Stay Away From Downtown Bomingham…
September 4th, 2009
Taking photographs is not magic. It just requires light. You can’t take a decent picture of a band on the way up or on the way down without a little light. Really, that’s all it takes…
STUPIDVILLE, ALABAMALAND — Whatever you do, DO NOT frequent the bars of downtown Bomingham! Not that most people in the metro area need that advice or excuse anyway.
In addition to being the epicenter of the worst financial crisis in the country, the budding new bars trying to get something going on in an otherwise small time, small town city in the most conservative, uneducated state in the country, allow morons who make $75 a night running the lights for never was bands to run things.
I took time out to go check out one of those new bars, The Rogue Tavern, in downtown Birmingham Thursday night to see my friends at the Blackwarrior Riverkeeper and my old friend Rick Carter with Rolling in the Hay to give them some publicity for their fund raiser. I ran into David Whiteside, one of the founders of the group, who showed me his photos of his relative Edward Kennedy, just buried in Arlington Cemetary, on his iPhone.
But when I asked the guy running the lights to turn the lights up so I could get some decent pictures, the fat, stupid moron had me thrown out of the fucking club. I kid you not!
For asking him to hit the lights so I could potentially get some shots to promote the band that was paying him, the new club paying the band, and downtown Birmingham in general, the management of this pathetic establishment went along with this fit of egotism.
I don’t waste my time going downtown normally, like most people in the metro area, for good reason: Republican Governor Bob Riley’s brilliant strategy to prevent a couple of highway deaths a year — and raise a bunch of money for the state — with the infamous “Take Back the Highways” campaign.
Instead of kicking the press out of their pathetic little gatherings for asking to have the lights brought up a little, perhaps the bar owners should be lobbying the Alabama Restaurant Association to protest the Take Back the Highways campaign. But NOOOOOOOO!
Instead, they presume to promote their new venues by hiring morons who have no clue how to run lights for a rock band, with egos the size of professional basketball players, who have no business in the entertainment business in any position?
So see ya later Birmingham. There is no apology humble enough to get me to ever frequent or recommend to readers ever again that they frequent any of your businesses. In fact, this incident just reinforces my long-held opinion that I am ashamed to say I am from Birmingham, Alabama. It truly is Stupidville, Alabamaland.
I am out of here ASAP. I brush the dust from my shoulder, and say: Fuck off morons. There is a recession on, and this is no way to pull out if it…!
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September 4th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Doggone it Glynn I wish you’d just say what you think!
September 4th, 2009 at 2:13 am
You know by now I always do.
I swear this is the last straw for me and this town. I’m done trying to help these people. They are beyond help…
September 4th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Unbelievable. Back in the day – I won’t say how far back but the White House was still a gleam in Reagan’s eye – the nightclubs where we hung out, like Midnight’s Voice, went out of their way to make nice to paying customers.
Prediction: The rogues at The Rogue Tavern will not be in business very long. As they say, “treat your customers like dirt, then you lose your shirt.”
September 4th, 2009 at 9:56 am
It’s one thing to treat customers like dirt, quite another to kick the only press there out for trying to get some decent photos to give your bar and band publicity. The Birmingham News wasn’t there, and neither was Fox 6 News or Finebaum or Rick and Bubba.
I take it is as an indication of the people of a town without any experience with real press simply not knowing how to act. It’s also an indication of the degeneration of our culture to the point where computer programmers and PR men have a higher status than real writers, photographers and artists of all kinds. Notice I didn’t mention light men. They are still just roadies and haven’t deserved any respect since Jackson Brown wrote that one song about them.
Egomania from the likes of this moron is one of the reasons I quit the music business in this town in 1979 and went back to college and got into journalism. The problem now is, journalism gets no respect. Most of the press in this country has been reduced to sniveling lapdogs.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:32 am
BTW: This is a rare opportunity to exact revenge for every photographer who has ever had a hard time getting good, sharp pictures at indoor public events because the people putting on the event were ignorant about light.
Take that, morons. Competent people of the world unite!
September 5th, 2009 at 3:56 am
Glynn
I am in total shock this happened to you in my establishment. You and I have been friends for over 20 years and I have never seen you give anyone a reason to be asked to leave. I will deal with my employees and hope that you will look at this as an isolated incident. Downtown Birmingham needs this venue and I think my reputation alone should indicate this will never happen again.
September 5th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Thanks Rick,
I’m sorry it happened too. I was on the verge of having a very good time on an incredibly beautiful evening and planned to give you a great writeup with photos.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Glynn, it has been proved that people drink more when it is darker, and bars exist, not to provide healthy places to socialize, but to use socialization to sell booze. And Booze Bob Riley helped a lot by more than doubling the percentage of alcohol in beer — a can of beer now contains more alcohol than a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey!
Approximately twice as much! And people will drink about the same number of beers as before. Booze Bob won’t have to worry about the highways soon, since all the drivers will be dead, rear-ended by drunken speeders.
It’s not just downtown Birmingham, but throughout the country, that bars and restaurants are getting darker and darker. Try to read the menu at Surin West some night. They need to serve flashlights with the Fish Tikka!
My impression of Rogue Tavern a month or so ago is that it is way too loud (bars like that, too) and the food was not very good. But it had just opened and the food may improve.
But let people see and talk!
September 5th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
LOL!
Thanks for the point of view, Jack, but I guess I just want to hold out with a different view of bars : )
Alabama is littered with way too many churches and not enough good bars, as far as I’m concerned.
Actually, The Rogue Tavern looks like a place with some promise. They had a keg of Sweet Water Georgia Brown on tap, which you won’t find anywhere else in Alabama.
As for the food, the Mini-Blues Burgers with blue cheese were quite tasty.
The problem with Alabama and Bob’s Take Back the Highways campaign is that it only exists in three southern states, the very same states with the least mass transit options of anywhere in the country. The only way to leave your homes in the suburbs after dark to go out and do anything is by car. Nobody uses the taxis or buses here, and they don’t run after dark in the suburbs anyway. And of course there are no passenger trains, no metro or subway system like DC and New York and other real cities. New Orleans still has its antique electric street cars. Portland has new ones!
My problem with the Free the Hops bill and stronger beer is that it should have been coupled with a bill rolling back the MAD mother’s ridiculously low threshold for intoxication. There is no reason why a grown person with a built up tolerance for a certain amount of beer or wine or whiskey or vodka can’t have a few drinks and still drive safely home, in the absence of a real mass transit option.
My problem with the tavern is with the light man.
My problems with this place are too numerous to mention in a blog comment. I’ve laid them all out many times before. Some people in Alabama are just now getting online and finding out that a different world exists in here than the one they are used to.
As I wrote back in December, it will be another 10 years before real, lasting change comes to this place. I don’t have that long to wait around to see if it happens.
In any event, I won’t endure it. Let the brain drain continue…