Local Style

Elle Decor is the latest national publication to discover Birmingham–and be pleasantly surprised by what it finds here. See the article, which appears in the January 2010 issue.

It’s kind of amusing to see how visitors interpret the city that’s so familiar to us. I was impressed that the writer of this article touched on the city’s crime and schools and our flamboyant former mayor–I mean, as much as I love this city, it’s not a perfect paradise, so we shouldn’t lie about or ignore our problems. But I was a little confused by the hints that we’re a British-leaning or -inspired city. Beyond the name, very little about Birmingham seems to have anything British about it. I think the writer might have spent a lot of time in Mountain Brook to get that idea.

Also, the article totally ignores Birmingham’s civil rights heritage, only mentioning the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the Civil Rights Institute in the listings at the end, and I found that to be odd. The point of the profile might have been to give people a new image of Birmingham beyond police dogs and fire hoses, but the civil rights movement in this city was a major turning point in American history–it would be like writing an article about Boston and omitting the part about the Boston Massacre or Paul Revere.

Despite that, the article is a nice look at the city and should open some eyes across the country. It’s stories like this that help put Birmingham on the national radar and let people in on our little secret.