'Tardy Gras', strip club vaccines, lifeguard shortage: News

‘Tardy Gras’, strip club vaccines, lifeguard shortage: News from around our 50 states
From USA TODAY Network and wire reports
© Gerald Herbert/AP
A trinket is thrown from a float during a parade in Mobile, Ala., dubbed “Tardy Gras,” to compensate for canceled Mardi Gras festivities because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alabama 
Mobile: Thousands of joyful revelers, many without masks, competed for plastic beads and trinkets tossed from floats as Alabama’s port city threw a Mardi Gras-style parade Friday night, its first since Carnival celebrations were scrapped earlier this year by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and several deep along sidewalks, shouting and cheering as nearly 30 floats and several high school marching bands crossed a stretch of downtown Mobile. With COVID-19 hospitalizations and vaccinations ebbing, many partied with abandon. It was definitely not a Mardi Gras parade: Those can only be held during Mardi Gras, the period before Lent. But it felt a lot like one, which was a big part of the goal after months of lockdowns, illness, deaths and face masks. James L. Hurst said he was jubilant to be out partying after a difficult year. Many had no face coverings amid an upbeat mood sweeping the crowd on a balmy spring night with clear skies. Some took part in small house parties near the parade staging point. Others on the route eagerly held up hands, aiming to catch cheap beaded necklaces tossed by riders atop the floats. “We didn’t get a chance to celebrate our Mardi Gras last year because it was canceled because of the COVID-19,” Hurst told the Associated Press. “It feels great to be out! We have our vaccines and we are ready to go!”

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