What do a hair band, an LPGA tournament and a giant Moon Pie have in common?

Alabama is sending BP cash to Mobile for all three.

After lobbying the state for weeks, Mobile is set to receive $1.35 million of the $65 million in direct aid that BP PLC has given Alabama to ease the economic and environmental damage caused by the summer oil spill.

Mayor Sam Jones said the money would go to local tourist draws.

The largest grants:

$600,000 for BayFest talent, including Motley Crue.

$350,000 for the Bell Micro Ladies Professional Golf Tournament.

$100,000 for the city’s New Year’s Eve and Moon Pie celebration.

The application calls for the remainder to be spent promoting attractions such as the Gulf Coast Exploreum, and the Senior Bowl and Gulf Coast Classic football games.

While beach condos in Baldwin County experienced huge summer vacancies, Mobile’s hotels enjoyed strong traffic, thanks to an influx of cleanup contractors and government officials.

But those filled beds masked a blow to the city’s tourism, according to Jones.

The Exploreum, for example, suffered its worst ever May and second-worst June in terms attendance, said spokeswoman Hela Sheth. “We definitely saw a huge drop-off, and it was unexpected because we were having a really good year until then,” she said.

BayFest was already in line to get $100,000 in BP money. The extra $600,000 boosted the talent budget from $1.5 million to about $2.1 million, said BayFest President Bobby Bostick, allowing him to go after more headline acts, particularly Motley Crue.

Best known for power rock and power drinking during the 1980s, Motley Crue cost the festival a half-million dollars in fees, staging and lodging, Bostwick said.

Earth Wind and Fire also was added to the roster thanks to the BP grant, Bostwick said.

Those bands command wide audiences, and fans will come from distant points to hear them, he said.

Bostwick and Jones said they had been after the state to award the city significant BP funding for weeks.

Mobile was largely passed over when the state doled out an earlier $15 million from BP to inject life into ailing coastal tourism.

BayFest’s first $100,000 came from that earlier grant, but the big recipient was Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism, formerly the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau.

That group was given $9.5 million for a series of concerts, according to Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Department of Tourism. A further $2.5 million went toward television commercials promoting beach tourism in general, he said.

Mobile events and attractions — BayFest, the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau and others — got a combined $645,000, according to Sentell’s reckoning.

That didn’t sit well with Jones, who said that the economic hub of the region deserved more consideration.

Of particular concern to Jones and Bostwick was the BP-funded concert series, which they saw as competition for BayFest.

The Baldwin concerts are set for late September and mid-October, bracketing BayFest weekend, Oct. 1-3.

A BayFest weekend ticket goes for $45, while several thousand of the Baldwin tickets are free or very inexpensive, Bostwick said.

Said Jones, “We don’t begrudge any of the money” given to Baldwin County. “All we are saying is, be fair.”

Both BayFest and the LPGA Bell Micro — the two big tickets on Mobile’s BP list — traditionally receive financial support from the city. BayFest is set to receive $243,000 in fiscal 2011, according to Jones’ proposed budget.

The mayor, though, said the BP money will replace, not add, to the city’s contribution to the Bell Micro, which has yet to be paid for this spring’s tournament.