16th Annual Orange Beach Seafood Festival and Car Show draws record crowd

by Ken Grimes, City of Orange Beach Community News

The 16th Annual Orange Beach Seafood Festival was held last Saturday for the Orange Beach Sports Association. Breezy but near perfect weather helped attract what could be a record crowd to the event as just under 1,000 plates were sold and about 90 vintage cars and hot rods showed up.

Proceeds from this one day event benefit the youth baseball and softball programs in the Orange Beach area along with supporting other community needs.

The annual festival is formerly known as the Orange Beach Red Snapper Festival which began many years ago as charter fishermen from Orange Beach would go out and catch the fish in the off season, primarily red snapper back then, to be cooked and sold in support of the youth sports at a time when the City of Orange Beach had few facilities, fewer teams and much smaller population.

A big congrats goes out to Robert Stuart, Bradley Shivers, Shannon McCurdy, Jeff Silvers and the many volunteers that made the Orange Beach Seafood Festival another great success. Fryers, prep workers, grillers, servers and ticket sellers are all just a part along with the silent auction and of course the player registration tent.

Tunes from Brent Burns, Top Hat and Jackie and other locals added to the mix of the day. Oddly enough under the big entertainment tent there were plenty of seats to eat as people backed their chairs out of the shade and into the sun for some warm rays to cool tunes.

The biggest kudos this year in my opinion is to Denny and Debby Busbee who organized the “Big Car Show” at the festival. No doubt the car show has grown for several years but their hard work and planning paid off with plenty of nice rides to look at and tons of prizes for the owners.

Great job and thanks to the many sponsors of the car show and the festival itself. A last observation was the increase in sales compared to 2007 for the Girl Scout cookies sold by the Brownie Troops. If you missed the sale, stop by J&M Tackle and pick up a few boxes anytime.

To see a slideshow of the event log onto www.OrangeBeach.ws and click Seafood Festival Photos thanks to Mr. Ken Cooper.

Even though the Mardi Gras festivities are over for the year, you can still stroll down memory lane with a slideshow of this year’s parades by clicking on www.CityOfOrangeBeach.com then watch the show on the Home Page of the site. Feel free to right click and save the ones you like.