The Homewood Star Volume 4 | Issue 9 | December 2014
Holiday event guide
neighborly news & entertainment for Homewood
Light up the night
Find a schedule of your favorite December events in this issue.
See page A14
A place for the world to see
Christmas Parade traditions return to downtown Homewood A Homewood resident is spearheading efforts to bring the 2021 World Games to Birmingham. Learn more inside.
See page B1
INSIDE Sponsors ...................A2 City .............................A4 Food.............................A7 Business ....................A8 Community ...............B3 School House ...........B6 Sports .......................B10 Calendar ................. B18 Opinion .................... B19
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By MADOLINE MARKHAM A living nativity glides down 18th Street each December. A generator provides light for the Bethlehem cityscape, manger and plywood camel. Last year, the music wouldn’t work right, so the children playing the nativity characters sang “Away in a Manger” as they processed in front of the
Our Lady of Sorrows students dress up for a nativity scene each year in the Homewood Christmas Parade. This year’s event is set for Tuesday, Dec. 9. Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
library, down 18th Street and over to SoHo. Older elementary students from Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School play Mary and Joseph while younger students dress as angels, camels, lambs, donkeys and cows — about 50 students in all. Three wise men walk behind while junior high students walk along next to the float to pass out candy canes. “It becomes such a huge production,” said
Wendy Whatley, an OLS parent who has headed up the float for the past four years. “We want to keep it in the sense of the true poverty of the original nativity, but it’s hard to do. We dressed up a little girl as the north star one year, and we said, ‘That’s the best use of light.’” Four years ago, the Homewood Christmas
See PARADE | page A23
New brewery looks to call Central Avenue home By SYDNEY CROMWELL Walkability: that’s what Joe Pilleteri likes about Homewood. He first noticed it while eating at Little Donkey with his family, watching people walk to and from the area stores. “I just thought that’s awesome. You don’t see that much,” Pilleteri said. Pilleteri had been planning Red Hills Brewing Company, a craft brewery and pub, for more than three years with the help of eight other investors. After seeing the foot traffic in the Crescent Avenue area, he decided that it would be the perfect place for Red Hills. “That’s one of the few things Homewood was missing — a craft brewery,” Pilleteri said. Red Hills is still working its way through the city’s approval process, but Pilleteri’s ideal
See BREWERY | page A23
A new brewery could open in the current Alabama Printing space next to Steel City Pops on Central Avenue. Photo by Madoline Markham.