Heads and tales: Trending down

cop Seedy, seedy Southside: A troubling trend continues, as Birmingham faces more bad news on the crime front. Based on stats from the first quarters of 2005 and 2006, rapes have nearly tripled on Southside, from eight to 22 incidents.
• Southside Sees Increase In Sex Crimes [NBC13]

Drive for Five: Operation New Birmingham wants to re-renew Five Points South with residential/retail/office complexes. Already, seven locations are potential sites for the development. Jeff Tenner, president of the merchants association and owner of Soca Clothing, said, “I would like to see everything filled up, all the street level space occupied and doing well with more people and more activity.” Build all the new spaces you want — if you don’t curb crime, ain’t no one comin’ to play.
• Five Points South renewal targeted [Birmingham News]

Sound check: City Stages has shuffled stages again. This time, the singer-songwriter venue My People.com Stage will be back in a familiar location, Fifth and 20th. But it will be facing the Miller Lite Stage, at Fifth and 18th. This isn’t the first time Stages officials have aimed the loudest stage at one of the quietest. Guess which stage drowns out the other one? It’ll cost you $35 to find out; three-day passes are currently on sale at AmSouth and Books-A-Million through June 4 at the discount rate. Also, the June festival has teamed with churches to bring in more gospel acts.

Update: Festival organizers decided to move the Miller Lite Stage one block over for better crowd management. And, they’re adding video screens to Miller and the Coca-Cola Classic Stage.
• City Stages’ songwriters stage back at first site [Birmingham News]

Yay us!: Our (pal) Miss Brooks isn’t just a Birmingham News staffer, but a blogger, too. You’d know if you read it in City Scene, which apparently couldn’t quite find a dozen things to do this week and padded it out with staff hobbies. Check it out next week, when the nice lady in Circulation holds a yard sale and May’s top display ad salesperson reveals his Schnauzer just had puppies!!
• 12 to do [Birmingham News]

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