Mardi Gras in Mobile

It was the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life. The 10-inch Big Pig Pizza was a carnivore’s delight, its thick doughy base topped with pepperoni, salami, ham, and bacon, and washed down with a glass or two of Californian red. It tasted all the better because I hadn’t expected to be eating it at all.

It was our first night at Mobile’s Mardi Gras and we’d arrived in the afternoon to a hotel lobby that looked like the entrance to Dante’s Inferno. The hotel itself was superb, but it seemed that half the world was checking in at the same time. Travellers with huge cases, teenagers in baseball caps and partygoers in outrageous outfits all besieged the lifts. We were too late for lunch, too early for supper, and frazzled after a five-hour drive.

Mardi Gras in Mobile: The Oldest in the USA

The small city of Mobile in Alabama has the oldest Mardi Gras in the United States. It began in 1703, one year after the city was founded, and the locals get a bit miffed that New Orleans down the coast collars all the publicity. In many ways Mobile is New Orleans in miniature. It’s an attractive port city with a French heritage, some buildings still have the ornate iron balconies from which revellers watch the parades, there are numerous elegant houses to visit, great food, and the people love to party.

I was convinced that when the parade ended that night, every eating place in town would be jam-packed and we would die of starvation in the gutters, hosed away in the dawn with the unclaimed Mardi Gras beads and the squashed moon pies. Instead we strolled into Picklefish, ordered a pizza and re-lived the night’s events.

Mobile had been parading and partying for a fortnight before we even got there, and there were still five nights to go. The parades are put on by various arcane organisations, whose origins often go back for centuries, and we had already missed the Maids of Mirth, the Daughters of Venus, and the Order of Polka Dots. Never mind, we were behind the barriers with a good spot in plenty of time for that night’s parade, the Mystic Striper Society.

Due to start at 6.30, but taking ages to wind through the blocked-off streets, we were entertained by the vendors selling t-shirts and other goodies (‘Hey mister, how much is your T-shirt with Who let the dogs out?‘), and the good-natured cops. They passed along the route on horseback, in cars, or on immense motorcycles that rumbled like jet planes. Looking like Joe Cool, they stared out from behind their shades, leather boots shining but often an incongruous rose tucked into their windshield, or strings of beads tied around their flashing lamps. They were tough and they knew it, and that was just the women.

Eventually there’s a flurry of activity and a cop roars by, clearing the hawkers from the path. Then six cops on motorbikes, riding slowly, circling round, and doing figures-of-eight, heralding the parade. Then here come the floats. There are masked pirates on purple galleons, cowboys, cowgirls, tramps and dolphins, floozies and fire-breathing dragons.

On the back of one truck a rock band thumps into view, ‘The Lyve Band’, banging out the blues. There are reggae bands, school marching bands, baton-twirlers and cheerleaders, young black girls dancing in ways that would get them thrown out of the average British disco.

And everywhere there are beads, being thrown from the trucks by the masked and costumed members of the Mystic Striper Society. Up to the balconies they hurtle, down low to the kids, over your head to the back of the crowd, or hurled straight at you if you catch someone’s eye. On one occasion a necklace of beads sailed through the air and landed straight around my neck, without me even knowing about it. From about twenty yards away the thrower beamed and gave me a thumbs-up. Hey mister, gimme some beads, the yell goes up, right in my ear, Gimme some red beads, I want some red beads!

It may only take about twenty minutes for the parade to pass by, unless you cut through to the next street and watch it all over again, but those twenty minutes are an exhilarating and exhausting mix of fun, noise, colour, screams… and usually a neck-load of beads.

And this happens as much as three times a day, almost every day for nearly three weeks. But after the parade’s gone by, instead of the streets being filled with drinking revellers and young girls flashing their breasts, the image I had from New Orleans, Mobile’s streets are a less raucous affair. Most watchers simply drive into town for the fun, clogging up the roads and car parks, and then drive home again afterwards.

For the rest of us, it’s a case of choosing whether to eat and drink in Wintzell’s Oyster House (twelve for $6.95: We open your oysters fresh and cook your food to your taste, so sometimes it takes a little longer. If you can’t wait, we’ll be happy to mail it to you), or maybe in Picklefish, where they make the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten in my life.

PS Sadly producing the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten wasn’t good enough, as Picklefish recently closed.

More Information

See the website of Visit Mobile.

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