Mardi Gras: ‘It’s not just about parades and balls. It’s the heart of the city’
Updated Feb 13, 2021;
Posted Feb 12, 2021
On a downtown Mobile street corner, Fat Heavy waves at passing cars, sharing a little bit of the city s Mardi Gras spirit.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
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At one end of Dauphin Street on this extremely wet Thursday night, convicts and referees mill around in Moe’s Original Bar B Que. At the other, a guy named Fat Heavy sits on a corner in a sequined costume, waving at cars.
There isn’t much to see on the nine-block walk from Washington Avenue to Joachim Street. Some of the restaurants and bars in between have a few customers. Others are empty, maître d’s and bartenders as poised and motionless as figures in paintings. It’s hard to make the walk without thinking about how different things should be, on the Thursday before Fat Tuesday, with people crowding these sidewalks, flocking in and out of these businesses before and