Copyright The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pulling into downtown Birmingham for a late Friday afternoon check-in at the Tutwiler Hotel, the realization hit that — for the first time in my life — I was a tourist in my own hometown. Born in a hospital two miles away from the historic building that’s now a Hampton Inn and Suites property, I had never set foot in the place, though, I’d driven past it all of my life before moving to Georgia in the 1990s. Growing up, downtown was a ghost town after business hours. On this evening, I walked three short blocks north of the hotel to Uptown, an entertainment district adjacent to the new City Walk — a one-mile linear park underneath the I-20 overpass, its undergirding lit up brilliantly in multihued colors.
