GILROY
– With only two weeks to go, the 26th Annual Gilroy Garlic
Festival Association directors and committee chairs gathered
Wednesday night to exchange assurances that everything is on track
for the July 23-25 celebration.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – With only two weeks to go, the 26th Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival Association directors and committee chairs gathered Wednesday night to exchange assurances that everything is on track for the July 23-25 celebration.
The festival association’s board room was buzzing with chatter from some of the 54 volunteers responsible for organizing Gilroy’s premier event that draws 120,000 visitors each year.
From festival President John Zekanoski, who opened the meeting by playing a new festival radio promotion, to Garlic Queen Alika Spencer, the directors, advisers, committee chairs and co-chairs relished in the home stretch of Garlic Festival planning.
“It’s crunch time,” Zekanoski said in an interview Thursday. “About this time, the excitement level just builds and builds and builds.”
At this point in July, most of the “i”s are dotted “t”s crossed, as Zekanoski says, and organizers are making sure all the details are squared away. But the excitement in the air was tangible Wednesday as each committee representative briefly reported on the status of the festival.
The first major festival-related activity is the 2004 Reek Run, both a 5K or 10K walk/run. The race starts at 8 a.m. Saturday at Bonfante Gardens.
The Garlic City Fun Run car show, from 3:30 to 10 p.m. downtown, also is Saturday.
“The Fun Run is 60 hours away,” said Pam Tognetti, chair for the classic car show sponsored by South Valley Street Rods and Historic Downtown Gilroy.
At the show, 800 people will have the chance to purchase one of the new Garlic Festival dishes, penne pasta con pesto – the recipe is perfected, Tognetti said – from a mini Gourmet Alley. The garlic bulb will be lit in a ceremony, as well.
A major promotion campaign kicks off next week. Media Coordinator Peter Ciccarelli said country music radio station KRTY (95.3 FM, Los Gatos) will broadcast with the burning garlic bulb next week and offer Garlic Festival prize packages.
“The garlic bulb will be at a different Bay Area location every day next week and KRTY will broadcast from that location,” Zekanoski said.
Prizes range from a pack of four tickets to a grand prize including tickets, a gift certificate for Gourmet Alley combination plates, a bobblehead doll and Garlic Godfather Pasta Sauce.
Most of the essential Garlic Festival supplies are already in: food, tickets, retail items, even sod to cover Christmas Hill Park.
Connie Sanchez and Patty Sebald, retail chairs, pointed to large cardboard boxes stacked around the rectangular room. The numerous boxes represented only a portion of the thousands of shirts, aprons, wine glasses, bobbleheads and more that they and volunteers priced over the past three Saturdays.
“Usually the Saturday before the Garlic Festival, we will finish,” Sanchez said. “It takes that long to price everything.”
They also inspected 3,500 Herbie bobbleheads that will likely sell out over the festival’s three days. This year, Herbie sports the festival T-shirt, bearing the second-place poster image of a frying pan flame-up.
Most of the committees are in the homestretch of organizing volunteers and their festival game plans. Garlic with stems attached is ready to be braided, said Elaine Bonino, garlic braiding chair.
The parking committee is making sure weeds are trimmed and roads are cut in the grassy parking lots to help traffic flow efficiently.
“We have a couple new parking lot ideas … to help things flow,” Zekanoski said.
To help emergency response flow, chair Danny Martin reminded volunteers to use a park map divided into four quadrants with grid points when specifying an emergency’s location.
“We’re laying out a pattern of response so that if something happens and we need to get to someone, we have a sort of ‘plan of attack’ to send a couple (emergency responders), rather than having a whole group descend on them,” Martin said.
Festival hospitality crews – the “ask me” volunteers posted throughout the park and at all entrances and exits – will attend training sessions this Saturday and next week.
“We’re just trying to extend Gilroy hospitality to people who come to the festival,” said Dick Nicholls, executive director of the Garlic Festival Association.
As Garlic Festival president, Zekanoski said it is the festival’s 4,000 volunteers who make planning fun. They want to be there, he said, which makes all the difference.
“I look at it as a cheerleading, guiding role to keep everything together, keep people running,” Zekanoski said. “But the nuts and bolts are the people who do the work – the association and the volunteers.”
