Spotlight is on Gilroy as volunteers prepare for 28th annual
Garlic Festival at Christmas Hill Park
Gilroy – Other than a bit of disappearing fence, no major snags cropped up as volunteers pitched scores of tents, artists spread out their displays and hundreds of cooks prepped truckloads of pepper steak and pasta con pesto for the 28th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.
“Things are falling into place,” said Garlic Festival Association director Brian Bowe. “It’s just about organizing things now.”
Hundreds of artists, food vendors and volunteers have erected tents, spread hay bails throughout the park and unloaded crates of soda and other food items for the three-day event which started Friday, July 28. In addition to Gourmet Alley, the festival’s main food artery where traditional favorites like calamari and scampi are served up, more than 65 food vendors will encircle Christmas Hill Park and the adjacent ranch site. The booths include a barbecue grill serving up turkey drumsticks the size of lawn gnomes and a Cajun kitchen with more modest helpings of fried alligator and rattlesnake.
Once stuffed, visitors can venture through huddles of tents on either side of the festival. More than 105 arts and crafts vendors signed on for this year’s event.
The stress factor was slightly higher in Gourmet Alley, the festival’s main food artery and the biggest single volunteer undertaking year after year. The assembly-line style operation that churns out plates packed with garlic bread, pasta, pepper steak and seafood requires a quarter of the festival’s 4,000 volunteers.
“We’re trying new stuff this year like toasting buns for the pepper steak,” said Alan Heinzen, co-chair of the committee that organizes Gourmet Alley. “Incorporating the new things with the old things, getting the volunteers geared up – it’s a battle. The alley is a huge job.”
But the job got a little easier this year with the help of Ready Pack and Taylor Farms, produce companies in Salinas that donated pre-diced peppers and other vegetables. In past years, volunteers had to chop the produce themselves. Meanwhile, Gilroy High School supplied pots and pans and administrators at Rod Kelley Elementary School let volunteers start thawing calamari and shrimp at the school. At day’s end, crates of produce, meat and pasta were cooling in refrigerated trailers on loan from Christopher Ranch.
“You can stress all you want, but it all comes together,” said Ken Fry, the other Gourmet Alley co-chair. “You always have a bottle of salt missing or some ketchup. You just gotta out and get some more.”
“A lot of the popular stuff is back, but we’ve expanded our food offerings,” said Diane Stephens, manager of the mercantile operation. The list of new goods include garlic rubs for meats and seafood and more garlicky dipping oils. The hottest seller of the festival was not yet on display.
Compared to the controlled chaos of Gourmet Alley, the Garlic Mercantile tent was an oasis of calm.
“Herbie is here. He’s hiding,” Stephens said, referring to the souvenir garlic-head bobble doll that whips up an early morning shopping frenzy each year.
Festival-goers eager to nab an armload of Herbies – this year selling for $12 a piece, up $2 from last year – have traditionally arrived as early as 6am to claim spots on line closest to the entry gates. But this year, bobblehead enthusiasts could get elbowed out of the way by aspiring superstars on a beeline for the Garlic Idol tent, where the first 50 arrivals will get one last chance to compete in a contest inspired by the hit television show American Idol.
In past years, gates often opened on a haphazard schedule, with some people trickling in before the official start time of 10am. Festival director Bowe said that organizers are going to firm up the schedule this year to ensure that all gates open exactly on time.
Unlike last year’s karaoke contestants, this year’s Garlic Idol singers will probably not have to sing in temperatures nearing the triple digits. Forecasts predict daytime highs over the weekend in the low- to mid-80s.
Still, festival organizers are not taking any chances after last week’s heat-induced power outages in South County and other parts of the Bay Area. Organizers have purchased four trailer-sized generators to ensure that food and music keep operating through the weekend.
If temperatures do rise, the members of one of Gilroy’s newest volunteer groups will help visitors stay cool. The Sunrise Rotary Club, a group of early risers who formed a weekly morning session for one of Gilroy’s most popular volunteer organizations, have set up two mist tents where people can escape the heat. Last year, people packed into the tents like sardines as the temperature crept well into the 90s. The Rotarians are also offering individualized options to stay cool in the form of handheld fans, starting at $5, and a fan/mister combo for $25.
Meanwhile, the 2006 Takko Garlic Lady from Gilroy’s Japanese Sister City Takko-Machi, Japan, exchanged smiles and greetings with Miss Gilroy Garlic Festival Sheena Torres at a reception in the Portuguese Hall Thursday evening. The gathering was the start of the weekend’s festivities celebrating garlic and friendships with other garlic-celebrating cities.
Micki Pirozzoli, 2006 Garlic Festival president, fresh from the final setup at the festival grounds, said all systems are go.
Serdar Tumgoren, Senior Staff Writer, covers City Hall for The Dispatch. Reach him at 847-7109 or st*******@gi************.com.
