Looking at the flea market image on Coliseum Boulevard, you would never suspect that long ago this modest strip-mall was East Montgomery’s answer to the mighty Normandale Shopping Center on the South side of town. Birmingham’s Loveman’s Department Store anchored Normandale, so the Montgomery Fair, our homegrown version, became the anchor at Eastbrook.  The Bear Brothers developed Eastbrook, but the Bear clan was basically builders, and no match for the Aronov juggernaut that developed Normandale.  But look again; today Eastbrook is a quaint and vibrant destination center, while poor Normandale is little more than a vast ghost town, a perpetual blight on its neighborhood.

-Charles Humphries