Every month, the return of the LoDa ArtWalk brings a specific kind of energy straight to the historic blocks of downtown Mobile. That regular sidewalk traffic sets the exact backdrop for the monthly poetry open mic readings that City of Mobile Poet Laureate Alex Jerome Lofton, also known as Huggy Bear da Poet, keeps running over at Great Day Latte. Backed by the Mobile Arts Council, this recurring room keeps a steady microphone active for neighborhood storytellers to pull up and share their work .
For this month’s session, the space brings in long-time Mobile native DeAndre Buck also known as Eterniti or Mr. Everlasting, to step up to the microphone as the evening’s featured performer.
Buck relies on a southern style combined with intellectual, complex lyrics that lean heavily on wordplay. He lays that philosophy out clearly in his own poetry lines, telling listeners that his words are meant to last: “I want to stay on your mind so much, you people gon’ get sick of me, even in your sleep I bet you dream the name Eterniti…”
Great Day Latte ArtWalk Open Mic Showcase
After inclement weather and city-wide hurricane cancellations forced organizers to postpone the original date, the showcase has been officially rescheduled for this Friday, October 16, 2026. The open mic night takes place at Great Day Latte on 10 S. Conception Street in downtown Mobile, aligning directly with the return of the monthly ArtWalk.
Lofton is running the room for the evening, setting the stage for Buck’s spotlight feature before opening up the floor for the neighborhood open mic poetry reading. After the recent storms briefly stalled downtown’s creative calendar, Lofton made it clear that the momentum wasn’t stopping, telling the neighborhood, “We rescheduled because of the hurricane, but we back… pull up on us.”
Doors at Great Day Latte open up and the showcase officially kicks off at 6:30 P.M.
DeAndre Buck Independent Blueprint
The creative connection between the host and the featured artist goes back much further than a single Friday night coffee shop stage. Both Buck and Lofton are founding elements of the Powerlines Poetry Collective, a local troupe that has spent over a decade curating independent spaces for underground talent to speak freely across the Gulf Coast without anyone telling them what to say.
Buck fell in love with writing back in elementary school, putting together short stories and poems before he ever started turning his words into songs in middle school at age 13. By the time he was 15, he was already writing and recording professionally under an independent label called Warrior Child Records, but a two-year delay on his debut album stalled out his early radio momentum. That multi-year setback taught the veteran lyricist a direct lesson about the dangers of losing control over his own catalog, pushing him to take things into his own hands and launch his own independent banner, Mer$iless Myndz Productions, back in 2009.
He spent the next fifteen years handling his own production and distribution just to protect his specific style, dropping independent projects that mix hip-hop and spoken word from Unrestricted in 2010 all the way to his 2024 collection Wanderland.
