The Port City’s Biggest Drop Yet
Downtown Mobile is putting the finishing touches on its New Year’s Eve celebration, with city officials promising the largest MoonPie Over Mobile bash yet as the Port City prepares to ring in 2013. The free, family-friendly event has grown into one of the region’s signature holiday traditions, drawing thousands to Bienville Square and the surrounding blocks each Dec. 31. This year’s lineup includes a Mardi Gras-style parade, live music on three stages, a laser light show and a fireworks finale timed to the giant lighted MoonPie’s descent at midnight.
Legendary Tuskegee-born group the Commodores, known for hits including “Easy” and “Brick House,” are set to headline the concert portion of the evening. The band’s roots run deep in Alabama soil, formed by students at Tuskegee Institute who went on to become one of the most successful funk and soul acts of their era. Booking a group of that stature gives the free public concert a headline act most cities would charge admission to hear.
City spokesperson Barbara Drummond said the celebration has become a point of civic pride, giving Mobile a national moment in the spotlight as the giant MoonPie is hoisted and lowered from a downtown building in a nod to the ball drop in New York’s Times Square. She said the event is broadcast to viewers well beyond south Alabama, with dozens of cities across the country expected to tune in as the confetti falls at the stroke of midnight, another touch organizers borrowed directly from New York’s celebration.
“It’s New Year’s Eve in Mobile, Alabama,” Drummond said, adding that organizers wanted this year’s show to top every MoonPie Drop that came before it.
A Tradition With a Twist
The MoonPie itself is an import with a homegrown following. The marshmallow-and-graham sandwich cake was created at a Chattanooga bakery, but Mobile adopted it as an unofficial city emblem decades ago through its Carnival season, where MoonPies are tossed from floats to parading crowds each winter. Lowering a giant lighted one over downtown each New Year’s Eve ties the city’s biggest single-night party directly to its most beloved seasonal tradition.
Bienville Square, the park at the center of the festivities, is named for Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, the French colonial founder of Mobile. The square has hosted generations of public gatherings, from political rallies to music festivals, and its old live oaks and fountain make it a natural stage for a crowd celebrating in the mild coastal winter. The surrounding blocks of Royal and Dauphin streets fill with families, street vendors and revelers as midnight approaches.
The Mardi Gras-style parade adds a distinctly Mobile signature to the night. Mobile lays claim to the oldest Carnival celebration in the United States, with organized mystic societies parading in the city decades before New Orleans staged its first, and the New Year’s Eve parade borrows that pageantry of floats, throws and marching bands for a family-friendly warm-up to the midnight drop.
The music lineup spreads across three stages so the crowds never crowd each other. Headliners hold the main stage near the square, while local bands and school groups rotate through the satellite stages along the surrounding streets, giving the evening the feel of a festival rather than a single concert. Food vendors and family activity zones fill the gaps between, and organizers stage the night so the energy builds steadily from the early evening toward the laser show and the midnight fireworks finale.
Downtown Museums Open Their Doors
Beyond the concert and fireworks, three of downtown Mobile’s most popular attractions are opening their doors free of charge for the holiday. The Gulf Coast Exploreum plans to stay open until 10 p.m., giving visitors a chance to explore its first-floor exhibits, including the hands-on MyBodyworks anatomy exhibit and a range of interactive science displays. The science center, steps from Bienville Square, regularly draws school groups from across the Gulf Coast, and a free evening gives families who might not otherwise visit a reason to walk in.
“We don’t get to be free to the public very often, so here’s your opportunity to see what we have to offer,” said Gretchen Jaspering, executive director of the Gulf Coast Exploreum.
A short walk away, the History Museum of Mobile will also waive admission, letting visitors browse exhibits on the city’s history as well as the museum’s “Up, Up and Away” exhibit, which traces American history through comic books. The museum occupies the Old City Hall complex on Royal Street, a National Historic Landmark building that has anchored the downtown historic district since the mid-nineteenth century.
“Comic books are a mirror on modern American history,” said Scotty Kirkland, the museum’s curator of history. “So you can really see the way Americans have changed over time, the way they see themselves in a larger world represented through comic books.”
The comic book exhibit gives younger visitors an entry point into the museum that a row of artifacts rarely provides, pairing Superman and wartime propaganda with the Depression, the space race and the social changes of the twentieth century. Curators say that popular-culture exhibitions tend to draw first-time museum visitors, which is exactly the audience a free New Year’s Eve admission brings through the door.
Mardi Gras Season Waits Just Ahead
Once the parade passes and the fireworks fade, revelers can continue the celebration at the Mobile Carnival Museum, where exhibits on the city’s Mardi Gras traditions offer a preview of the Carnival season that follows close behind New Year’s festivities in the Port City. The museum’s galleries of gowns, scepters, float designs and memorabilia explain the mystic society culture that locals grow up inside and that visitors find endlessly curious. On the calendar, Twelfth Night and the start of the season sit only days beyond the New Year, making the museum a natural bridge between the two holidays.
For out-of-town guests, the museum stop often answers the first question they ask about Mobile: why Mardi Gras here? The exhibits walk visitors through the city’s claim as the birthplace of American Carnival, from the rowdy early nineteenth-century street celebrations to the structured mystic societies that still stage parades and balls each winter. Locals, meanwhile, use the free admission night as a chance to show their children the costumes and history behind the parades they already watch from the sidewalk.
An Economic Boost With the Confetti
The free-admission night also doubles as a showcase for downtown itself. Every year the celebration introduces residents from across Mobile County to restaurants, museums and public spaces they might otherwise pass by, and downtown merchants count the evening among their strongest of the holiday season. Organizers have deliberately built the schedule so the crowds flow between the square, the museums and the stages rather than staying in one place.
Hotels within walking distance of the festivities typically fill their rooms for the night, as visitors from New Orleans, Pensacola and the Baldwin County beaches come in for an urban New Year’s Eve without the price of a big-city trip. The broadcast Drummond described adds a marketing dividend that is harder to measure but real: every cutaway shot of the lighted MoonPie hanging over downtown puts Mobile’s skyline in front of viewers who may never have considered the city as a destination.
City leaders are encouraging families to make a full evening of it downtown, combining the free museum visits with the concert, parade and MoonPie Drop for what has become an annual can’t-miss event for Mobile County residents and visitors alike. The free admissions run during the early evening hours, letting families with young children tour the exhibits before the crowds thicken toward midnight.
Planning and Logistics for a Big Night
Staging the event takes months of coordination among city departments. Police plan street closures and traffic patterns around the square, fire and EMS crews position along the parade route, and public works teams handle everything from stage placement to the cleanup that follows. The fireworks finale and the descending MoonPie both require safety zones that keep the crowds at a distance while preserving sightlines from the square and surrounding rooftops.
Organizers also watch the weather, a familiar concern for a December event on the Gulf Coast, where the forecast can swing from warm and clear to stormy within a day. The three-stage layout and the museum admissions give revelers indoor options if the night turns wet, a resilience built into the plan after years of hosting outdoor celebrations on the Gulf.
For a city that measures its year by celebrations, the MoonPie Over Mobile bash has become a fixture that bridges the holidays and the Carnival season that follows. By midnight, the laser show and the fireworks will have lit the sky over Bienville Square, the Commodores will have played, the comic books and anatomy exhibits will have educated a few thousand early-evening visitors, and the giant MoonPie will rest at the bottom of its rigging until next year, when Mobile will try, once again, to top itself.