Your Downtown Mobile New Year’s Eve 2018 Guide: MoonPie Drop, Venue Parties and Sister Sledge

New Year’s Eve lands on a Monday this year, but downtown Mobile businesses plan to stay open well past normal hours as revelers ring in 2019 in LoDa. From bar parties to the MoonPie drop itself, here is what’s on tap for December 31, 2018.

Bar Parties Across Downtown

Alchemy Tavern, the independent mainstay at 7 S. Joachim St., opens its doors at 9 p.m. with a $5 cover and entertainment stacked in every corner: karaoke kicks off downstairs at 10 p.m., Mobile band Yesterday Tomorrow plays emo and scene covers on the upstairs stage, and everyone gathers for a High Life toast at midnight. Pool, video games, foosball and skee-ball are on hand between sets. The venue has long been one of the anchors of the LoDa entertainment district, a stretch of Lower Dauphin Street where bars, restaurants and music rooms sit within a few blocks of one another, making it easy for partygoers to walk between stops rather than drive on one of the year’s heaviest nights for impaired driving.

The Blind Mule at 57 N. Claiborne St. goes all-in on original music with a New Year’s Eve Rock n’ Roll Show beginning at 10 p.m. (doors 9 p.m., $5 cover). The Attic lineup features The Shunnarahs, Scaepers Papers, Hibachi Stranglers and The James Jeffery Experience, while a Rocket to Nowhere Dance Party runs with DJs Cliccbait, Scantron and Hot Lobster. The Blind Mule sits just off the heart of LoDa, close enough to Bienville Square that guests can step out and join the street crowds for the Midnight 2019 MoonPie Drop without moving their cars.

Budget celebrants can plant themselves at Hayley’s Bar, 278 Dauphin St., where the annual NYE Bash brings free champagne, no dress code, no door charge and an extended happy hour until 10 p.m. — think $2 PBR and Natty Light, $3.50 Abita beers, $4 Fireball and a menu of $3 shot specials. The party runs until 6 a.m. Hayley’s has been a fixture of the Dauphin Street bar scene for decades, and its no-frills approach has made the annual bash a standby for longtime locals who prefer a neighborhood bar atmosphere to a ticketed event.

Live music fans have another option at The Merry Widow, 51 S. Conception St., where Flynt Flossy and Turquoise Jeep perform with Blow House Brass Band. Doors open at 9 p.m., music starts at 10 p.m., and day-of tickets run $15. The Merry Widow has built its reputation on bringing touring acts of every stripe through downtown Mobile, and a brass band closing out the year is a fittingly Gulf Coast way to send off 2018.

MoonPie Over Mobile

The free public celebration around Bienville Square packs its own full schedule. Food trucks roll out at 8 p.m. alongside the Alabama Bicentennial Resolution Wall and courtyard music by David Brinston. At 8:30 comes the cutting of the world’s largest MoonPie at the Renaissance Riverview Plaza Hotel, followed by a 9 p.m. second line parade led by the Port City Second Liners. Mayor Sandy Stimpson and county officials take the stage during the evening program as the crowd builds toward the countdown. The second line tradition — a parade rooted in New Orleans jazz funerals in which a lead procession is followed by anyone who wants to join — has become a signature element of Mobile’s public celebrations, reflecting the port city’s deep cultural ties to its neighbor down the bay.

The centerpiece of the night is the 600-pound electronic MoonPie that descends at midnight from atop the 15-story RSA Trustmark Building at the corner of St. Francis and Royal streets, accompanied by fireworks over the downtown skyline. The drop has become Mobile’s answer to the ball drop in Times Square, and it plays on the city’s claim as the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the United States, a tradition dating to the early 18th century. MoonPies — the marshmallow-filled sandwich treats long tossed from floats by masked riders — are the natural totem for a city that has thrown the snack by the ton every Carnival season for decades. At midnight, crowds typically toss thousands of the real thing into the streets around the square, sugar and marshmallow dusting the pavement until cleanup crews arrive in the morning.

Because the MoonPie Over Mobile street party is free and open to the public, families with young children mix with the late-night bar crowd, and many attendees make an evening of the whole schedule: dinner from the food trucks, the giant MoonPie cutting, the second line, then a spot along Royal Street or near Bienville Square for the countdown. Police typically close streets around the square and the drop site to vehicle traffic in the evening hours, and officers with the Mobile Police Department patrol the crowds on foot and horseback.

Getting Around on the Big Night

Downtown workers and residents should expect street closures and detours around Bienville Square, Royal Street and Lower Dauphin from late afternoon through the overnight hours. Guests coming from West Mobile, Tillman’s Corner or across the bay are encouraged to carpool or use a rideshare, and anyone who does drink should plan a sober ride home. The city’s holiday message year after year is the same: the bars are pouring, the square is packed, and the safest way to enjoy both is to leave the keys behind. Anyone staying late should note that several downtown venues keep the party going well past the traditional midnight toast, so early-morning dining and taxi stands fill up quickly once the fireworks end.

A Gulf Coast New Year’s Tradition

Mobile’s MoonPie celebration is part of a broader Gulf Coast tradition of ringing in the new year with objects that mean something locally. Pensacola drops a pelican, and New Orleans drops fleur-de-lis and an oversized gumbo pot in the French Quarter, while smaller towns across south Alabama and the Mississippi Gulf Coast stage their own fireworks displays and street parties. The shared approach reflects the region’s habit of turning New Year’s Eve into a street festival rather than a television event — crowds in the open air, local bands on temporary stages, and food that doubles as regional identity.

The 2018 edition carries extra weight because of the state’s bicentennial. Alabama marked 200 years of statehood on Dec. 14, 2018, and the Bicentennial Resolution Wall at Bienville Square is part of a yearlong commemoration that included a traveling exhibit, county heritage books and a closing celebration in Montgomery. For Mobile, the oldest city in the state, the connection is a point of pride: the city was founded in 1702 by French colonists at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River before moving to its present site in 1711, making it more than a century older than the state itself.

The Port City Second Liners and other brass acts that anchor the evening also represent the city’s musical lineage. Mobile’s Congo Valley and Toulminville neighborhoods produced generations of jazz and blues players, and the city’s Carnival associations have sponsored brass bands since the 19th century. Hearing a second line wind through Bienville Square on New Year’s Eve places the modern party directly in that lineage.

What’s Open and What to Expect

Beyond the named venues, most LoDa bars and restaurants plan extended hours for the holiday, and several Dauphin Street establishments host their own DJs or cover bands without official ticketing. Revelers should expect cover charges at the larger parties, cash-only lines at some bars, and dense crowds on the sidewalks between Bienville Square and the intersection of Dauphin and Royal after 10 p.m. Temperatures for the evening were forecast in the seasonably cool range for the Gulf Coast, meaning light jackets rather than winter coats, but attendees coming from the MoonPie cutting at the hotel ballroom should be prepared for a walk of several blocks between venues.

For families, the early hours are the friendliest window: the food trucks open at 8 p.m., the MoonPie cutting happens at 8:30, and the second line steps off at 9, all well before the crowd peaks. Parents who want the full experience with young children in tow often watch the fireworks and the MoonPie descent from spots near the Renaissance Riverview Plaza or along Government Street, where sightlines are good and the press of the crowd eases.

As midnight approaches, the schedule funnels everyone toward the same place. The karaoke singers at Alchemy pause mid-chorus, the DJs at the Blind Mule’s dance party cut the music, the champagne corks pop at Hayley’s, and the crowd in Bienville Square counts down together as the giant MoonPie makes its descent. Then 2019 arrives in Mobile the way most years do on the Gulf Coast — with brass in the streets, sugar in the air and a Tuesday morning recovery for everyone who stayed until the end.