Shortly after my June B-Metro column remembering Birmingham hot dog legend Gus Koutralakis was published, I received an email entitled “Pete’s Famous” from Andreas Anastassakis—which read, “I am Jimmy and Nicky Koikos’ cousin from the Bright Star Restaurant. We read the great article you wrote on our cousin Gus. “Jimmy has asked me to contact you, … Read More
Uncategorized
Bon Voyage, Erin!
Just this morning, Martha put Erin on a plane for the Great American Truck Show in Dallas. She’s really been looking forward to it—since James Hudson (one of our many good friends at Randall-Reilly) was kind enough to send her a snapshot of a Time And Temperature display indicating that the outdoor temperature was exactly 100º. … Read More
Such A Lovely Place To Suffer
Voilà a few raisons why I-yam hooked on Le Tour. I used to hate July. With fall practice still a month away, and national signing day a distant memory, July represents the low point of the year for people who (like me, once upon a time) have no life outside college football. That was Before … Read More
Attention Southerners: Download your Fall 2011 Life Planner now!
It’s the ever-popular SEC Helmet Schedule. ( Special Thanks To CrimsonAudio.net ) ENJOY!
Dancing In The Street (Revisited)
(Photo by The Birmingham News) It’s taken me some time, but I can now honestly say I miss City Stages. Not the City Stages I skipped from 2004 to 2008—and regretted attending in 2009—but the festival which, at its best, was as good a thing as my hometown has ever done for itself. I’m talking about … Read More
Baggett’s Third Ad: Show Them The Money.
Our latest ad features Baggett’s Traffic Manager, David Crommelin. He’s the guy who determines each driver’s pay on a weekly basis. Needless to say, nobody exemplifies the way a company treats its drivers quite like the Traffic Manager. And boy-oh-boy, in our interviews with Baggett drivers, we heard plenty of salty comments about the way … Read More
What Do o.b. Tampons Have To Do With Truck Driver Recruiting?
(A WORD OF EXPLANATION: This post originally appeared on our other blog — which is focused entirely on truck driver recruiting. There are loads of posts I consider far more interesting than this one, but for some reason, it keeps popping-up in the blog’s stats among our Most-Read posts.) The best truck driver recruitment campaigns … Read More
Could I Get One More To Go?
(Special thanks to Joe York, and the short film “Gus”, for the image.) One Saturday morning in mid-April, my wife joined our son and me for one of our periodic bike trips from the house in Forest Park to Downtown and back. Along the way, we visited several of the places we often stop: Sloss … Read More
A R-eel Fish Story
The following article was originally printed September 3, 2009 in the Sea Breeze News—very possibly the wittiest small-town newspaper in the known universe. Two weeks ago a group of four men, Steve Hoyland Jr. with friends Bruce, Ken and Erik, set off on an overnight offshore fishing trip. They left at noon on a Tuesday … Read More
I Like To Watch, Eve. It’s Very Good.
This month’s title is a quote from Being There, one of my favorite movies of the last three decades. In it, Peter Sellers plays Chance—a man with the mind of a child who knows virtually nothing outside what he has learned from television. Which, by the way, he spends nearly every waking moment watching. It’s … Read More