Frigid Fat Tuesday opens on deserted downtown Mobile
Updated Feb 16, 2021;
Posted Feb 16, 2021
Mobile s Mardi Gras Park stands empty late in the morning of Fat Tuesday 2021. The city had planned to display parade floats in the park for public viewing, but unexpected weather conditions caused them to drop the plan.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com
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At 10:30 a.m. on Fat Tuesday, normally the time the first of many Mardi Gras parades would roll, downtown Mobile presented a surreal scene: Police maintained a perimeter around a huge pedestrian zone while the streets remained virtually deserted, with a few scattered snowflakes drifting down now and then.
‘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.
The Incan hid the parade-less disappointment, choosing to extoll the virtues of the organization’s historical and strategic placement on the Mardi Gras calendar.
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
Police Chief Lawrence Battiste said he has concerns about his officers exposed to the COVID-19 virus during a Mardi Gras Day event in downtown Mobile. The city is planning to close off city streets downtown, but there are also eight block parties scheduled to take place on Fat Tuesday. At the same time, New Orleans is closing bars and prohibiting to-go drinking from Friday to Tuesday.