Photobomber conducts daily raids on unsuspecting beachgoers

On the Friday after Easter in 2022, about 10 minutes before sunset, Larry Frankel was out for a run along Siesta Key Beach when an impulse overcame him. He’d passed groups of people snapping photos on the sand and thought, “Let’s jump in front of some cameras.”

So, he did. His first victims were two women and a guy holding a can of Landshark beer. They smiled into the lens as the wiry, tanned geezer with long fly-away hair and a sleeve tattoo on his right arm crouched behind them flashing a manic grin. 

A bomber was born. 

The Siesta Photobomber, to be precise. Since then, Frankel has become something of a beach celebrity. With a knack for self-promotion, he has built his avocation into a legitimate brand. The “bomber” wears brightly colored shorts and sneakers, matched by muscle shirts plastered with the Siesta Photobomber logo. When we spoke in August, Frankel said he had posted some 2,200 photos and reels on Instagram and amassed nearly 3,000 followers.

When bombing, Frankel does not take his own pictures. The “bombees” do, which makes sense since he’s busy bombing. To make it easy for victims, his shirts bear a QR code that leads directly to his IG account, where they can direct-message pics and follow him. Several times a week, Frankel posts a bunch of photos and reels, which are sequences of images set to music.

Why, you might be wondering, does a 65-year-old transplant from the Philadelphia area, who still works in real estate, spend an hour before sunset running on the water’s edge keeping an eye out for folks snapping pics so he can hustle over and pop into the frame? Because it’s fun. Because he meets a lot of people from all over the world. Because they get a kick out of it — most of the time. Because he can spread a feel-good vibe on a two-and-half mile stretch of sand. 

“I drive 20 minutes from my apartment to the beach every day,” Frankel says in a thick Philly accent, “and I still get excited knowing that I can do my [photobombing] thing on the best beach in America.”

Add “brand ambassador” to his job description.

Justin Piccillo, Frankel’s beach pal who occasionally joins in on a raid, admires the energy the bomber exudes. “He’s a charismatic guy, with an unbelievable outlook on life,” Piccillo says. “The guy’s always smiling. He’s a hard person not to like.”

Larry Frankel’s been a lot of things in life: a U.S. Marine, the owner of a Philadelphia-area courier service, a Realtor, a stay-at-home dad who moonlighted as a security guard for the local high school. Currently, he spends a week a month as a “professional picker,” road-tripping around the eastern half of the country hitting auctions and estate sales to find stuff to buy and sell.

Photo by Lori Sax

Back in his youth, Frankel drove rich folks’ cars from Philly to Florida, mostly to the east coast. One trip, though, took him to Longboat Key. “I caught the sunsets and realized that the west coast was it,” he recalls. “I fell in love with Sarasota — for 30 years.” 

A beach bum in waiting, if you will. After a divorce and retirement, Frankel finally migrated, arriving in Sarasota on March 24, 2020, just as Covid 19 was tightening its grip. “There weren’t a lot of people on the beach,” he says. Frankel went anyway. Once an avid runner, he had shut it down after having a hip replacement about a decade ago. “The first day I went to Siesta Key I said, ‘To hell with this,’ and started running again,” he recalls.

Two and a half years later, the bombing business is booming. Frankel is not in it for the dough, although he could probably monetize his social media following if he chose to. “I’m not starved for cash,” he says. “I don’t do it for my bank account.” (One caveat: He wears New Balance shoes and clothes, and regularly sends content to the company via social media, in hopes of landing a sponsorship deal, even if it’s just for swag.)

Not all of Frankel’s bombing raids have been met with smiles, hugs and IG sign-ups. He’s been hit with a few F-bombs and had a young guy whiz a football by his head. (It missed, and he picked up the ball and threw it into the Gulf.) “One time, I bombed this wedding group, and a guy — it was obviously the father who had paid for the photo shoot — booted me in the butt,” Frankel recounts. “I looked at him and said, ‘I am not a table, so don’t put your foot on me. That’s your warning.’”

But such unpleasant encounters are rare. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred times I get a positive reaction,” he asserts. Frankel doesn’t just bomb and run. He hangs around and schmoozes. And sometimes he doesn’t even have to bother bombing. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for people to approach and ask to get their picture taken with him.