Comeback Town: Downtown was really cool when I was growing up

David Sher’s ComebackTown for a better greater Birmingham.

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I grew up in the ‘50′s and ‘60′s and the number of contemporaries I can share my memories with is shrinking.

I feel compelled to tell my story of growing up in Birmingham—specifically downtown—because it was a unique time that young people today will find difficult to comprehend.

During my childhood everyone went downtown, and I mean everyone.

There were no shopping centers, strip malls, or big box stores. You might say downtown Birmingham had a monopoly.

So anybody and everybody was downtown.

Folks shopped there, ate there, and socialized there.

Walking along the streets of downtown, I ran into relatives, neighbors, and schoolmates.

At times there were so many pedestrians on downtown sidewalks that I made up a game. People were lined up on the curb three or four deep waiting to cross the street. When the light changed, I would walk as fast as I could to the upcoming curb to compete in an imaginary race. I won most of the time, but of course, no one else knew they were in a competition.

Many a day, particularly around Christmas time, there were so many automobiles downtown that there was a policeman at every corner to direct traffic.

When folks wanted to meet friends or family members downtown, they’d ask them to meet under the clock at Loveman’s Department Store—that was everyone’s meeting spot. (It’s now the clock at the McWane Center).

The block bounded by 19th & 20th Streets North and 2nd and 3rd Avenue North had so much pedestrian traffic, it was called the ‘Race Track,’ and landlords likely charged the highest rents for those stores.

The eating options were limitless–Joy Young, John’s, Britling and Morrison’s Cafeteria, La Paree, Pasquale’s; the counters at J.J. Newberry, Kress, Woolworth or Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs. You could buy a Krystal hamburger for 12¢ and fries for a dime and then walk to the Krispy Kreme around the corner for hot melt-in-your mouth donuts.

The movie theatres were bustling—The Alabama, Ritz, Lyric, Melba, and Empire.

The retail stores went on for blocks and blocks—Pizitz, Loveman’s, Parisian, Blach’s, Burger-Phillips, New Ideal, and scores of others—big and small.

I attended the University of Alabama, but came home most weekends. One Saturday night my girlfriend (now my wife) and I went to the Alabama Theatre. The next morning I got a call from my upset father. He received a call from a good friend who wanted him to know that he had seen me at the Alabama Theatre without a coat and tie. By the way, students wore coats and ties at Alabama Football games.

Another unforgettable memory was in 1956 when my family decided to go to the Elvis Presley movie, Love Me Tender, which had just opened at the Alabama Theatre. The line for tickets was so long it wrapped around the block.

I remember eating lunch with my mom on the balcony at the Pizitz Department Store, sticking my feet into an X-Ray machine at Parisian to measure my feet for shoes, and eating the best fried chicken dinner and yeast roll I’ve ever eaten in my life at Joy Young, a one-of-a-kind Chinese-American Restaurant.

My parents bought me my first pair of grown-up shoes at Porter’s Department Store and my first suit at Blach’s.

I saw a color television for the first time in a display window at Pizitz.

On occasion, my father took me to get my shoes shined at Bon Bon Hatters. It made me feel like a real grown up.

But nothing came close to downtown Birmingham at Christmas time.

The Christmas display windows at Pizitz and Loveman’s made my imagination soar, and the Enchanted Forest inside Pizitz was a winter wonderland I will never forget.

I recently came across an article written in the ‘80′s predicting the demise of downtown Birmingham and the huge growth of Brookwood Mall and Century Plaza–both malls are gone now.

Downtown Birmingham may have had some bad days, but it is making quite a comeback. If you don’t believe me, try finding a parking place downtown on weekend evenings.

Downtown will never look like it did when I was a kid—but with more and more residential properties and a demand for walkability—downtown will continue to grow and reinvent itself.