Raise your vote for the MoonPie drop in Mobile
MoonPie Over Mobile is celebrated New Year's Eve in Alabama's Port City. (Tad Denson/contributed)
Anyone who’s ever partied at the corner of St. Joseph and St. Francis streets on New Year’s Eve knows beach balls, sardines and conch shells have nothing on Mobile’s MoonPie Drop at midnight.
But let’s make it official.
Tracey Minkin, travel editor of Coastal Living magazine, threw down the gauntlet Monday when she asked readers to vote for their favorite of 13 uniquely coastal New Year’s Eve celebrations and determine where she will ring in 2016.
“See which one of these rad/fabulous celebrations is your favorite this year … and vote for the one I should go to this year, at the bottom of the post … because I will!” Minkin wrote, calling Mobile “Alabama’s charming and delightful Gulf city.”
The only Alabama-born event making the inaugural list is “MoonPie Over Mobile,” launched in 2008 with $9,000 in discretionary funds from Mobile City Councilman Fred Richardson. In its first outing, the uniquely Mobile celebration attracted about 15,000 revelers, a figure that quadrupled by 2014.
Though not actually made in the Port City, the marshmallow-cookie confections have become synonymous with Mobile’s Mardi Gras festivities as masked float riders fling them into throngs of anxious parade watchers during the annual pre-Lenten Carnival season. In turn, a 12-foot, 600-pound electronic MoonPie now descends majestically from atop the Retirement Systems of Alabama’s 34-story Trustmark skyrise on New Year’s Eve.
MoonPies are produced by Tennessee’s Chattanooga Bakery, which joins the Retirement Systems of Alabama, Austal USA and the city of Mobile as sponsors for the 2015 celebration.
“All eyes will be on Mobile this New Year’s Eve,” Richardson said. “The city of Mobile is proud to once again be a major sponsor of the New Year’s celebration, with both locals and visitors alike filling the streets of Mobile and the hotel rooms.”
Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson and Richardson are slated to make the first cut into the world’s largest, edible MoonPie, baked by Chattanooga Bakery, to kick off the festivities. Attendees are encouraged to decorate umbrellas to march in the second-line parade led by the historic Excelsior Band down to the main stage.
A 2015 bonus for pigskin fans afraid of missing the College Football Playoff games will be widescreens on the main stage.
The main event will feature R&B divas En Vogue.
“We are proud, on behalf of our 4,000 local employees at Austal, to again sponsor the main stage and bring great talent such as En Vogue to Mobile to celebrate the New Year,” Austal spokesman Craig Savage said.
The evening will end with a laser light show and fireworks.
Although exact economic impact figures are unavailable, Event Mobile Inc. President Carol Hunter reported to the Mobile City Council in January that the 2014 celebration attracted as many as 50,000 revelers near the main stage and another 10,000 patrons to nearby businesses, with downtown hotels reporting between 90 percent and 100 percent occupancy.
“Downtown Mobile is going to be the place to be this New Year’s Eve … and we expect the streets to be filled again,” Hunter said.
To learn more about Coastal Living’s contenders courtesy of Visit Mobile click here or here, and to cast your vote for MoonPie Over Mobile as the best New Year’s Eve celebration on the coast, click here.
Why a MoonPie?
Mobile is the home of the first Mardi Gras celebration in the United States, and the MoonPie is the favored “throw” of the hundreds of Mardi Gras maskers riding the floats during the extensive Mardi Gras parade season.
- MoonPies were first thrown from Mardi Gras floats in 1952.
- Today, Mobile consumes more than 4 million MoonPies annually, and has adopted the delicious treat as an informal emblem.
For the MoonPie Over Mobile celebration, this southern city has teamed up with Chattanooga Bakery, the maker of the iconic MoonPie marshmallow sandwich, to create a giant edible MoonPie at the Renaissance Mobile Riverview Plaza as the featured attraction for its New Year’s Eve celebration.
Source: Event Mobile Inc.
