A comparison of Brum and Bham from Prezzybox.

Tutwiler Hotel, Birmingham AL

I spent my 24 hours in Bham at various places around town but late at night, after my visit to Dreamland for pork ribs (nom!), I went home to The Tutwiler Hotel. It was Oscars Night so I hit the bar for a reassuringly expensive Sauvignon and a drunken chuckle at Sandra Bullock as she blubbed her way through her acceptance speech.

As a travel journalist, I’m lucky enough to be hosted in various types of accommodation and while to me, on the whole, hotels are hotels, The Tutwiler stands out in my memory for one thing.

The bed – OMG.

I have only ever felt the soft floaty loveliness of such a bed at one other hotel and I’m writing about that one next.

The mattress, bedsheets and pillows were delicious to sink into, particularly after a night on the Greyhound and a day on the Amtrak. And this wasn’t the wine talking. I’d had a little kip on arrival at 11am and it was genuinely glorious to fall back on to that Goldilocks bed - not too firm, not too soft, but absolutely just right.

I love it when a hotel gets the bed right - after all, it’s the main reason you need a hotel; somewhere to rest your head for the night.

The Tutwiler’s blurb explains why its beds are so good:

“Your eyes will be drawn to the luxurious bed. It’s tall, fluffy and looks like a white cloud piled with high pillows. That is Hampton Inn and Suites’ plush Cloud Nine bedding, which ensures that your bed is clean and comfortable to provide an amazing night’s rest. The luxurious mattress topper, soft duvet, high thread count sheets and assortment of soft and firm pillows will make you think are sleeping on a cloud.”

It was like sleeping on a cloud. Here is the bed. Looks pretty normal, right? But do not be deceived: a marvellous sleep lies within and upon:

It’s just a shame there weren’t enough hours in the night before I had to get up and squidge back into my Amtrak recliner seat.

As for The Tutwiler - I liked that it obviously had a history, from the drawing rooms on the ground floor to the historic photographs on the walls. This is even a hotel with an audio tour that tells the story of Birmingham through 42 historic photographs on the lobby level.

The current incarnation of the hotel lives on 2021 Park Place. But it was formerly The Ridgely Apartment building, which opened in 1914 as “one of the grandest apartment buildings in the south”. Converted to The Tutwiler Hotel in 1986, it underwent major renovation in 2006-7 when it was pretty much gutted with only the exterior, the polished marble floors and the vaulted ceilings remaining the same.

I can’t speak for Birmingham’s other luxury hotels but The Tutwiler was certainly a very pleasant and friendly place to stay - and I am also eternally grateful for the good service of theor ‘ambassadors’ at reception. If not for them, I wouldn’t have got to see Sloss Furnaces - read that post here.

Note: I stayed at the Tutwiler as guest of Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau. You can find more information about rates and reservations on the hotel website.

Hotel Du Vin, Birmingham UK

Also slap-bang in the city centre is Brum’s main historic hotel, which looks not unlike The Tutwiler. We used to have The Grand Hotel but since that closed its doors, the Hotel Du Vin Birmingham on Church Street is the main contender for ‘hotel with a history’.

The grand, old, early Victorian building formerly housed the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital, founded in 1823. There are 66 bedrooms and suites set around a central courtyard and original features include the sweeping staircase and granite pillars.

Hotel du Vin is a boutique hotel chain (featuring an extensive wine list, natch) that takes over old buildings and gives them the HDV makeover. I haven’t stayed at HDV Birmingham – I would give you a review but the HDV’s PR didn’t respond to my email request, grrr! – but I have stayed at HDV Brighton and it was there that I first fell back on to a bed whose name was heaven.

Handsprung mattresses and fine Egyptian linen are hallmarks of the brand. In fact, the mattress is apparently the most expensive item in the room - which often also contains such luxuries as twin rolltop bathtubs.

So if you want luxury in your overnight accommodation In B’ham UK, then there are a few options, but this one lives in the most stylish building of them all.

For more info about HDV Birmingham, here’s the website. Photo: Tony Hisgett/Flickr.

…and nightlife areas live next to a confluence of five roads, in both cities. This is a really weird coincidence, right?

Five Ways, Birmingham UK

Brum’s main entertainment district starts at Five Ways roundabout and runs along Broad Street to Paradise Circus (such a pretty name, such a grim place). It is a vision of bright lights, big bouncers, staggering scantily dressed females, gangs of straight men dressed as women on stag dos and, by 2am closing time, puddles of vomit on street corners. I may be being a bit harsh here as I’m too old for Broad Street, but if you want to get trollied on a Friday or Saturday night in Birmingham then here’s the place to come.

Five Ways itself is a similar nightmare to negotiate - a scary roundabout featuring much traffic and many lanes, although to be fair, it is nothing on the scale of Spaghetti Junction - see Birmingham’s joint Problematic Highway Exchanges).

Amazingly, Five Ways has its own Wikipedia page.

Here’s a shot by Elliot Brown of the cinema complex at the top end of Broad Street by the traffic island, and one of Five Ways itself.

Five Points South, Birmingham, AL

I had the joy of a Five Points South drive-thru on my 24-hours in Bham, so really I have no idea what it is like but decided to chisel it in here as a Birmingham Match anyway.

There looked to be a fair few restaurants and bars with alfresco tables, and for a busy road junction, it was even kinda pretty (I say that coming from a fellow industrial city; if I was from California I’d probably think it sucked.) Perhaps, some Bham residents could fill in the blanks on Five Points South and what it’s like for the nightlife?

Meanwhile, I tried and failed to get a shot from the traffic lights of @socialmediabham’s car… and couldn’t find a shot of it on Flickr, so here’s my photo of a picture on an old postcard instead. Desperate much?:

One melted iron ore, the other melted chocolate; both have become tourist attractions in their respective Birminghams…

Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, AL

What it is:
Now a National Historic Landmark, this blast furnace produced iron for nearly 90 years and helped build ‘the Magic City’ of Birmingham.

Info:
Website: Slossfurnaces.com
Address: 20 32nd Street North, Birmingham, AL 35222-1236
Tours: Free Self Guided Tours and Cell Phone Tours on Tues-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun. 12pm-4pm, closed Mondays. Book ahead for scheduled or group guided tours.
My Flickr set: Sloss Furnaces (34 pics) …or see the slideshow at the end of this post.

Review:
I had two hours left of my 24 hours in Birmingham. Fortunately, the Tutweiler Hotel’s hotel valet offered to run me over to Sloss in their airport pickup van for a quick look-see – much appreciated as the entrance was pretty damned hard to find even by car and no easy walk from Downtown.

I happened to be there on a Monday, so Sloss was closed. But a serendipitous open gate on the perimeter meant that I could document some of its web of rusting pipes and smokestacks.

It really is an incredible set of preserved industrial buildings in all shades of orange, red and brown rust and in many atmospheric shapes. It ran from 1881-1970 and in its early heyday of long hours and poor working conditions, many workers lost their lives either to the furnace or its machinery, with several particularly grisly deaths creating its reputation for being one of America’s most haunted locations. I have to admit that peeping through a broken window sent chills down my spine – even though it was a hot summer day – and I scooted.

These days, Sloss hosts a renowned educational metal arts programme and also acts as a concert/event venue - particularly, of course, at Hallowe’en, hence the grisly disembodied hand in my Flickr pics.

Cadbury’s, BIrmingham, UK

What it is: The world’s most famous chocolate factory, with its global roots in the leafy suburb of Bournville, Birmingham, and a renowned social conscience for providing its workers with housing, education, healthcare and other social benefits. While you can’t tour the factory itself, visitors can see how the chocolate is made and hear the Cadbury story at Cadbury World.

Info:
Website: Cadbury.co.uk
Address: Bournville Lane, Birmingham B30 2LU
Tours: Open daily. £13.90 for an adult, £10.10 for a child, family ticket £42.
My Flickr set: Cadbury’s Chocolate Factory (37 pics) …or see the slideshow at the end of this post.

Review:
After Cadbury’s was taken over by Kraft Foods in February 2010, I felt the need to walk through the Birdcage, the fenced walkway that runs through the factory grounds and on to Cadbury World.

It was a slightly emotional walk. My mother worked at Cadbury’s for many years in the 1970s and 1980s, and in many ways the close-knit community of women workers and the tough working conditions were the making of her as she fought for worker’s rights as a shop steward and began a fundraising career that ended up with the likes of Adrian and Dominic Cadbury, grandsons of George Cadbury, in her fundraising pockets.

Back then there were thousands of workers, mostly women, working ‘on the belt’, placing chocolates manually into assortment boxes for hours on end. Now, the factory itself seems as much of a ghost town as Sloss thanks to increasing levels of mechanisation.

Cadbury World, meanwhile, is thriving as a tourist sideshow showing how the chocolate is made, the history of Cadbury’s through the ages, and, of course, giving visitors the all-important chance to test the wares and buy in bulk at the Factory Shop.

But somehow it seems a bit soul-less and packaged from its origins as a Quaker family business. I was disappointed to see that the factory tennis courts needed weeding, the fishpond has turned to gloop and there seem to be more tankers and lorries than people arriving at the factory gates. All a sign of the corporate times, I suppose.

And yet somehow the original spirit of Cadbury’s still runs through the blood of Bournville. The local village green hosts a number of community events, while last weekend the Bournville Festival on the Cadbury cricket ground still had its maypole and funfair. Best of all, you can still smell the chocolate wafting on the breeze on a good day. 

Sadly, there are no guarantees that Kraft will keep the site open or that chocolate will continue to be made here in the years to come. The commercial nature of the plant means that it is unlikely to become a National Historic Landmark like Sloss any time soon. In this respect, although Sloss no longer functions industrially, Birmingham AL is lucky.

Slideshow: Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, AL - view full screen

Slideshow: Cadbury’s, Birmingham, UK - view full screen

Iron: Man, Birmingham, UK

Yes, that’s Iron [colon] Man. Though the locals just call it The Iron Man. This tilted 1993 sculpture by Turner Prizewinner Antony Gormley lives in Victoria Square, home of Brum’s Town Hall, Council House and the Floozie in the Jacuzzi (more on that in a later post). It’s 6m-tall with it’s feet buried in the pavement and leans 7.5° backwards and 5° to its left. Why? Who knows. That’s art for you. But it was cast with more than a nod to Birmingham industrial heritage and forging skills. A lot of people don’t like it apparently – it’s ‘controversial’. Me, I think it’s probably the most interesting thing in the square - apart from the random concrete balls, that is. (Picture: Amanda Slater)

Vulcan, Birmingham AL

Just a teensy-weensy bit larger is Bham’s Vulcan, also referred to as the Iron Man. Vulcan is the world’s largest cast-iron statue at 17m tall - the circumference of his waist matches the height of Brum’s statue – and is located in its own 10-acre park complete with visitor’s centre. It has long been an iconic symbol of Birmingham, and is set on a 37m pedestal tower on Red Mountain, which overlooks the city… [cont.]

Italian artist Giuseppe Moretti had it cast from local iron in 1904 and it’s been in its elevated home since 1939. Why Vulcan? He was the Roman god of the Forge, also nodding to Bham’s industrial iron and steel past.

Thanks to Daniel, who was my local host and guide for my 24 hours in Birmingham AL, I not only got to see Vulcan close up but he treated me to a ticket to ride inside the Nasa-style elevator tower to the top. A dizzying experience as you can see from my painted smile and set of white knuckles below. (Pictures: Fiona Cullinan)

Spot the difference? Hopefully you can, but our skylines became notoriously linked when a Birmingham City Council designer used a picture of Birmingham Alabama’s skyline on a Birmingham UK recycling leaflet in 2008. Full story here…

Did you spot which was which? Click on the pics to see them at a larger size.

• Bham skyline (top): © Katchooo/Flickr
• Brum skyline (bottom): © Tony Hisgett/Flickr

Suburban Moseley & Downtown Birmingham

THE MOSELEY EXCHANGE, Birmingham UK

• Twitter: @moseleyexchange
• Website: Moseleyexchange.com
• Address: 149-153 Alcester Road, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8J
• Opening hours: 9am-8pm Monday to Thursday; 9am-6pm Friday

About The Moseley Exchange:

• A co-working space and place to meet, work and share ideas.
• Unlimited membership is £85 a month with day-use rates from £10. There are free trial passes or occasional special offers such as the recent Free Fridays.
• Regular events for members to encourage networking/collaboration/sharing. Events include midweek lunch, Friday coffee and cake, and launches for the ever-changing art exhibitions decorating the walls of the space.
• Occasional events have included business advice drop-in sessions and marketing, CRM, blogging and digital engagement workshops.
• Named as one of the 10 best co-working spaces in the UK by Creative Boom online magazine.

Photos: The Moseley Exchange/ Pete Ashton/Flickr

***

SHIFT, Birmingham, Alabama* - *has now closed down. Others are starting in the city but not yet established. I’ll list them here as I hear about them.

• Twitter: @shiftworkspace
• Website: Shiftworkspace.com
• Address: 2308 2nd Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35203, US
• Opening hours:  Weekdays 9am-6pm

About SHIFT:

• A boutique consultancy (with people in Austin, Sydney and NYC), the Birmingham Shift Workspace opened in April 2009. Less than a year later, it is/was under threat. (Update: Birmingham’s Shift has now closed).
• Bham’s space seemed to be more corporate/pro-active than Brum’s space. It services included trying to place its freelance members into relevant work projects (mainly those involving social media strategy, web and interactive design, creative strategy, branding and corporate identity, and project management).

Illustration: adapted from Hilary and Anna’s Flickr picture.

Malfunction Junction, Birmingham AL

It was while standing on the top of Vulcan The Iron Man (more on Brum and Bham’s high and low-level Iron Men in a future post) that my local host Daniel Walters pointed out Birmingham’s Malfunction Junction.

The busiest intersection in Alabama (260,000 vehicles daily) has been churning through traffic since 1970. Here, Interstates 20, 59 and 65 criss-cross in a pretty four-pronged near-cloverleaf that regularly sees motorists weave across multiple lanes to get onto their desired route (sound familiar, Brummies?).

Hence its rep as a stoopidly regular accident blackspot, the most notorious of which was the explosion of a gas truck in 2002, which killed the driver, damaged the bridge, and required demolition and reconstruction (achieved in just 38 days).

According to the informative Bham Wiki, the junction’s ‘tight turns and short merging distances’ are pretty much to blame. Speed restrictions through Alabama’s Malfunction Junction were imposed in 2007, reducing the limit from 60mph to 50mph, although some consider anything less than 85mph ‘downright sissy’ - check out more Birmingham AL rules of the road.

Spaghetti Junction, Birmingham UK

Aka the Gravelly Hill Interchange where the longest motorway in Britain, the M6, meets the A38(M) Aston Expressway in Birmingham, with a few other A and B-roads, three rivers, three canals and two railways lines thrown into the maze-like mix.

It’s not uncommon to be heading for the high road north to Scotland and suddenly find yourself on the low road south to London instead, such is the confusion of the looping, multi-layered, three-pronged Celtic knot of roads.

‘Spaghetti Junction’ was first named by a local newspaper sub-editor (my old job by the way) after seeing an aerial picture of the directional maze. Other Spaghetti Junctions have since been named around the world but Birmingham’s is the first/best-known.

Maybe it was a 70s thing, but Spaghetti Junction was built at the same time as Malfunction Junction, opening in 1972.

Although it’s a confusing and frustrating concrete jungle to many, it’s actually quite pretty with its forest of supporting pillars and urban concrete curves. It was the subject of a Birmingham Flickrmeet in June 2007.

Spaghetti Junction, © Ted and Jen/Flickr

© Melinda Shelton – TCR in action

As Whip It has just come out in the UK, my next “Birmingham meet Birmingham” post is going be on roller derby. Yay! [Transparency: I skated at a CCR practice once and fell flat on my ass/arse.]

So it’s time to introduce Brum’s rollergirls to the US ladies that helped kickstart the whole roller derby revival. Ladies, feel free to internationally trade pun bout names…

First up from the UK, not one but three teams of violent Brummie lovelies on eight wheels…

1. BIRMINGHAM BLITZ DAMES, UK
Say hello to the Birmingham Blitz Dames who scrimmage in the Stockland Green area of Brum.

The girls: Gallery roster includes Helen Fury, Violet Attack, Tear E Hatchet and Kiki Kasplat.

About: “The league was formed in October 2006 by American transplant Bee Bentley (Bee Sting) following the resurgence of the sport via a grassroots movement of strong-minded women in the USA in 2001. [Ed _ see below.] …We consider ourselves a very happy family and don’t just meet in the sports halls. Off-skates training is also encourage and so is socializing. We are currently undertaking an All-You-Can-Eat tour of Birmingham and love relaxing in our second home: Subside.”

Blog: Here’s the Blitz Dames review of Whip It, after they skated round the cinema, that is.

Twitter: @blitzdames 

Facebook group: 845 members at time of writing. Here’s their page.

Second up is the…

2. CENTRAL CITY ROLLERGIRLS, UK
The Central City Rollergirls learn their skating chops at Cocks Moors Woods leisure centre in Kings Heath and also in neighbouring Redditch.

The girls: Gallery page should be coming soon, like their website. Ahem. Cough cough.

About: “The CCR are all about having fun and working hard together to promote a great team sport and offer girls a friendly and enjoyable environment to come learn to rollerskate, find out all about game and make some great friends at the same time!”

Myspace/blog: Most info is currently on here.

Facebook: 1243 members at time of writing. Here’s their page.

Finally, last summer saw a splinter group form…

3. SECOND CITY ROLLER BULLIES, UK
Bitter Sweet (formerly of the Blitz Dames) has skated off to form a new team. So check out the Second City Roller Bullies of the Tri-Country Rollers.

The girls: Gallery roster includes Bitter Sweet, Luna Riot, Titney Fears, Rolles West, and more.

Attitude: “The Tri-County Rollers and Second City Roller Bullies moto is ‘FIND YOUR TRIBE!‘ Everyone is welcome in the SCRBs! It doesn’t matter if you’re big and beautiful, a sexy in betweeny or a skinny minnie, there is a place for you in Roller Derby! You can be big or small, tall or short, blonde or brunette, you can be a punk or a metal ‘ead, shy and quiet or a bloody great big mouth, a hooker or a house wife! EVERYONE IS WELCOME! There is only one rule, you have to be over 18 years old! That’s it! There is no upper age limit!”

Blogs: All the info you need is here.

Twitter: @Brumrollerbully

Facebook: 980 fans at time of writing. Here’s their page.

In Birmingham, Alabama, there is the one and only flat-track team (as far as I know):

1. TRAGIC CITY ROLLERGIRLS, USA
Over in Alabama„ meet the Tragic City Rollers. http://tragiccityrollers.com/ - a pisstake of “The Magic City”, which was Birmingham’s nickname it was built on iron and steel almost overnight. They practise at Funtime Skate Center in Fultondale, Alabama

The girls: Gallery roster includes captain Voodoo Lily, co-captain Punkin Disorderly, and team-mates Roxy Ramjett, Sookie Smackhouse, Lil Miss Perfect, Inapickle and more.

About: “The Tragic City Rollers are Birmingham Alabama’s all-girl flat track roller derby league! Formed in December 2005, we’re a fleet of bitches who know how to lay it down derby style! We play hard and we fight even harder, all the while keeping the pigtails curled and the fishnets in stock!”

History: One of the 30 all woman (skater owned and operated) roller derby leagues at the heart of the movement to revive roller derby in the United States.

Attitude: “Roller derby is more than just a sport; it is social activism, community service, and a character-building activity for women across socio-economic divisions and social backgrounds. … Not only do we  strive to promote camaraderie and fairness in standards and sportsmanship, but also local community-based charities and businesses, like Rape Response, Race for the Cure and Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

WLTM: “Bitches who brawl! And all our bad ass derby fans!”

Facebook: 1,451 fans  at time of upload. Join the club.

Twitter: @TCR

BUS STATIONS OF BIRMINGHAM UNITE…

1. Birmingham Greyhound Station, AL

• Info - The station was constructed in a ‘moderne’ style and opened in 1950, according to BhamWiki. Opening times, location, etc, from Greyhound.com
• History - the station was a focus for the Freedom Riders in the US Civil Rights Movement when black and white activists rode together on both Greyhound and Trailways to protest against segregation on the buses. They were attacked by the KKK but ultimately prevailed (more on that in a separate future post). Here’s the 1961 timeline of Freedom Rides.
• Blogged - Bharden’s account of riding the Greyhound and getting stuck in B’ham bus station for seven hours:

“I ended up just sitting in the greyound station for 7 hours. With all the homeless people. Greyhounds are like the homeless shelters of the states, and when you have a beard and a mullet you just get mistaken for one of them. Every hour or so the police will come past and wake you up and check you have a ticket and kick the bums out for a bit. Its like school. The police are viscous. If there is no seats left and you sit in a quiet area on the ground, instead of going hey buddy you cant sit there, they go “Stand the F*(K up!”  and you crap yourself.”

• Image: © Fiona Cullinan/Flickr Creative Commons

2. Birmingham Coach Station, Digbeth

• Info - the previous dingy eyesore of a station was razed to the ground in 2007 and a shiny new intercity bus station opened in the same spot in December 2009. Here’s the National Express info on location and other details.
• Background - Birmingham is a central transport hub in the middle of the UK, linking cities throughout the UK, but from the Digbeth station it is also possible to make international connections to Dublin and Poland.
• Blogged - Digbeth blogger Nicky Getgood spent 12 hours in the bus station on New Year’s Eve 2009. Here’s the first of her 14 NYE Express posts where she writes about the staff, the cleaner, the passengers and the stories they had to tell:

“I cannot recommend enough that everyone spends a little time watching the world go by in the nearest coach or train station, to experience where you live as a traveler. You’ll see a truly different side to your area and get to talk to some very interesting people passing through it, who all have their own stories to tell.”

• Image: © Elliott Brown/Flickr Creative Commons