The Snoopy Hunt: A Day in Santa Rosa

We came to Santa Rosa to check on a rumor. Charles Schulz drew Snoopy here for the back half of his life, and the city is said to be full of Snoopy statues, hiding on corners and in doorways. So the weekend had one assignment. We went treasure hunting.

Counting Snoopys#

First, the arithmetic. For three summers starting in 2005 the city put fiberglass Peanuts statues out on its streets: 55 Charlie Browns the first year, 76 Woodstocks the second, 95 Snoopys the third, about two hundred once the later ones are counted in. Then most of them went to auction, and the money became art scholarships. The version we heard was that more than a hundred are still around.

Walking the streets on a Saturday afternoon almost twenty years later, the real number is a lot thinner.

A fiberglass Lucy statue in a yellow flowered dress, arms open between two junipers

Day jobs#

Back on the street the finds picked up, and a pattern emerged: the ones that stayed all have jobs.

A Woodstock statue in a garrison cap and patched work shirt, in a nest by the curb

A white Snoopy statue with a painted curled mustache

Charlie Brown stands with his hand on Snoopy’s head, back to the park, watching the traffic: doorman for the visitor center, naturally.

The bronze Charlie Brown with his hand on Snoopy's head, facing the street

Some corners come in pairs: a Lucy in pink playing tourist, a camera slung on her back, and across the crosswalk, Woodstock is clearly a driver this time. One more Snoopy in a teen-club shirt stood outside with a basketball. That job looks a little easier.

A pink Lucy with a camera on her back, a Woodstock in an engineer's cap across the street

A Snoopy statue in a teen-club shirt, holding a basketball by a bike rack

After five#

Half the afternoon went by fast, and the hunting got tiring. Between two statues we turned into an antiques shop.

An antique shop window with a Budweiser neon sign, an antique car parked above the cabinets

The records inside are filed by year. Next to them sat a cardboard box, full of what used to be somebody’s life. They say being forgotten is the real death, and looking at an old lady’s color photograph I still pushed the thought back down… hopefully the photo just got sold to the shop in one sweep, by some devoted declutterer in the middle of a move.

Record bins with year tabs marked 1940 through 1948

A box of old photographs, a print of two costumed chipmunks on top

Out of the shop, we kept wandering. After five the streets mostly hand themselves over to the evening shift, downtown is pretty much down to its restaurants, and everyone still out is either waiting to get off work or already on the way home.

An evening sidewalk under awnings, a man walking home with groceries

A red ENTER sign in the foreground, a man sitting with his bicycle across the street

A silver Marcie statue reading a book on a bench under redwoods

A porter statue with a locomotive painted on his chest, on the evening sidewalk

Satellite dishes on a rooftop against a deep blue sky

A white armchair in a dark room, cut by a slash of light

The museum and the rink#

Sunday belonged to the Schulz Museum.

A Snoopy asleep on a doghouse painted with music notes

A Linus statue in a crossword smock, blanket worn as a cape, holding a giant pencil

A silver Charlie Brown, shirt painted as a brick wall, scaffolding around him

A Woodstock in a hard hat climbing the scaffold stairs

A porthole in a cartoon spaceship wall, a Snoopy floating inside the bubble

Across the parking lot is the ice arena Schulz built himself in 1969. The café in its lobby still keeps his table reserved.

A whipped cream drink in a Warm Puppy Café cup, chef Snoopy printed on it

A white Snoopy statue doing the happy dance on a black pedestal

A statue in a captain's jersey and yellow hockey helmet, a puck at his feet

A Woodstock statue in referee stripes, sitting in a birdbath

A Snoopy statue in a top hat and tails, a small Woodstock on the hat brim, comic murals on the windows behind

Before leaving we went back to the café to pack some bread for the road. Looking up: over the café, Snoopy has been put into stained glass, the way older towns do it with saints. I thought about it for a moment. Snoopy does deserve to be treated that way.

A round stained glass window of Snoopy on his doghouse