From Fat Tuesday 2020 to Feb. 11, 2022 is 717 days. That’s 717 days without a Mardi Gras parade in downtown Mobile. You know it’s going to be a big deal when the Conde Cavaliers roll on Friday evening.
Yes, there have been a handful of Mardi Gras-style parades, like the one held last May to celebrate the commissioning of the Austal-built U.S.S. Mobile. Don’t even start. They’re not the same. People go home after those.
The hiatus makes for an interesting Rip Van Winkle effect. Mardi Gras is nothing more than a big messy collection of interlocking traditions, and change comes slow. The same can be said of Mobile. From year to year, Carnival celebrations in Mobile feel much the same.
But 717 days of pandemic is time for a lot of things to change, and a lot have. Much more so than in other years, visitors making their annual pilgrimages downtown may notice a different look and feel here and there.
Here are a few of the most eye-catching changes.
What Goes Around: The intersection of Canal and Water streets, the traditional starting point for the Joe Cain Classic 5k and the southwest corner of Route A, is now a roundabout. We’d like to think that at least a few Joe Cain Day runners, marchers and floats will make the full circle around it, the way the bicyclists on the Wednesday night LoDa Ride usually do, for an appropriately chaotic Joe Cain Day. Construction started in August 2020 and the city opened it on March 29, 2021.
Road construction along Broad Street in downtown…
