city council finally reach an agreement on the city’s budget.

By Ed Reynolds

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July 26, 2007
Insufferably long meetings, arguments over the definitions of pork, and city council behavior described by the mayor as somewhat “schizophrenic” made the 2008 municipal budget process one to remember. That three city councilors are running against Mayor Bernard Kincaid in the November mayoral election made the civic bouts even more entertaining. On July 10, the council still could not resolve its issues with the budget that Kincaid had given them on May 15. Recessing the regular Tuesday meeting, the council left the dais and convened with the mayor and his staff in a small conference room (away from the weekly meeting telecast in the council chambers) for more than four hours. (News media and the public are allowed to squeeze into the room.) By four that afternoon, the recessed meeting moved back to the council chambers for another hour. The council had finally come to an agreement about how it would approve the budget.

The council is cutting some of the things that are most important to our citizens, some of the things that we get the majority of our complaints about. —Councilor Valerie Abbott

By the meeting’s end, the mayor had convinced the council to take money from city departmental operational expenses and services for councilors’ preferred projects, instead of cutting unfilled personnel positions from city departments, as had been the council’s first choice. Departmental operational expenses include necessities like electricity and fuel, and services include weed abatement and building demolition, among many others.

“What I don’t want to happen is to have widespread pandemonium within our employees, where they think that they are not going to get paid a salary,” said Council President Carole Smitherman, who is running for mayor in November. Councilor Roderick Royal drew the ire of Councilor Joel Montgomery, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, when he moved that the $1.2 million for police and firefighter raises be stricken from the council’s budget wishes. All city employees will get a four percent raise in the coming fiscal year but the council initially insisted on giving police officers and firefighters a five percent increase. Councilors William Bell, Smitherman, and Montgomery voted against removing the extra one percent for public safety employees.

Councilor Valerie Abbott (also a mayoral candidate, as is Councilor Bell) challenged Kincaid on the wisdom of taking money from operational expenses and services. “But when the gasoline runs out and the utilities run out and the water runs out, then what is your plan?” Abbott asked Kincaid. Smitherman objected: “I sincerely believe that is a statement that is gonna cause pandemonium, and is very inflammatory—we’re talking about running out of gas and water and heat and everything else—that’s inflammatory. And I wish that the mayor would not even respond to that. Because that’s not going to ever happen!” Abbott argued that the city has run out of money in the past to fund such services.

“Public safety is obviously not on the top shelf as an issue for the citizens of the city of Birmingham,” said Montgomery, after the meeting, of Royal’s motion to strike the five percent pay increase. “He’s interested in getting these little pet-peeve projects done and they’re not interested in getting any of these salaries funded for these police officers . . . or in the fire department. To me that is a priority of the city of Birmingham.”

Councilor Royal spoke after Montgomery. “Unfortunately, the budget dance sometimes does get ugly. . . . But we made it to the finish line.” He defended the elimination of the extra one percent for public safety workers by saying that “because of pending litigation, it may have been the smartest thing to do . . . When we dropped that point of contention, things flowed.” The council is appealing a circuit court ruling that stipulates that they do not have the authority to raise salaries.

The next day the council met in its chambers with the mayor. After the usual morning prayer, the council moved the gathering to another small conference room for more discussion. Ten minutes later, the throng went back to the council chambers, where the budget was approved, with Councilors Abbott and Duncan voting against it. Smitherman abstained and Montgomery was not present, having voiced his disapproval the previous day.

After the meeting, Abbott shared her displeasure: “[The council is] cutting some of the things that are most important to our citizens, some of the things that we get the majority of our complaints about . . . overgrown property, demolition of dilapidated housing. And then we went in and started cutting our departments’ ability to operate. We cut their utilities, their gasoline, their water. We even cut electricity for street lights and traffic signals. To me, that’s not a logical thing to do.”

“It just so happens that I think it’s risky. I think it’s risky to look to cut ten percent of gasoline,” said Smitherman outside the council chambers. “Who knows? Gasoline may be $5 a gallon next week! We just don’t [know] that . . . It’s unfortunate that it has taken us all this long time just to sit down and talk to each other. Now that’s the real tragedy”

Councilor Steven Hoyt voted to approve the budget. “The mayor has committed [that] we’re not going to be underserved to the tune that’s being objected. But I just believe these are all quality-of-life items. If we don’t have good citizens . . . I mean, who cares about gasoline, if folks can’t get along and we don’t have safe havens for our young people? . . . And I can’t begin to tell you how many murders we’ve already had this year. I’m just saying we’ve got to do something. We need a world-class park and [recreation] system. All thriving cities have them. We don’t have that yet.” As is often the case, Hoyt touched on minority inclusion, which will soon be addressed through an economic summit “so that we have corporations that mentor these small minority businesses, which includes women and African Americans and Indians—American Indians—and Asian Americans and all.”

On July 17, the Birmingham City Council officially approved the $329 million budget by a five-to-three vote (Montgomery was absent). Councilors Smitherman, Abbott, and Carol Duncan voted against it (Kincaid later joked during the press briefing that the first letters of the opposing councilors’ last names spelled “SAD”). Smitherman, who had successfully secured a walking track for her district, at a cost of $380,000, continued to insist that unfilled jobs be eliminated rather than cutting any city department services and expenses. Councilor Duncan labeled the council’s personal projects “pork,” elaborating, “It’s a squealer. It’s pig skin. It’s pig rind. It’s high and dried and fried. But baby, it’s pork!” Duncan noted that she is “wanting to be supportive of so many things I have fought for. But it’s not responsible. You can’t run your home borrowing on your utilities.”

Councilor Royal refused to let Duncan’s “pork” reference pass without comment, as he condemned those who put projects in the budget while also voting against it. “You can’t have your cake and pie all at one time. . . . I’m so glad that the councilor said ‘pork,’ because that particular councilor has placed three times as much pork in this budget as I have.” Royal suggested that the councilors opposing the budget put money back that they were going to spend for projects in their districts. However, he did agree with Duncan that the council should be concerned that 80 percent of the budget goes to personnel.

Duncan responded to Royal: “I asked for $270,000 for capital for Ruffner Mountain to begin their building program. They’re ready. $4.5 million is going to Ishkooda, Wenonah, and that area, the Oxmoor area. Then we’ve got the Red Mountain area. But it seems to me that Ruffner, which is already well under way, is coming up short-funded.” Pointing out that the Jazz Hall of Fame is not in her district, Duncan noted that she put $250,000 toward upkeep of the Carver Theater. She said she also put $70,000 toward Kid One Transport and gave $100,000 to the Alabama Ballet. “And that’s my pork. Not one trip, not one conference,” she concluded.

At his press conference following the meeting, Kincaid summed up the budget: “We walk away with councilors having their cake and eating it, too. . . . This was giving them what they wanted.” The mayor said that those councilors who objected to council projects as “pork” could return money earmarked for projects in their district. “They never said, ‘I’ll give back my $270,000 for Ruffner Mountain,’” said Kincaid. “These are projects that are needed in the community. . . . It’s not as if somebody is taking exotic vacations and things.” Regarding Council President Smitherman’s decision not to go along with the compromises, considering that some of the councilors’ preferred projects were paid for, Kincaid surmised, “It is schizophrenic. It really is.” &