coffee shops, art galleries, and funky neighborhoods in Edgewood District of Birmingham Alabama

Over the years I have developed a my own personalized method to finding unique corners in strange cities. I typically search for art galleries or coffee shops online before traveling. If the shops look shabby enough, you can almost always be guaranteed a unique neighborhood to wander around in.

I am a weekend traveler, so I have to pay careful attention to gallery hours, as most have shortened hours on Saturday and are closed on Sunday.

Note to Gallery owners: It sure is might be easier to sell art to “cultural tourists” if you are actually open during the times these people are off work and traveling. Ya think? Duh ! A lot of galleries don’t seem to get this concept. I would have bought a willy-nilly-art-gadgety-gook thing if only I could have found a place that didn’t close at 5pm on Friday. It is so hard for me to buy things by looking through the windows of a closed store.

So I find whatever the area has to offer that is also OPEN, I Google it, jot down a few address and plan to get lost. I refuse to buy Tom-Tom, Garmand, or any other helpful Henry computer Gadget for my car.

This weekend I am in Birmingham, Al for WordCamp blogging geek fest. I wanted to come early, hit the Forstall Art Supply Store, looking for Golden Airbrush Acrylic.

Find them on FB at at the Forstall Facebook Fanpage.

This is another story for another day – but no, I don’t have an airbrush device. And yes, I want to use the airbrush pigment in my paintings thanks to great advice and inspiration from Patti Brady. See my book review about her post about her new acrylic book, Rethinking Acrylics.

OK, so back to Forstall – - a great store ! Although they didn’t have airbrush acrylic paint/pigment, I was able to scored a little bottle of airbrush medium so I can mix up my own with the fluid acrylic that I already have in many, many colors. So I am all set for that. I love small art stores, owned by actual proprietors instead of corporations. I was able to meet the owner today, see some people playing in the back with encaustic wax paint, and met several of the employees who were ALL very nice.

I was happy to get the chance to chat with Micki Blackwell. I had read about her online, so it was was cool to talk to her. She told me a little bit about some clayboard work she had recently completed. Also we had a discussion about colored charcoal which is water soluble. Cool stuff indeed.

Micki is teaching a experimental drawing workshop tomorrow, Saturday, at Forstall. AND it is only $15 bucks including a free lunch !! If I wasn’t in town for the sole purpose of my blogging geek fest, I would be taking this Draw Outside the Box workshop.

So, this meandering travel method I have invented led me to a leave Forstall and head to a place called Art Alley. Wonderful gallery, I am hoping to re-visit and inquire more about them.

I counted 28 galleries in the Birmingham brochure, though about 6 of these are weird things like museum gift shops, a chilli place, and some private artist studios that are open by appointment only. So at least 20 art galleries in the area that are open to the public and that actually sell art. I MUST come back here, and not on Sunday or Monday when all the galleries are closed.

My trip to Art Alley lead to me getting caught in an incredible traffic and pedestrian mess involving small residential streets and a middle school with lots of Volvo driving moms. After a few minutes of this, I abandoned my car in an alley and took off on foot back the main drag, called Oxmoor street.

One suburb iced vanilla latte whipped thingie later from Cool Beans and I was a entirely refreshed person.

I am searching now for the CoolBeans website takes me to a weird atheist activism site listed at the address of Cool Beans. Guess I was drinking some atheist coffee or something without knowing it.

Still tasted OK, although I have no faith in it. (just a pun, folks, don’t go all weird on me about your personal religious beliefs.) I am going to discriminate here and NOT give you the link, ha-ha. You will have to Google Cool Beans Birmingham, AL yourself if you want to find the whacked out atheist site. You can go there and read about how the atheist feel discriminated against and what and who they are boycotting.

UPDATE: apparently the Cool Beans and Atheists don’t get along. Cool Beans “kicked them out in 2005, old news now. Don’t know the current status. too bad when you search Google for Cool Beans you get the Atheist site instead. Wonder if that was hacked or something? anyway, Special thanks to my Twitter Friend, MiscellaneaArts, for updating me with this info.

One of the best parts of this afternoon’s diversion was getting a good look at some really cool, old apartments built to look like what I would call Shakespearean. I suppose the official word is Tudor, but that doesn’t sound as good. Wish I could have snapped some pics of these flats, but alas, another Volvo Maniac Mommy was behind me. I don’t think she would have tolerated my random U-turn to snap pics from the car since she had several stinky, sweaty teenage boys stuffed in the car with book-bags and soccer balls and arms hanging out the windows.

So now I have shared my afternoon with you in a nice little, meandering summary. I have even spiffed it up with hyper-links to all the cool places I found in the Edgewood District today in Birmingham, Alabama. And to think, before today, I sort of didn’t like Alabama. Goes to show ya.