8/6/2019 Outsider Eyes

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/outsider-eyes 1/1j u ly 8 - ju ly 15 , 2010   BIRMINGHAM W EEKLY4

five or ten people there. When I wentfind some local music coverage the onfound hadn’t been updated in years. Ta vacuum happening here. Birminghproducing good music, but no one wattention. I felt like I was one man shointo the void, but it was a place to starstart I did. I created a blog called r3vr

 which morphed into BHAM.FM whediscovered some like-minded individcollaborate with.

BHAM.FM was a dream. We brokestories, booked some shows and I listto a ton of music, good and bad. For two years, I listened to almost every b

played in town. In the end though, likdreams, real life intervened. People lolost jobs, got jobs and got married. Prit was back to just me again. I pluggedsacrificing my Sundays to write a weeof posts because I went crazy if I trieddaily. Finally, it was too much and I saltogether.

This was terribly depressing, thoughirrepressible when it comes down to iFM had become one of those sites thame to start it in the first place — a waof outdated information. I still wantethe city about the jewels I kept uneartthere, but I couldn’t do it alone. This approached Birmingham Weekly aboa music column, and it was as much tsurprise as anyone else when they offthe Managing Editor gig instead.

I’ve done every piece of this job in oor another. I’ve worked as a layout dea life-long writer and photographer, Iaged other people and I’ve edited a blthe less, becoming the editor of a new

 wasn’t even on my radar screen a few ago, and it’s an amazing opportunity

 want to abuse, so I was a little nervoucoming aboard.

This is why, hammering wearily awain the morning on those first papers, happy. I had landed, sublimely and setously, in the right place. Here, I can all of my energy and time to accomploriginal goal. I can celebrate the thingBirmingham I’ve come to love, from platform then I ever thought I possibam sure I will learn more about Birmin the process than I ever would have

Don’t take my prior enthusiasm as nAll is not sunshine and roses in Vulcadomain, and I will make sure we addissues that face the community, but I face those issues with an optimistic hunfettered by the shackles of cynicism

 you’ll continue to join me.

Write to editor@bhamweekly.com.

Hello Birmingham. Nice to formally meet you! I’ve been lurking in the background at thepaper for a while now, getting our new websiteready and contributing an article or a photo-graph every once and a while, but it’s nice totake the final steps into editorship. It’s been a

 wild ride thus far, and it certainly began witha bang. Right off the bat, we made a marathonsprint to publish three papers in eight days

 without the help of our production goddessto guide us to port. It was during that time,pulling shift ‘till one in the morning, extremely tired and happy as hell, that I first began tosuspect I had finally landed in t he right place.

Let me step back and explain. I arrived here

in Birmingham in the late summer of 2007 with my new fiancé. She’s from Birminghamoriginally, though we met waiting tables ata burger joint in Manhattan, and when wedecided to get married and settle, it becameclear that there was no way we could afford tostay in New York. I’ve always loved the South,and I grew up in a steel town very similarto Birmingham in many ways, so when theopportunity arose we packed everything weowned into a truck and drove for twenty-somehours straight to get here. It was the best moveI ever made.

One of the first things I learned here was thatan alarming number of Birmingham nativeshave a generally negative view of their own city.

“Perhaps they’ve been immersed in their ownclichéd national image for too long,” I thought,

“or perhaps they can’t see the small wonders

for the tabloid headlines.” I, on the other hand, was looking at the city through outsider eyes,and it seemed mighty fine to me.

My temperament dictates that I live in anurban environment, and I’ve always lovedNew York, but it is so overwhelming at times,so absent of homey comfort. Birmingham, by contrast, is a wonderful meld of large urbanenvironment and small town familiarity. I getto look up at skyscrapers and run into peopleI know everywhere I go. I get to live minutesfrom downtown, but in a house that I adore. Imean, it’s got a white picket fence, for cryingout loud! And unlike New York, the people of Birmingham have been uniformly and openly  welcoming.

On top of this, I discovered that the MagicCity hosts a community of artists that producequality work in a vast array of genres. I’ve whiled away many hours of my life in artisticpursuits of one kind or another, and I was de-lighted to find creative sustenance abounding.In particular, I was impressed with the quality of the music being made. I didn’t know how rich Birmingham’s musical history was at thetime, but I after I kept discovering new local

 bands that I li ked, I suspected something.It was around this time that I noticed some-

thing peculiar. I would get really excited abouta killer show, but when I got there I’d be one of 

SALUTATIONS AND ASPIRATIONS FROM THE NEW ED

Outsider eyesletter from the editor   Sam George

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