WING AND FLY | Todd Dills | PARLIAMENT HOUSE IMPLOSION

WING and FLY

PARLIMENT HOUSE IMPLOSION
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I woke early this most recent rainy Sunday in Birmingham -- early with purpose. 6:45 a.m., armed with digital SLR and very strong coffee, I trudged up the litter-strewn stairwell in the 1920s-era parking garage that serves our building, the former Chamber of Commerce at 1st Ave. North and 19th Street, in pursuit of a 7th-floor clear vantage of the Parliament House hotel, six blocks due slightly southeast of our apartment. Built with an "infusion of Hollywood cash," as the Birmingham News (the reality: Doris Day was among the initial investors, don't ask me why), the Parliament House was a thing of glitz and glamour in its day, the early 60s. Built in the boxy, clean-lined style of the era, it had long since taken on a kitschy look, shuttled from inept management company to inept management company, and with the rest of the center city since the racial turmoil of the late 1960s and 1970s, been left to rot. The two years I've been here it was inhabited by the dispossessed -- squatters, etc., if 'twas inhabited at all.

The door to the roof was inexplicably locked, and it was 10 minutes to showtime, so I hurried back downstairs to our third-floor apartment, filled up on coffee, and posted up in the glorified alcove that serves as our back porch. A few seconds later, after seven or eight dynamite blasts, this is what happened to the Parliament House:

Parliament House

I'd never seen an implosion up close, much less from the comfort of my living room, and was struck with the absence of words I might have for it. The images tell the tale much better, I guess. It was a familiar feeling -- typical when confronted with horrific violence -- the trick of the best writing lies in finding those words. I've got work to do, clearly.

Susannah, my wife, was less than excited, overall, she'd seen the demolition of three high-rise projects on Chicago's south side years ago, this was old hat. It happens so quickly, she said. I'll forgive her, she was sleepy. I was, too.

But it did seem right, a demolition in Birmingham. It seemed sad, a little, but sad in a way that fit the nicely melancholy feeling any rainy day lends the bowl of the city center. Today, the winds were high, thunderstorms rolling in, and as the dust quickly blew straight toward the apartment, clouding every possible view for ten minutes, we returned to our rainy-day morning, warm, sleeping late, cats purring. . . .

021708

PAST WING & FLY:
*MEMORIAL, TWO
*THIS IS LIT: BEST OF 2006
*MEMORIAL
*WEEK OF HANKS
*CITY MAN
*STENCIL PIRATES
*FUCK ME
*HARVEY WASSERMAN AND THE STOLEN ELECTION
*DAVE ZIRIN'S EDGE OF SPORTS
*RIVERBEND
*TOTH
*WHALE
*X
*Z
*SMOKE
*NEXIUM
*EUREKA
*MENO
*HAMMOND
*PILSEN
*CANADA
*DAYTONA
*WESTERN AVENUE
*ZOO

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Todd Dills is the editor and publisher of THE2NDHAND, which brings you this neat sort of "editor's corner" or "letter from the..." or what have you, winged mightily by Mr. Dills -- who most certainly loves you, and love being the product of communication, maybe... -- and launched every other week, we hope, for your reading pleasure. E-mail Dills at will by clicking on that word, yes, back there. He loves to hear from you.

Books by Todd Dills:

Sons of the Rapture, a novel, Featherproof Books, 2006. Order via the publisher or via Amazon.

In Chicago Noir, the third in Akashic Books' acclaimed series of noir anthologies, Dills's "Arcadia" is featured.

ALL HANDS ON: A THE2NDHAND READER
edited by Todd Dills
w/ an Introduction by Jim Munroe
$12

Like placing your ear beside some kind of magical, future radio and listening to the shocking world of the strange and new.... ALL HANDS ON, an anthology of new work and old, features the best of the magazine and a look at what may stand as the underground lit world's most interesting contemporary writing. --Punk Planet

THE2NDHAND has been the most exciting literary vessel in Chicago, opening a comfortably padded room for the anecdotal fiction writers and the experimental tale-spinners to play together where no one will get hurt. Read through this collection of four years worth of stories, and you'll see the line between the two isn't as clear as all that. And in the way the strongest species survive, it would seem the cross-pollination that happened over the years has strengthened both sides. --PopMatters.com

Or mail a check for $12, made out to Elephant Rock Books, to THE2NDHAND, P.O. Box 479045, Chicago, IL 60647.

FOR WEEKS ABOVE THE UMBRELLA
2002, by Todd Dills
70 pages, saddle-stapled, $7

To order, mail a check made out to Todd Dills or carefully concealed cash to:

THE2NDHAND
c/o Todd Dills
1827 1st Ave. N #301
Birmingham, AL 35203

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