GILROY
– Combine four new driving lanes on U.S. 101, an extra-hyped
silver-anniversary celebration and the perpetual prayers to the
Garlic Gods for good weather, and organizers believe this year’s
25th Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival could be the largest ever.
GILROY – Combine four new driving lanes on U.S. 101, an extra-hyped silver-anniversary celebration and the perpetual prayers to the Garlic Gods for good weather, and organizers believe this year’s 25th Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival could be the largest ever.
So, even with a slumping economy, a nationwide cutback in vacation travel, high gas prices and below-average attendance numbers at last weekend’s 24th annual Mushroom Mardi Gras Festival in Morgan Hill, Gilroy garlic heads remain optimistic.
“There are a lot of things going on right now that you have to consider – especially with the economy – but I’d say the weather will still be our biggest (attendance) factor,” said Richard Nicholls, executive director of the Garlic Festival Association. “The Garlic Festival isn’t exactly a terrorist target, and although the economy is an issue, we draw two-thirds of our customers from the nine-county Bay Area, so we think people vacationing closer to home could actually play in our favor. Hopefully some of those people will say ‘forget Disneyland this year, and let’s drive down to the Garlic Festival.’ ”
Estimating that 125,000 to 130,000 garlic lovers will flock to the stinking rose mecca July 25, 26 and 27, Garlic Festival Committee members are set to order enough beef, scampi, sausage, bread, refreshments and, of course, garlic to fill the bellies of anyone who decides to make the trip to the internationally-famed event.
Banking on its silver anniversary along with the recent breaking of the longtime U.S. 101 bottleneck between San Jose and Morgan Hill that deterred many Bay Area guests from heading to South County, Garlic Festival organizers have embarked on their most aggressive advertising campaign ever this year, Nicholls said.
New arrivals to this year’s festival such as an Oriental chicken stir fry dish, customized silver anniversary wine glasses and an updated edition of the popular first edition Garlic Festival cookbook will team with last year’s favorites such as the Herbie bobblehead doll and the extreme sports exhibition Got Milk? in an effort to attract crowds in excess of the 125,409 people who attended the three-day event in 2002, Nicholls said.
Throughout last year’s festival, those people consumed roughly 15,000 pepper steak sandwiches, 32,000 servings of garlic bread, 10,000 of mushrooms, 9,000 of bruschetta and 8,500 of scampi. Sales of sausage sandwiches and calamari each hovered in the 6,000 range.
