MAGIC IN THE CITY

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Web Site Recalls Birmingham’s Postwar

Pop Culture History

By Bonnie Bailey                                                          

Do you remember Pizitz and Loveman’s?  How about the Wigwam Village on Bessemer Super Highway, Burger in a Hurry or the Starlite Theatre? If your nostalgia meter just spiked, chances are you lived in Birmingham during the postwar era of drive-in movies, soda fountains and classic diners. Want to take a walk down memory lane? BirminghamRewound.com offers you that opportunity.

The Bear

Birmingham Rewound, the online brainchild of Savannah, Georgia, radio host Russell Wells, may be the ultimate example of distance making the heart grow fonder. Wells, who has never lived in Birmingham, started the web site in 2005, dedicating it to the Magic City’s postwar memories, specifically, its unique pop culture, e.g. Kiddieland, the Alabama Theatre and Grayson’s Delicious Ice Cream in Southside. Growing up with a father climbing the ladder at Sears, Roebuck and Co., Wells was born in Birmingham but only spent his first few months of life in the city, afterwards moving every couple of years to a new state. His grandparents’ house in Homewood was a destination for Wells and his family, Birmingham “the only constant in a sea of change,” he says. Birmingham held both family and his boyhood passion: radio. As soon as Wells got close enough to the city, he’d always find his favorite radio station, WSGN, the leading top 40 station  in Birmingham for years. After graduating from Arkansas State University’s radio program in 1987, Wells says, “I flooded the radio stations in Alabama with resumes. I finally went to work for a radio station in Troy, but it wasn’t Birmingham.” Eventually Wells went to work for Georgia Public Broadcasting, where he is now the Operations Manager of WSVH in Savannah.

Birmingham Train Terminal

It was a pivotal day in 2003 that planted the seed for Birmingham Rewound. A friend sent Wells a link to deadmalls. com, a retail history site devoted to memories of retail outfits no longer the hot spots they once were. “I’ve always been interested in roadside history, old Americana and pop culture, so I checked  it out and noticed that it said nothing about Eastwood Mall,” he said. Wells decided to make a quick trip to Birmingham to take pictures of Alabama’s first indoor, air-conditioned mall (the marquee for Eastwood Mall read, “South’s largest mall – Open one door to 47 stores – 73 degrees year round”). Most of the stores were closed, Wells says, but what impacted him the most wasn’t the dying establishment. “My grandmother had died earlier in the year, and she was my only remaining connection to Birmingham,” Wells says. “I
realized that I had nowhere to go that day after taking pictures at the mall. Birmingham was nolonger a destination, and I didn’t want that to happen. I started thinking about old Birmingham, about the zoo and the railroad. I thought it would be really cool to have a web site with images of Birmingham, but I didn’t have the images.” That’s where local historian and author Tim Hollis came in.

Starlite Drive In

“I got an email from Tim saying he had tons of pictures of old Birmingham landmarks, but he had no web design experience. It was a perfect combination because I had web experience, so we started putting together a site,” Wells says. Their efforts at first just targeted Eastwood Mall, but eventually they broadened to a site devoted to all of Birmingham.

Within a month of going live, “I feared I was going to start getting emails from Comcast about bandwidth,” says Wells. Emails filled with  memories poured in.  A year later Wells had maxed out his space. Dan Cole, a friend with a web hosting business and a common interest in Birmingham’s history, came to the rescue, offering Wells hosting that would support growing amounts of traffic. Using photos, brochures, road maps and menus saved from Tim’s childhood, plus articles, advertisements and cartoons printed from library microfilms, Wells and Hollis grew  Birmingham Rewound into a site that features info on Birmingham’s old retail, like Pizitz, Loveman’s and Bargain Town USA  plus roadside landmarks and restaurants like Constantine’s Drive-In, Spinning Wheel and Kelly’s Hamburgers. There’s also info on postwar radio, movies and TV in Birmingham, plus a section called ‘This month in history,’ which features history going back 40, 50, 60 and 70 years.

“I would give anything for a time machine,” says Wells. “But this is the next best thing.” Even though Wells has never lived in Birmingham, he says, “From working with Tim Hollis and Dan Cole and getting the response from people that we’ve gotten, I almost feel like I’ve been a lifelong resident of Birmingham, even now.” Get your dose of Birmingham nostalgia at www.birminghamrewound.com.

Russell Wells

Tags: Birmingham 1960, Birmingham Train Terminal, Kiddieland Birmingham Alabama, Nostalgia, www.BirminghamRewound.com
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