Gilroy – Andrea Alvarado and Anna Clark haven’t missed a single Garlic Festival for 15 years, and they weren’t about to make an exception this summer.
But the sisters, who were among the first of tens of thousands to spill into Christmas Hill Park for the 28th edition of the city’s marquee event, couldn’t quite pinpoint the one thing that keeps them coming back.
“The food,” Clark said.
“I came for the calamari and the Herbies,” Alvarado cut in, referring to the festival favorite bobblehead souvenir. She and her sister were each carting off five Herbies.
“You have to come here for the food,” Alvarado stressed. “And the weather. And the crowd. And the music…”
On all counts, the sisters were not disappointed this weekend, as perfect weather greeted the steady throngs that filled the grounds at Christmas Hill Park during the three-day event. Attendance and revenues slipped a bit compared to last year’s banner numbers, organizers said, but the good news seemed to be that everything came off without a hitch.
“I’m wiped out but ecstatic,” festival president Micki Pirozzoli said Sunday night, as she and dozens of event organizers kicked back and relaxed for the first time in weeks. “I’m most excited about the great weather and how happy everyone seemed to be, from the volunteers to the vendors to the visitors.”
She reminded other organizers a few minutes later of the importance of their efforts to sell food, direct traffic, pick up trash and perform countless other jobs that make the festival a success year after year.
“Anybody’s that’s asked me how I do this, I say, “I don’t do this. We do this,'” Pirozzoli said. “We’re truly a family.”
The debut of Garlic Idol – a singing competition modeled on the hit television show American Idol – drew hundreds of onlookers and dozens of aspiring superstars, who competed for a grand prize of 1,000 gallons of gasoline. Jaime Lindow, a 17-year-old from Campbell, emerged as the first Garlic Idol after weeks of winnowing the field through pre-dawn radio tryouts and a weekend of live competition.
“I just wanted to thank my grandparents for getting me up out of bed and to that Friday audition,” Lindow said to the crowd before her winning rendition of Celine Dion’s “Seduce Me.” “I would be nothing without their support.”
While the songs of Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias and other pop stars emanated from the Garlic Idol tent, the hopping sounds of 50s rock and roll had hundreds jumping out of their seats to dance in the Christmas Hill amphitheater. Year after year, cover band Shaboom manages to pack the amphitheater tiers and whip up throngs of faithful fans into a dancing frenzy.
“There’s always good music playing, but this is the real deal,” said Neil Gregor, who was wearing a garlic-bulb cap as he danced with long-time friends. Gregor has never missed a Garlic Festival, even though he lives in Arizona now.
“I’ve been to every single one in my whole life,” he said. “I come back every year. The Garlic Festival is the best way to come back and reunite with everyone.”
While ideal weather contributed to a festive mood, it failed to attract crowds as large as last year’s banner year. Attendance ran on the up side of 90,000 according to first-year festival Executive Director Brian Bowe said, adding that ticket sales numbers were still being reviewed and that new accounting practices were put into place this year in each sales booth.
Nearly 130,000 packed into the festival last summer, despite temperatures approaching triple digits. And though revenues cooled off by 13.5 percent compared to last year, they $1.42 million expected to come is in line with the festival’s five-year average.
“We were very pleased with where the revenue wound up,” Bowe said, “and that will translate into benefits for local charities.”
Lower attendance figures didn’t stop garlicky products from flying off the displays at the Garlic Mercantile tents this weekend, which backed up with lines of more than 100 people on opening morning despite the cash-only express lane for Herbie collectors.
The festival sold out the majority of the 2750 bobblehead-dolls on Friday, said the festival’s retail chair Patty Sebald, and kept about 50 on hand for sale at festival headquarters in the future.
“On Saturday, people cleaned me out of the fancy food items – the dipping sauces, the garlic-flavored olive oils, the rubs,” Sebald said. “They bought like crazy – it was like a feeding frenzy. We sold 95 percent of all of our inventory.”
A single item – a $2 packet of Garlic Barbecue rub – drew Larry and Charolette Walker from Antioch.
“It was so great that I actually had to come down here to find it,” Walker said.
The Garlic Mercantile wasn’t the only place that did a steady business.
Lines ran 40-people deep throughout the weekend at a booth where Michael A. Jackson was selling French-fried artichokes for $6 and artichoke-stuffed crab and shrimp for $8. It was the first Garlic Festival for Jackson, who said Gilroy’s celebration of the stinking bulb tops the other festivals he’s traveled to across the country.
“Excellent. Absolutely fabulous,” Jackson said. “I do a lot of festivals and it’s the best show that I’ve been to.”
Jackson, who said he planned to return next year, credited the festival for its professionalism and high level of planning.
Though a veteran of large-scale trade shows, festival director Bowe said he too was surprised by many of the 4,000-plus volunteers who make the event a success.
“One of the things that astonished me are the people who came from hundreds, thousands of miles away, not to go to the festival, but to work at it,” he said. “I’ve never been involved in any situation where so many dedicated people keep coming back year after year.”
Serdar Tumgoren, Senior Staff Writer, writes for South Valley Newspapers. Reach him at 847-7109 or
st*******@gi************.com
