Birmingham Facts, Superlatives and Other Propaganda

  • The University of Alabama at Birmingham's University Hospital is the world's top kidney transplant center.
    (Birmingham News, Fall 2002)
  • Birmingham has one of the "Top Ten Bars Worth Flying For," according to GQ Magazine. The article lists the top ten bars in the world, among them "The Garages" in Birmingham for its eclectic, authentic charm.
    (GQ Magazine, April 2003)
  • Birmingham's Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival was named one of the "ten fantastic film festival vacations" along with New Orleans, Austin and San Diego.
    (Film Festival Today, Spring 2003)
  • Gourmet ranked Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham among the top five restaurants in the country.
    (Gourmet Magazine, Fall 2001)
  • Birmingham's Barber Motorsports Park houses the largest collection of vintage motorcycles in the world. The park is considered the "Augusta of Motorsport," referring to the quality of the world-class course and home of the Porsche Driving Experience. "When it comes to road courses, this is going to become the spiritual home to the sport," said Roger Edmondson, president of the Grand American Road Racing Series.
    (Birmingham News, Spring 2003)
  • Bon Appetit named Birmingham's Hot & Hot Fish Club among the "Great Neighborhood Restaurants in the South."
    (Bon Appetit, Fall 2002)
  • The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), the global Catholic television giant, is headquartered and broadcasts from its studios in Birmingham to millions of viewers around the world.
    (Birmingham News, Winter 2002)
  • Birmingham is Alabama's largest city.
  • Bare Hands Gallery, which carries exclusively the work of local artists, was recently named one of two “uniquely Birmingham sites” by National Geographic Traveler magazine. The other site is the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
  • Alabama ranks #3 in the nation in most runners per capita. (Runner's World magazine, November 2001.)
  • Birmingham is ranked #1 as host city for the annual PGA Senior Golf Tour.
    (Sports Illustrated, 2001)
  • Birmingham took 10th place among U.S. cities on the annual list of Fortune 500 companies.
    (Fortune Magazine, April 2001)
  • Birmingham's Ruffner Mountain is larger than New York City's Central Park
    and a five minutes drive from downtown. It is the second largest urban nature preserve in the country.
    (Birmingham News, Spring 2003)
  • Only New York City has more of the top 50 banks headquartered in the city.
    (Fortune, 2000)
  • Begun in 1975, Birmingham's annual "Miss Apollo Pageant" is now the second oldest continuously running drag queen pageant in the country.
    (Black & White City Newspaper, September, 2002)
  • Birmingham's role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s placed it "at the center of the most significant domestic drama of the 20th century..."
    (Newsweek, Fall 2001)
  • In 1995 Mercedes Benz chose a site just east of Birmingham to build its first assembly plant outside Germany. The plant produces the popular M-Class All Activity Vehicle. A $600 million expansion is currently underway.
  • Birmingham is the only place in the world where all the ingredients for making iron are present: coal, iron ore and limestone---all within a ten-mile radius.
  • Vulcan, the mythical god of metalworking, is the largest iron figure ever cast and is second in size only to the Statue of Liberty. The statue was Birmingham's entry in the 1904 World's Fair, where it won first place.
  • The Club's multi-colored dance floor was director John Badham's inspiration for a key icon in the definitive 1970s movie Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta.
  • Southern Living, the nation's most successful regional magazine, is published in Birmingham.
  • The Birmingham Museum of Art houses the largest museum collection of Wedgwood outside England.
  • With the opening of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail throughout the state, Alabama was called "…one of America's top 10 golf destinations."
    (USA Today)
  • Birmingham is home to the nation's oldest baseball park, Rickwood Field, which opened in 1910 and hosted baseball greats such as Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.
  • Saks, Inc., the nation's fourth largest department store chain, has its headquarters in Birmingham and operates 330 stores in 24 states.
  • The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Kirklin Clinic was designed by world-renowned architect I.M Pei.
  • Vonetta Flowers, the first African-American to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics (2002 - bobsledding) is a track coach at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.</LI-->
  • Birmingham’s world-class musical talent has put the city in the national spotlight with two winners from the mega hit TV show American Idol. Ruben Studdard won in 2003 and Taylor Hicks came home with top honors in 2006. In between, Birmingham’s Bo Bice won first runner-up in the 2005 competition.
  • Birmingham was recently voted “America’s Bass Capital” by readers of BASSMASTER magazine. Anglers were challenged to submit their choice for the country’s best “big city bassin’.” Ten major cities were in the running, with specifications including a major metropolitan population, healthy bass populations, enthusiastic bass fishing communities and opportunities for big fish.
  • In a recent interview in the New York Times, NYC mega-restaurateur Danny Meyer was asked about up-and-coming food cities. His response: There are so many! Both Portlands---Maine and Oregon---are obsessed with good food. So are Seattle, Boston and Birmingham, Alabama. (Danny Meyer is the president of the Union Square Hospitality Group. More than 20 years ago, he opened his first restaurant, the legendary Union Square Café, in downtown New York, an area that has become “a foodie paradise.” Meyer now owns and operates seven successful, high cuisine restaurants in New York City.)


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