Entertainment
Snooty celebrates his 69th birthday with the usual bash and a brand-new mascot
Snooty is turning 69 this week.
Bradenton’s most famous resident was born on July 21, 1948. Harry Truman was president, Spam was food and the big hit song that month was “Woody Wood-Pecker” by Kay Kyser.
He’s called the South Florida Museum home for almost his entire life. He was named “Baby” when he came here as a 1-year-old from his birthplace in Miami, at a facility called Miami Aquarium and Tackle Company. Legend has it that he was re-named “Baby Snoot” in homage to Fanny Brice’s popular radio show of the era, “Baby Snooks.” As he got older, he became known as simply Snooty.
As usual, the South Florida Museum will hold a weekend celebration of Snooty’s birthday. This year it will fall just one day after Snooty’s actual birth date.
Snooty’s 69th Birthday Bash & Wildlife Festival is scheduled for 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Saturday. It’ll go on as scheduled rain or shine in the Spanish Plaza, in the museum’s north parking lot (by the Manatee River) and in front of the museum on 10th Street West. All the outside stuff is free, and admission to the museum is reduced all day.
You can visit with Snooty if you go inside (and look at museum exhibits and check out the Bishop Planetarium as well), but you can get a look at him from the festival, through a picture window in his aquarium.
The Birthday Bash & Wildlife Festival features children’s games and art activities and free cookies and drinks for kids. There are also educational displays and activities to help kids and adults learn more about Florida’s environment and wildlife.
There will be something new, or at least new-ish, at Snooty’s Birthday Bash this year. On Monday, Foster Swartz, an 18-year-old Sarasota resident, landed a job as the official Snooty mascot. So he’ll be at the bash in his new Snooty costume, and he’ll probably be sweltering in the heat even more than the rest of us.
Swartz was one of three finalists for the job, and on Monday they all auditioned in the planetarium. Swartz impressed museum officials with a poem he wrote about why he would make the best Snooty mascot, and he introduced the “Snooty Shuffle,” a way of walking that’s meant to simulate what a manatee would look like if a manatee could walk.
Swartz is not the first Snooty mascot but it has been several years since the museum has named an official mascot, and Swartz will be sporting a brand-new Snooty suit.
Details: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. July 22, South Florida Museum, 201 10th St. W., Bradenton. Free. Museum, admission $9 for adults, $8 for seniors (65 and over), $7 children ages 4-12. Children younger than age 4 free with a paying adult. 941-746-4131, southfloridamuseum.org.
Marty Clear: 941-708-7919, @martinclear
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