North and the surrounding blocks will turn once again into the bustling art show known as Artwalk, now in its ninth iteration. In recent years, Artwalk has blossomed into a premium event, featuring scrumptious vittles, live music, wandering street acts, work by over 100 artists to peruse and all at the cost of nothing.

Human beings have an innate need to believe in something. We are capable of achieving things, great things, things well beyond our means, if only we believe that it is possible. Conversely, we can be drawn into some of the most reprehensible behavior mankind is capable of by belief.

If there’s one thing Birmingham has proven it knows how to do well these days, it’s vote. I’m not talking about the various elections that keep rearing their heads, turn-out is still woefully low for those occasions. I am, of course, referring to our uncanny ability to vote in winners of reality talent competitions on television.

Birmingham was born out of iron. "The Magic City", so called because it sprang up out of nothing, seemingly over-night, fueled by the fertilizer of convenient and strategic location to industrial necessities.

When you’re an aspiring actor trying to make it in New York, any role is a good role. After countless hours waiting in line for cattle-call auditions, only to be told you aren’t going to be seen after all, you would take anything, any “Third Moron from the Left”, space-filler of a role.

I’m a baseball fan. Let me clarify. I’m a baseball fanatic. I root for the Yankees, a quality which endears me to few, but not because I like to win. I really like to win, actually, but I root for the Yankees because I rediscovered my love for baseball in Yankee stadium after a long and bitter divorce with the sport. I grew up a Phillies fan, listening to games on the radio with my dad and travelling to old Veterans Stadium once a year to get a first-hand look at the grass. When Major League Baseball struck in August of 1994 I was so angry I stopped following it. Until, that is, I made the happy mistake of moving to New York. New York is a baseball town, and I couldn’t live there long without absorbing a little of the old game in some way.

Hello Birmingham. Nice to formally meet you! I’ve been lurking in the background at the paper for a while now, getting our new website ready and contributing an article or a photograph every once and a while, but it’s nice to take the final steps into editorship.

When I was 12, I spent the summer traveling up and down the east coast with my family performing a street theatre piece based on the poetry of Carl Sandburg called Rootabega Stories. It was a grueling task, baking in the withering heat of late July while your father gave you notes about your prat falls. Still, I wouldn’t trade those long hours for anything you could give me. In a life spent in pursuit of creative fulfillment, those early days on the road stand out as a golden period. It was easier to be free with family, to imagine fully, to make brazen and fearless fools of each other and ourselves.

Matthew Mayfield is obsessed with freedom. He admits it himself, and you only have to look at the twisted vein of his history to see that the man has been constantly reinventing himself as a means of survival. He escaped the rigid confines of college for the fever dreams of promised rock stardom.

We’ve been through a lot in this city. Hell, I moved here a little under three years ago, and I’ve already witnessed my fair share of tabloid-worthy shenanigans and soul-crushing defeats, and that’s n