Artists sought to create Jimmy Buffett statue

Artists sought to create Jimmy Buffett statue

The Mobile Arts Council is soliciting artists to submit proposals for a Jimmy Buffett statue to be placed in front of the National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico. Applications will be accepted until April 25. More info: mobilearts.org.
The statue will be unveiled in September of 2026 when an exhibit opens honoring the man who approved the very first Margaritaville in Gulf Shores in 1983. (Walgreen’s is there now.)
Buffett’s sister Lucy owns LuLu’s Restaurant in Gulf Shores. JB has played there as well as a few times at the Flora-Bama and at a free concert on Gulf Shores Public Beach featuring honorary Coral Reefer and fellow Mobilian Will Kimbrough.
Forbes placed Buffett’s net worth at $1 billion when he passed. But before the Margaretville retail store in Key West in 1985, the Margaritaville restaurant in that same hamlet in 1987, and a second restaurant in New Orleans in 1993, there was J.B’s Margaritaville in Gulf Shores. Jimmy confirmed that fact from the stage at that 2010 BP Concert at Gulf Shores Public Beach: “We’re coming home in a lot of ways here. A lot of people don’t know, if you study your history – it’s not even in Wikipedia – that the actual first Margaritaville was in Gulf Shores, Alabama before it was in Key West, Florida,’’ Buffett said. “Let’s just say we didn’t do as good here as we did eventually, but it was a learning process. Thank you everybody. You can put that up on Wikipedia or you can just take it and throw it in the Gulf. I don’t care