A different way of thinking about living Intown....

Recently a Fort Wayne, IN. resident seriously considering a move to Birmingham had this to ask:
(paraphrasing)

Hey, UrbUps, help me out, man. What can I do in Birmingham if I want to live in an In Town neighborhood, spend less thant $200,000 and I have a daughter who in is a pre-IB program that I want to send to a good school?

Below is what I had to say. What do you think, dear reader?

Some neighborhood options for pre 1960 intown homes in the city of Birmingham:

Glen Iris

Southside

Crestline

Norwood (my neighborhood)

College Hills

Bush Blvd area



The skinny: living intown in Birmingham you will be in a much more economically and racially mixed area than in any of the suburbs. There are significant challenges and opportunituies that come along with that. I have not been to Ft. Wayne, but I imagine a similar pattern exists there as here. Glen Iris and southside, crestline are more consistantly middle-class and have significant pockets of yuppie-dom living in them. You see lots of restored housing there, lots of Saabs, Volvos, BMWs and Prius's in the driveways.

My neigborhood is one with tons of old mansions, some of which are beginning to be well-restored by a small group of professionals, idealists and romantics moving in. One of my neigbors a few blocks over spent $45,000 for the house they are restoring and will have put about $80,000 more into it by the time they occupy in a month or two. They will have an absolutely stunning house at the end of it however. With the aquality it'd be $500,000 in Homewood, easily! I have another neigbor who spent $160,000 for a retoration that was done for them, but the house has every high end amenity you can imagine in it. Despite the reputation, crime is relatively low in Norwood. I personally haven't had any problems in 4 years and none of my neighbors have once they have actually moved into their house (houses that are being worked on and are empty for months on end are a different story, however). To turn a phrase made popular by Rick James: "Copper pipe is a hellava metal!" Dave Chapelle Show fans will get that reference. :D



Bravo35233 gave a great breakdown on the schools. He did not mention Alabama School of Fine Arts, which is a highly ranked school that has a test based entry requirement. He also did not mention Ramsay HS, which is part of Bham City Schools. Their students do well, generally come from middle class backgrounds, have parents that are very involved in the school activities and academics, score well above the state averages on the standardized tests. A high percentage of its graduates go to college (I'm working on getting the actual percentage). It's part of Bham City Schools and is mostly black so, unfortunately, it gets lumped all together with the general "do not consider sending your child here" list that most suburbanites subscribe to here.

What do you guys think?

New ongoing feature for The Intown Green: Name That Neighborhood

Who can email me with the neighborhood location of this home? I will be taking pictures from around the metro area (not just Intown) and post them here. Want to build a game up around being able to tell where homes are located based on design, history, topography, etc.

Who can tell me about this one?

Intown Spice...Midnight Chess on 4th Avenue North

Dateline October 12th, 2007

Driving home from Java and Jams last night which is at 20th and 4th Avenues North, I saw two Intowners (I don't imagine they make a long drive home after a game like this) playing chess about 100 feet from the front of the Carver Theater/ Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame on 4th Avenue North. I had to get a picture. These brothers were intensely into this game. One of the guys didn't want to be pictured (something about the running from Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabweian police) but the other player was, ahem, game. You won't see this outside of The Galleria.

Dateline 10-12-07 Friday Night-Downtown

My highspeed isn't acting right today so I'm forced to leave my three-arched Norwood cave and get out into other parts of Intown. The downtown part. 20th Avenue is turning into something of a nice place to visit at night and I stepped into Java and Jams for the first time. They've got coffee. They've got hot food ( I got a roast beef on whole wheat with provolone). They, of course, have coffee. They have acoustic music. Playing tonight was Kellee McCoy of Homewood. Unfortunately he doesn't have any music that you can listen to from his myspace page at www.kelleemccoy.com but "he good". I was able to write this while listening to him which is saying something. A good, smooth voice along with some acoustic guitar is soothing to the mind and spirit when done right (not too loud) Blue-eyed alt-soul gives you an idea of the type of music he plays.

Ready for "something" to begin....

Well it happened.

My guy/gal (who shall remain nameless at this point) didn't get chosen by my city-mates to lead the Birmingham. Significant disappointment and a feeling of gloom was my initial reaction: drinking from the poisoned punch going around, passed by some intown residents; only 'my guy/gal' could provide the solution to growth intown. The thoughts go something like this: without "my guy/gal" everybody's going to continue moving out, the neighborhoods will continue to be commonly thought of as overrun with crime and generally the sky will fall.

I'm feeling differently now, however. New times offer new opportunities, right? Cocking my head to the side and squinting my eyes I've decided to look at this sit-cha-tion differently. Remembering my initial excitement for Larry Langford's candidacy for many of the same reasons he won: his ambition, his energy and his popularity (notariety?) is allowing me view things in a new light. I'm forcing myself to see less of the challenges that caused me to loose my Larry-religion early on. Challenges like: What is his plan for action? Will his strong will turn into bull headedness? Will that bull headedness create and add to his pre-existing enemies? Will his "something" translate into long term, fraud free success. So with some trepidation I'm asking what exactly will our new mayor's "something" be?

With my head cocked to the side and eyes squinted, I've decided to think positive: all you folk who have be galvanized (supposedly 45% of registered voters got out and went to the polls. You go, B'ham!) by this election need to get active and stay active in city government.

That's going to be my commitment. I'm starting with my neighborhood, Historic Norwood.

We need to make sure Larry knows our name and the visions our "Neighborhood Plan Implementation Committee" has. Birmingham needs a redevelopment authority to speed the recycling of all these empty houses and properties; leadership has got to get serious about increasing home ownership Intown, we need more cops and morale among them has got to be better. These are the basics for me, before a dome and even before better transit.

So, everybody Intown, say it with me: "Larry, what's our name?"