I just wanted to say I worked two days at the Garlic Festival
and agree with your cheers for the new system with volunteers given
the tickets for Gourmet Alley food.
Fare Went Well
Dear Red Phone:
I just wanted to say I worked two days at the Garlic Festival and agree with your cheers for the new system with volunteers given the tickets for Gourmet Alley food. It worked well and I got more food than I could eat and had a really great time.
Red Phone:
Dear Alley Cat:
Thanks for volunteering your opinion. Those marinated mushrooms in Gourmet Alley were divine, were they not?
Missed the spot
Dear Red Phone:
I would like to give jeers to doing away with hospitality area for volunteers at the Garlic Festival. Even though the food was good in Gourmet Alley and the concept did work, I really missed sitting in the hospitality area and seeing the friends and families I’m used to seeing in there every year. I’m hoping the festival will bring back at least a hospitality area for the volunteers to sit together.
Red Phone:
Dear Alley Cat No. 2:
Festival coordinators are very good at listening to the volunteers to improve the festival from year to year. They took the feedback they got from volunteers of years past who wanted to eat in Gourmet Alley instead of the volunteer hospitality area. Keep in mind this was the first festival with the change, and Red Phone is confident that in coming years they’ll make even more tweaks based on feedback to improve accommodations. So, how about those mushrooms, huh?
A lot of praise
Dear Red Phone:
As a long time festival volunteer – I’ve been volunteering for more than 20 years – I have to say kudos to whomever put together the parking for volunteers this year. It was not so dusty, the weeds were cut down and it was very organized.
Red Phone:
Dear Parker:
Red Phone gave your kudos to Bill Headley, festival parking chair, who was the driving force behind this year’s parking. Headley, who began as a parking volunteer at the very first Garlic Festival in 1979, says the thanks go to strong communication among volunteer coordinators and a solid team of hardworking volunteers – 85 percent of whom are younger than 18. More than 400 volunteer shifts were manned in parking during the three-day fest. “It’s a very physical and mentally demanding job, and we genuinely appreciate all of the volunteers,” he said. “For some folks it’s almost a rite of passage. It’s a difficult committee. We have two large parking lots which is a very daunting, dusty, dirty task.”
Festival on track
Dear Red Phone:
I saw the parking tracker cords on Santa Teresa Boulevard outside the parking lot at the Garlic Festival. How many cars were tracked going into this year’s festival?
Red Phone:
Dear Tire Tracks:
Red Phone drove this one by Bill Headley as well. He says the data from those meters may not be accurate because the data doesn’t register if cars are traveling at speeds less than five miles per hour. But, Higgins and Associates Civil and Traffic Engineers, located in Gilroy donated their services to the festival to get an accurate measure of the cars entering the lot this year. The company had more than 20 people donate their time to counting cars. This data will be priceless in years to come when the current parking area is gone and coordinators will need to plan for festival-goers to be shuttled into the festival. The count for Saturday reached 11,926 cars parked, and the festival total will be tallied soon, Headley said.
