Masked Observer: Reveling in the light, banishing the gloom
Updated Feb 17, 2021;
Posted Feb 17, 2021
King Braxton Hicks spreads his mystic splendor at the Krewe de Palmetto block party in downtown Mobile on Feb. 13, 2021.
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Editor’s note:
The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the local
In the South, mamas always have the last word.
It’s no wonder that for Mardi Gras to happen, even with the volume turned way, way down, it would require the festive framework of maternal domain. Grappling with this invisible pestilence, the Mother of the Mystics and the Mother of Invention must have held a tête-à-tête, for the morsels that emerged from their Carnival kitchen filled the season’s final weekend with optimism and happiness.
Hundreds honor man credited as modern Mardi Gras founder
“Happy Joe Cain Day we love it down here.”
Decades later and in the midst of a pandemic, that tradition is still very much alive!
“We miss Mardi Gras this year so we just wanted to have fun and enjoy what we could.”
In 2021 the celebration centered around Mobile’s Mardi Gras icon was not nearly a fraction of the tens of thousands of people drawn to downtown Mobile each year on Joe Cain Day, but the people have not forgotten how to party!
Between midtown and downtown, up to 1,500 people came out to celebrate.
‘It’s a sad, sad day’: Joe Cain Day traditions continue in Mobile during pandemic
Updated Feb 15, 2021;
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Mayim Bloom walked over with a bouquet of dead roses in her hand and dropped them on a grave marker festooned with Mardi Gras beads and coins Sunday morning.
She might not be one of Cain’s “Merry Widows,” but the 4-year-old did her part to keep the spirit of Joe Cain alive during the traditional day that honors the late Confederate solider. Cain, more than 150 years ago, is credited with reviving Mardi Gras in Mobile following the Civil War and he has been celebrated on the Sunday before Fat Tuesday since the late 1960s.
‘Do the right thing’: Alabama’s top health officer concerned about Mobile Mardi Gras risk
Updated Feb 13, 2021;
Posted Feb 12, 2021
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Mardi Gras Day in Mobile represents a concern for Alabama’s leading public health officer who implored revelers on Friday to “do the right thing” and avoid large crowds.
Dr. Scott Harris, the state’s health officer, said he sees a large gathering for Mardi Gras having the potential of causing a COVID-19 super spreader event one year after the 2020 Carnival activities in New Orleans were blamed for creating an early coronavirus hot spot that led to a surge in cases and deaths in the Big Easy.
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