Last year, Rusty White Jr. and Brian Elder just missed out on getting into the Alabama Bass Trail 100 Series. This year, they made sure they’d have a place in the ABT series, starting with the first event Jan. 21 at Lake Harris (known to locals as Lake Wedowee) by signing up as soon as registration […]

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame songwriting legend Mike Stoller says he wants to help honor Alabama native Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, who made a hit of the now-classic “Hound Dog.” Stoller and songwriting partner Jerry Leiber wrote the song for her seven decades ago when the two men were still teenagers. Thornton, a native of […]

The road to reserving a table at Birmingham’s popular Automatic Seafood & Oysters restaurant just got “bumpier.” Chef Adam Evans on Monday night won a coveted James Beard Award for Best Chef: South. Many consider the awards to be life-changing for those in the restaurant industry who become semifinalists and finalists, but especially for those who win. A […]

Gee’s Bend, Alabama, couldn’t be real. That’s what fashion designer Patrick Robinson, who knew of the storied Gee’s Bend’s quilters, figured. “I’ve owned the books of Gee’s Bend forever. I never thought it was a real place,” says Robinson, founder of the New York City-based Paskho clothing company. “I thought it was this mystical place where people […]

Alabama’s state seal is the only one among 50 that touts its waterways on a map of the state. A handful of other states feature bodies of water in their artwork, but no other state showcases its river systems in its seal. “If you look at our state seal, what’s the first thing that stands […]

Nick Garrett spent a recent weekend using his scroll saw to craft a wood 3D jersey of All-Pro NFL running back Derrick Henry, one of his favorite football players while Garrett attended the University of Alabama, and his favorite NFL player. Garrett, a distribution engineer at Alabama Power, planned to hang the jersey in his man cave. Garrett’s plans […]

Imagine a race course filled with high speeds and sharp turns galore, with competitors sometimes inches apart as they jockey for position. While it might sound like the Talladega Superspeedway, it’s actually the streets of Birmingham’s Pepper Place for the second annual Birmingham Hammerfest Fueled by BOLT24 this Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 14-15. The free event will feature 20 USA […]

Stephen Haber was hiking the trails of DeSoto State Park in northeast Alabama and got himself good and lost. He continued to wander, fully unprepared for what he was about to encounter. “I happened upon a retired couple in a Ford F-150 pickup truck,” said the native New Yorker who has lived in California for […]

American prisoner of war Roddie Edmonds stood in front of more than 1,200 fellow POWs, the commandant of a German Stalag holding a Luger to Edmonds’ head. The day before, the commandant had demanded that all Jewish POWs among the 1,200-plus noncommissioned officers captured during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 […]

Jesse J. Lewis Sr. has lived almost a century of history and, along the way, made some of his own. Born Jan. 3, 1925, Lewis last month celebrated his 96th birthday. He grew up in the Great Depression, dropped out of high school, served under Gen. George Patton in World War II, suffered through the racial […]

Thirteen-year-old Eric Wallace knew, as surely as he needed to breathe, that he needed to make music. He knew that he had to make music. “For me, that was always, how can I get to my friend’s house who has a drum set? How can I play guitar? How can I get that sound with […]

Some familiar names in Alabama’s culinary world are semifinalists for the 2019 James Beard Awards, announced Wednesday morning by the James Beard Foundation. Birmingham’s The Atomic Lounge for the second year in a row is a semifinalist for Outstanding Bar Program, one of 20 across the country to make the cut. The Outstanding Bar Program award is for “a restaurant or […]

The second morning after Dolester Miles won the 2018 James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in America, her Instagram account lit up with its first posts. Miles, who has worked for Frank Stitt at Birmingham’s Highlands Bar & Grill since he opened in 1982, posted photo after photo of her, of her desserts, of her with her […]

Seeds of hope planted in some Alabama schools are sprouting into tiny yet vigorous sprigs that signal a bumper crop. The shoots will grow over the next few years as those schools work to reap the harvest of a Hope Institute program that cultivates character in students. Housed at Samford University, the nonprofit is the […]

Timing is everything. And Birmingham’s timing for becoming a host city in the North American effort to secure the 2026 World Cup was awful. Wednesday, a combined bid from the United States, Mexico and Canada won the hosting rights. Sixty of the 80 matches, including the final, will be in the U.S.

The Alabama Legislature for three years running has refused to approve reparations to Anthony Ray Hinton, the Jefferson County man who spent almost 30 years on death row before prosecutors dropped all charges against him. Tuesday, Oprah Winfrey announced a decision that could help Hinton financially. Winfrey Tuesday morning revealed that Hinton’s memoir “The Sun […]