While the nightlife may not be hopping seven days a week in Birmingham, there are certainly plenty of nighttime hotspots and diversions in the Magic City to keep your energy level up late into the night. Options range from swanky bars to neighborhood watering holes, from the comforting dives we all love to the more edgy Five Points South destinations. In addition to heading to Southside or Lakeview downtown, Over the Mountain communities have plenty of entertainment options that allow parents a few hours of escape together while the babysitter watches their kids at home. Whether you are 18 or 80 years old, there are a broad variety of ways to pass the time in Birmingham.
There are two main entertainment districts that offer a dense cluster of nightlife, though nightlife venues can be found in most any area of town. The most prominent district is the Five Points South area centered at the intersection of 11th Avenue South and 20th Street South. These and the surrounding streets feature a mix of some of the best nightlife entertainment options in Birmingham. Residents call the area “Five Points,” and you can be sure that you’ll find something of interest. The best way to explore is to simply park your car and walk. Parking on the street is free after 6 p.m. and usually doesn’t fill up until late at night. Pay lots with attendants and valets are available and can take the hassle out of a crowded night. After parking take your time and investigate all the white line restaurants, dive bars, dance halls, sushi joints, pool halls, tattoo parlors, and clubs that line the streets.
The Lakeview district is a smaller entertainment district centered at the intersection of 7th Avenue South and 29th Street South. Although it doesn’t contain as many choices as Five Points, the nighttime crowd here is usually a little older and the locations here are all one-of-a-kind. Lakeview has free parking on the street, so if the weather is nice, be sure to walk around and take a look at all the area has to offer.
There is an open container law in effect in Alabama, so be aware. It is illegal to drive with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent or greater—designate a driver or call a taxi if you plan to go over the limit.
For a town with a blue collar, steel-industry history, many new visitors mistakenly assume that Birmingham remains the city it was back in the mid-to-late 20th century. This could not be farther from the truth. The University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), the state’s largest employer, helped create a strong intellectual life in the city by attracting some of the most brilliant minds in medicine, research, and science, a cultural vitality further augmented by Samford University as well as Birmingham-Southern College, one of the nation’s premier liberal arts colleges. Alabama School of Fine Arts, a public high school located downtown, has been a wonderful incubator of young artistic minds since the 1970s in fields such as creative writing, dance, music, theater, and visual arts. In fact, the fine art departments at ASFA are consistently ranked among the most prestigious in the nation.
That sort of environment produces results. Newsweek magazine selected Birmingham as one of 10 “Hot Cities: America’s Best Places to Live and Work,” and the US Conference of Mayors also selected Birmingham as “America’s Most Livable City.” It’s a testament to the many attributes the city enjoys, from a temperate climate to the affordable cost of living, but it is most certainly the strong presence of a number of fine performing arts venues, institutions, and organizations such as Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham, The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, and others that help push this mid-size city so high up in the national rankings. Music, theater, dance, visual, and the symphonic arts all thrive in Birmingham, drawn to the many excellent venues such as the Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center, Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex, and smaller innovative concert venues.
Overview
As one might expect, a number of artists of note hail from Birmingham such as musicians Emmylou Harris, Chuck Leavell, Lionel Hampton, Sun Ra, Cleveland Eaton, the Temptations, and Jimmy Carter, leader of the Grammy Award–winning gospel group The Blind Boys of Alabama. Indeed, a look at the who’s who of television’s American Idol—Taylor Hicks, Ruben Studdard, Diana Nicole DeGarmo, and Bo Bice—seems to indicate that being from Birmingham is in a contestant’s best interests. There are visual artists such as Thornton Dial, Frank Fleming, and Lonnie Holley. Birmingham can also claim a host of writers and novelist such as Daniel Wallace, Walker Percy, E. O. Wilson, Fannie Flagg, Robert McCammon, Howell Raines, Warren St. John, Daniel Alarcón, and Tobias Wolff. Actors and directors like Courtney Cox, Kate Jackson, Louise Fletcher, and John Badham, director of Saturday Night Fever, Dracula, and WarGames, all hail from the Magic City.
But beyond the name-dropping, Birmingham is simply a city that supports the various performance arts, creating an environment where craftspeople can experiment and thrive. One only has to pick up a local newspaper or city magazine like Black & White, Birmingham Magazine, or Birmingham Weekly to look at the numerous weekly listings for theater, dance, performance art, and other special events to realize the city is very fortunate in this regard.
The venues and organizations listed in this chapter have established themselves as dependable, quality providers of professional entertainment. Are there other smaller community groups, cultural centers, and supportive organizations in Birmingham that contribute to the region’s art scene? Certainly so, but there is simply not room or time enough to list them all. The phone numbers listed are typically for the box office, though some performing-arts events sell tickets through Ticketmaster and other ticket services. Most venues offer discounts for seniors, students, and groups. Call or see the websites to find out more.