Awoke. Nicci seemed pretty happy that she didn’t have to wake up early. She offered to take me to the fitness center at the hotel. We ran for fifteen or twenty minutes on the treadmills. I worked up a pretty decent sweat. After that we showered and dressed for the day. We decided to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a museum built to share the history of the Civil Rights movement in the south with special consideration given to Birmingham. It was slightly depressing, but informative as well. Who knew that in the early 60s — almost a decade after the landmark Brown vs. Board Of Education decision of the Supreme Court, the city of Birmingham actually elected two separate governments because the white population was upset with the way that the black citizens voted. Across the street from the Institute is the 16th Street Baptist Church, which is known for its being bombed during a racially charged attack in the early ’60s. Who knew Birmingham contained a number of important American historical landmarks!
From there, Nicci showed me the Five Points section of town, which is kind of a college-y area near UAB. That was the first part of town I’ve seen where people were actually walking around the streets. We ate lunch at a place called No Way Jose, or Jose’s Cafe, the place seemed a bit ambiguous about its name. The food was “meh,” but they had a decent beer list. Nicci and I shared a pint of Great Divide Hercules Double IPA. Yummy. Very yummy.
We drove back to Nicci’s hotel, where she began the process of doing her hair for the show. It takes an hour. I started watching but soon fell asleep. It was cute to see her routine.
She left for a dress rehearsal at 4:30, at which time I left to explore Birmingham on my own. I returned to the Five Points area to visit a record store we drove past called Renaissance. It was alright. The guy who worked there was nice enough to let me into the back of the store to see their more collectible records. Nothing exceptional. I walked back to my car after an hour and stopped at the tattoo parlor nearby to ask the kids who looked most like Echo Park kids where I could go to watch the sunset. They recommended The Vulcan, which I’d heard Nicci mention earlier in the day.
The Vulcan Statue is the world’s largest cast iron statue. It’s the symbol of Birmingham. It’s pretty fucking mammoth. I arrived there at about 6pm, and stayed until 8 or 8:30, walking around the grounds, hiking up and down the stairs (is it 159 steps or 160?) to kill time between stages of sunset. The views of the city were amazing. I took about 200 photos, but I’m only going to share the few that I think really stand out from the rest.
There was a cocktail party or something to benefit Breast Cancer awareness, so I stuck around to see how that played out. Afterwards, I tried to search the Internet for late-night coffeeshops in Birmingham with free WiFi, but the FIVE different ones I drove to were all closed. So, I returned to Nicci’s hotel to upload my photos and write this blog entry. She’s at rehearsal until twelve, and I already can’t wait to see her again. I’m such fag for her. Shut up, John Q. Blogreader. Let’s see you find an amazing and talented girlfriend.
The show officially opens tomorrow night. There will be an afterparty following the show. I doubt I’ll have time to update the blog until I’m back in LA sometime Friday, but when I do so I will fully review the show with all my thoughts about the performances. I’ll try to be as unbiased as possible, but it’ll be hard. Nicci’s really good at what she does.
…And with that, I’m off to Wal-Mart to buy a bottle of wine for when she gets home. If you want more spur-of-the-moment updates about the trip, check out Twitter or Facebook. It doesn’t take as long to post things on those sites.
Photos:
– Vulcan Statue
– Downtown skyline framed by trees
– Vulcan ass
– Downtown skyline as sunset begins
– “No Running On Stair Steps”
– The “real” stairs to the top of the statue
– Pretty radio towers at sunset
– The last moment before the sun set.
– Fancy stairs at the base of the statue
– The moon between tree branches
– Lights come on as darkness approaches
– A quick trip to the bathroom later, it’s pretty much dark outside!
– Radio towers again
– There’s a baseball field down there!
– Another skyscape
– Bye bye, radio towers!
– As I prepare to take the elevator back down to the ground, I attempt (and utterly fail) to spell “Hi Nicci” with the moon while I play with my camera’s exposure times. I got the “N” right. Everything else went horribly wrong.
