The Friday Ramble: Visit the Wiki, Storm the Bistro, Explore the City and eat your vegetables!

Use the Wiki

Some of the links in today’s Neon post are courtesy of the B’ham Wiki, a project that aims to create as accurate and detailed a reference guide for the City of Birmingham and the surrounding region as possible. I would encourage anyone that feels like writing and abiding by the guidelines of contributing to visit the site and get involved in recording as much of this area’s history as possible. I hope that as the site is updated (and maybe as I find to contribute things to it), we’ll be able to link more of the articles about the city to it. It is another way for us to discover a lot about our city and what makes it unique. The more that we know the more we can celebrate those things.

Storming the Bistro (since there’s no Bastille here)!

Happy Bastille Day! In honor of this French national holiday, I’m suggesting we gather at as French-sounding an institution as there is in town, Metro Bistro, for Happy Hour this evening (click the link for a map and directions). The other reason could be due to how close it is to the loft. I’m not really expecting a large crowd at all, but it would be nice to see some folks out this evening. You can all make fun of the really large picture that accompanies the resident profile of yours truly in the current edition of Black and White (and no, it’s not available online <sigh>) I’m planning on showing up between 5 and 5:30 p.m. I hope some of you can make it.

Explore more of the city

This is the proverbial soapbox that I get on, so ignore it if you think you’ve heard it before and scroll down to the end. I attended the first Sixteenth and Sixth of the season at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute yesterday evening. Click here to view the post made earlier this week about the event. The event was excellent, with spoken word, music and gallery talks about current exhibitions at the Institute. The interesting thing was that with all of this going on, there was not nearly the crowd that there will probably be next week at Art on the Rocks. While the buzz for Sixteenth and Sixth is not quite the same as the one for the Museum’s events, it should be there. It’s not a competition, as is being demonstrated with tomorrow’s Birmingham’s Hidden Treasures events throughout the metro Birmingham area. Hopefully this day of events celebrating those patrons and members of the participating institutions will shine a light not just on this event, but others like it showcasing the area’s diversity.

One more thing…

A note I got from the guys at Birmingham Artwalk about their return to Pepper Place Farmer’s Market:

Artwalk Presents “A Taste of Art,” beginning tomorrow at the Pepper Place Farmer’s Market. Every Saturday between now and Artwalk, we will have a booth at the farmer’s market from 7 am – Noon. While you are shopping for your veggies, come by and support our organization and artists – we’ll have 2006 t-shirts, Stella raffle tickets and advance Preamble tickets for sale. This Saturday, we will feature the wonderful mixed media of artist Melanie Colvin. While all of her work is created to withstand the outdoor elements of your garden, her mosaic wall pieces and planters are just as elegant in the home. Oh yeah – Blueberries are in season – so come early before they are all gone!

Maybe I’ll see you this evening or at the Sunflower event at the Gardens at Park Place tomorrow. Enjoy the weekend.

Cheers.