This year’s Garlic Festival included farewells and new
beginnings.
A farewell to the festival late co-founder, Val Filice, and an
emotional adieu to Sha-Boom, the popular oldies cover band that
ended its 25-year run at the festival Sunday.
Sha-Boom’s final concerts and complete list.
photo gallery.
For more videos, photos and stories, scroll to the bottom of this story.
This year’s Garlic Festival included farewells and new beginnings.
A farewell to the festival late co-founder, Val Filice, and an emotional adieu to Sha-Boom, the popular oldies cover band that ended its 25-year run at the festival Sunday.
At the same time, the first-annual Battle of the Bands competition captured hundreds of beer-sipping, garlic-fries-munching people and made one San Benito High School outfit $1,000 richer. Three vampires also showed up for the first time in recent memory.
The women from San Francisco intrigued pointing passersby Sunday as they sauntered around in black outfits, sporting plastic fangs and red make-up dripping from their ruby lips.
“The garlic ice cream was delicious,” Katie Lerin said in a Transylvanian accent. “It’s easy to eat with these fangs, too.”
By mid-afternoon Sunday, the garlic ice cream line stretched more than 200 feet – right about the time the Herbie bobble-head dolls sold out.
“I told them they should of ordered more,” Gerry Foisey said with a chuckle as he nudged Garlic Festival Association Executive Director Brian Bowe in the side while taking a break in the shade. Foisey was dressed in the iconic garlic bulb costume and sun hat for which he has been dubbed Mr. Garlic. This year’s bobble-head doll was made in his likeness.
It was not long before three girls with Budweiser cups sidled up to him for a picture in the mercantile tent, where tables lay half bare.
“This is why he keeps volunteering. And for the record, he did not tell us to order more,” Bowe said jokingly in reference to the 2,500 dolls that went like hot cakes throughout the weekend. Bowe and Garlic Festival President Ed Struzik reported Monday afternoon that 107,553 people attended the event this year, up nearly 8 percent over last year, they said.
“We were thrilled this year, even surprised,” Struzik said. “Surprising in these economic times of $4.50-a-gallon gasoline.”
Struzik and Bowe attributed the higher attendance and increased revenues to great weather, Sha-Boom’s last show, the Battle of the Bands, extensive media coverage and the popular cooking competition known as the Garlic Showdown.
Before the gates opened, though, Gourmet Alley was renamed Val’s Kitchen in honor of the festival’s co-founder. The dedication was part of an elaborate pre-opening ceremony, which started with a human chain that stretching from the flaming metallic garlic bulb near the entrance to the pyro chef area of Gourmet Alley, about 200 feet away. To the sound of The Doors’ “Light My Fire” played on accordion, Struzik climbed a ladder and dipped a torch into the bulb’s flame.
When it was pyro chef Bob Filice’s turn to hold the torch, he and the other chefs unveiled a poster dedicating Gourmet Alley to his father, Val Filice. On the sepia-toned poster, Val Filice laughs, stirring a giant pot with a long wooden ore.
“Now it’s called Val’s Kitchen,” Gourmet Alley volunteer Ken Fry said. “May the flames be with you.”
Soon the calamari was flaming, the tunes blaring and garlic ice cream was everywhere – in mouths and in trash cans.
Taking a breather from the visible heat later in the weekend, Bob Filice reminisced about the 29 years he spent at the side of his father and the time the two spent perfecting their famous scampi recipe with a not-so-secret ingredient: lobster butter sauce made with clam juice.
“Dad and I have been doing this since year one,” he said, sporting his signature tri-colored hat. “He was a great big teddy bear.”
Despite a few minor hiccups – such as a peppersteak shortage early Friday afternoon – the first day went off without a hitch, festival staff reported. Fridays are always a little hectic while volunteers and staff polish up on the skills that have grown rusty after a year, said Joann Kessler, the Garlic Festival Association’s assistant executive director.
“There’s always things to be ironed out on a Friday,” she said, “but nothing that couldn’t be handled.”
Proper handling was necessary when it came to this year’s garlic top-cutting contest, where four employees at Christopher Ranch faced off in a hay circle for five minutes, snipping the tops off bulbs as fast as they could without nipping a finger. Francisco Ramirez took the crown all three days, winning $150 after besting his opponents with 68.25 pounds of bulbs Sunday.
After Bill Christopher announced Ramirez’s win, he gave the go-ahead for the eager crowd to storm the circle and collect what bulbs remained. Mayhem ensued, and Ari Molofsky and his nephew, Jacob Molofsky, emerged from the crowd holding about a dozen bulbs that they dumped onto the lap of Ari Molofsky’s wife, Anna Molofsky.
“Oh, man, it’s all about getting involved,” Ari Molofsky said with bated breath as he wiped his brow. “This is pretty impressive, I have to say.”
So were Steven Albaranes and Florence Palaruan’s exotic butterfly art. The merchants sold vibrant butterflies from South America, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea preserved and encased in clear plastic boxes.
“Only exotics,” said Albaranes, who has been coming to the Garlic Festival since 1990 to pedal his wall decorations for a few hundred dollars each. “We love the Gilroy Garlic Festival because hundreds of thousands of people come here … and the garlic sausages were delicious.”
“The fried calamari. The scampi,” said Anomie Mustari, who came down from San Francisco and sat in the shade with her grandson from Hawaii, Benjahman Mustari and her boyfriend, James Robinson.
“Oohh, the scampi,” hummed Robinson. “The food’s first, then the entertainment,” Robinson said.
In the background, the voice of Kate Russell rang.
The Australian singer, sporting blonde-auburn hair, wrapped up her 20-song set with autographs and plenty of “You’re beautiful” compliments coming from adoring middle-aged men.
To keep all the food, drink and entertainment running as smoothly as possible, a cadre of volunteers had been busying themselves since dawn Friday.
Two freshmen garlic festival patrons included recently hired Gilroy Police Department Chief Denise Turner and City Administrator Tom Haglund, who chuckled about the fun-feeling atmosphere compared to the tedium of city council meetings.
“The most impressive thing is all the volunteer effort,” said Haglund, who came from Hanford earlier this year. GPD Capt. Kurt Svardal gave him and Turner – who came from the Seattle area – a briefing-slash-overview of the festival Friday morning.
“It’s amazing,” Turner said. “I haven’t had breakfast, so I’m looking forward to a peppersteak sandwich.”
Throughout Saturday and Sunday mornings, cars crawled along U.S. 101. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper all the way back to Cochrane Road in Morgan Hill, with drivers tooting their horns at each other while baking in the late-morning sun.
Emergency medics transported at least six patients from the park, said Mario Bena, chairman of emergency services, but final numbers won’t be known for a week or so, he said. Most emergency personnel reported dealing with minor bee and hornet stings, cardiac and diabetic problems and heat exhaustion.
Law enforcement officers arrested 20 people throughout the weekend for public intoxication, two for fighting in public and three for resisting a peace officer. Police escorted another 50 people for disorderly conduct, according to GPD Sgt. John Sheedy.
Under a different kind of heat Friday afternoon, Gourmet Alley volunteer Kathy Doughty chopped basil with her daughter, Laura Doughty, but they were not exactly sure what for.
“Someone just comes and takes the bucket every now and then,” Laura Doughty said, giggling with her mother. Kathy Doughty has been volunteering for five years, she said, and the mother-daughter duo were giving their time for the Gilroy High School Choir.
“I love working with my daughter, but standing for hours and hours is hard.” Kathy Doughty said.
Whatever the reason for coming, there is one thing that holds the festival all together, according to Scott LeBlanc, a Gilroyan who works for TaTech Steel, which set up the columns for the sun screens protecting hungry patrons from the sun.
“What makes the Garlic Festival so special is all the volunteers that make it all happen,” LeBlanc said.
“And the beer,” added his girlfriend, Deneene Lundberg.
Festival by the numbers:
– 107,553 – Total attendance
– 3.5 tons – amount of garlic consumed
– 91 – average weekend temperature
– 3 – number of vampires
– 0 – parking complaints
– 10,618 – boats of garlic fries sold
– $500,000 – Gourmet Alley revenue
Source: Garlic Festival Association and volunteers
