Only one day out of the year can Bill Clark get away with
stuffed mushrooms and beer for breakfast.
Only one day out of the year can Bill Clark get away with stuffed mushrooms and beer for breakfast.
In all of his 54 years, Clark only missed one Gilroy Garlic Festival – the very first one – and that’s because he was a little busy marrying his wife. The happily married couple of 30 years staked out a spot Friday morning in front of the infamous flame-ups of Gourmet Alley. The 6-foot-tall towers of flames kept them warm against the cool morning breeze.
“Every year, it’s gotten better,” Clark said. “We always come out on Friday. It’s vacation day every year.”
Despite the chilly weather, the line outside the beer gardens remained steady, said Chamber of Commerce volunteer William Garcia, 34. The Gilroy native was 4 years old at his first festival and looks forward to the last weekend of July every year.
“I’m a garlic lover,” he said. “I could sit and eat garlic cloves all day.”
Festival volunteers thanked the garlic gods for the cool fog that burned off around noon, giving way to a warm sunny afternoon.
“The weather is fabulous,” said Festival President Kirsten Carr.
Clipboard in hand, Carr darted around Christmas Hill Park first thing, making marks or adjusting details. Not one to shy away from responsibility, Carr told her father she wanted to be president when she was younger, she said. She just didn’t know it would be of the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
“President Obama can have 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” she said at the opening ceremonies. “I’ll take Christmas Hill Park any day.”
The festivities kicked off with the lighting of Gourmet Alley and garlic chef Bob Filice’s cry of “Mangia!” which could just be heard over the roar of flames and cheering of the crowd that gathered.
The first visitor in line, Jeff Dennis, 50, and his granddaughter, Destiny Caudillo, 9, waiting anxiously for the gates to open. Checking his watch, Dennis mapped out a game plan with Caudillo. A lunch of peppersteak sandwiches and garlic fries was imminent, they agreed. Garlic ice cream would top off the meal.
“It’s an acquired taste,” Dennis said. “You have to try it. It’s not too bad.”
Patrick Foley, the coordinator for international relations in Takko-Machi, Japan – one of Gilroy’s sister city – led a group of Japanese visitors and agreed that garlic ice cream is a Gilroy tradition.
“It’s so good you have to try it once every year,” Foley said wryly.
Takko’s queen of their annual garlic and beef festival, Garlic Lady Ayumi Inamura, was surprised with the size of Gilroy’s festival, she said. Wearing a traditional kimono and small, sparkling crown, she joined Gilroy Garlic Festival Queen Jessica Brewka and her court on stage during the opening ceremonies.
While some made a beeline for the festival’s famous food, others herded over to the mercantile tent to pick up a souvenir. Disappointed to learn that the endearing bobbleheaded doll, Herbie, wouldn’t be making an appearance this year, Anna Lavigne of Fremont made a point to speak up about the beloved doll.
“I’ve heard a lot of people asking about him,” she said, her sun hat adorned with various garlic pins she’d collected over the years. “I have almost all of them and would pay even if they did raise the price.”
Absent Herbie, the mercantile tent boasted several other new items, said Jennifer Ledwell, store manager. Hoodie sweatshirts, vests and women’s T-shirts are all new this year. Colanders with slats in the shape of garlic cloves and the festival’s signature wine glasses go fast every year, she said.
Judy Marez, 77, shared Lavigne’s disappointment over Herbie’s absence. Marez herself submitted several ideas for the doll over the years, including an Elvis version that read, “All shook up at the Garlic Festival,” and said she would have paid $50 for a Herbie doll. She has one from each year displayed in her china cabinet at home, she said.
Marez found comfort, however, in the traditional foods of Gourmet Alley.
“If you live in Gilroy, you better love garlic,” she said, tasting the pasta con pesto.
The excitement cooked up in the afternoon with the new cooking competition between the Sakabozzo team – made up of local personalities Gene Sakahara and Sam Bozzo – and Luca Rutigliano, executive chef of Corde Valle in San Martin. The two teams prepared a signature dish and then swapped recipes with their opponent to prepare their opponent’s dish.
The banter and teasing was constant between the chefs through out the competition. Both teams wanted to win and were trying to win the audience’s favor – one of the judging categories.
At one point, Rutigliano carried his grandchildren up on stage with him hoping to sway the crowd. But Sakabozzo wasn’t going to be left out of the game – they invited their grandchildren and some of the children from the packed crowd to join them on the stage. When a young boy volunteered to be a Sakabozzo grandchildren and ran up to the stage, the team grabbed the boy’s arms and lifted him over the rail so he could pose with them.
The title of grand chef went to Rutigliano, but only by a tenth of a point. Because the contest was so close, both chefs received garlic wreaths.
Just outside the stage, festival-goers learned to braid garlic. In essence, the leaves are woven together tightly, pulling up so that the garlic bulbs fit snugly together.
Bill Christopher of Christopher Ranch also showed audiences how to top garlic – lopping off long, dried leaves and roots to make the bulb look supermarket-ready. The festival used to have festival goers top their own garlic, but a few attendees hit their fingers instead, so this year experienced garlic toppers demonstrated the art, Christopher said.
When the demonstration was finished, Christopher allowed festival-goers to grab all the garlic they could and the hay bale-encircled demonstration area became a flurry of color, bags and hands.
Outside the demonstration area, the activity was calmer, as many people stood in line for food or sat on a hay bale and enjoyed what they had purchased.
“The festival is about the diversity, the food and how welcoming Gilroy is,” said Shirley Colson, 45.
Even when she lived in San Diego for 14 years, she made the trip up to Gilroy every year for the festival.
“It’s a family tradition,” she said. “If you go to any festival during the year, you have to go to the Garlic Festival.”
As the festival shifted into the late afternoon, camaraderie became the word of the day.
For Greg and Terri Wayne, who drove down from Carmichael, just outside of Sacramento, making new friends was as easy as taking some good advice from Linda Schweibinz.
“She just said, ‘Hey, come over here – in the shade,'” said Greg Wayne, a former Gilroy resident.
The Waynes joined the Schweibinzes and soon were chatting like old friends. It was a great way to start the festival, Greg Wayne said.
“I can’t wait to come back and meet more friends,” he said.
Both couples embodied the human spirit found at the festival, and both have been coming for a few years – mostly for the penne con pesto, they said. They all planned on returning Saturday and Sunday, and to prove his sincerity, Greg Wayne mentioned he made a hotel reservation for this weekend back in December.
About 120 friends and family members caught their breath in the stands of the Amphitheater Stage on the Park Side, huddled on either side where the shade fell. A few fatigued festival-goers actually decided to nap in the shady, grassy knolls farther into park. Definitely absent from napping crowd Friday was Garlic Festival President Kirsten Carr.
“I’m having a great time,” Carr said with a smile as she waved for her friends to join her. “We’re off to go dance to The Corvairs.”
And dance they did, in a generational medley outside the kid’s area. Inside, Gilroy’s Young Chef’s Academy hosted a cook-off for children and adolescents, who prepared meals on the spot for judging.
As one woman passed nearby Gourmet Alley, a pyro-chef’s flame shot five feet into the air.
“I do that all the time in the kitchen – it’s just not called cooking,” she quipped.
Inside the Alley, Steve Ashford, one of nine quality control engineers, helped keep things running with nearly 700 volunteers buzzing through the tennis court-sized tent all day long, hoisting and plopping huge trays and pots of calamari, mushrooms, steak and everything else.
“I’ve probably tested 12 mushrooms since this morning, just helping all the new volunteers and making sure they get it right,” Ashford said.
Thanks to the swarm of volunteers inside Gourmet Alley, Denise Madril and her grandmother, Jennie Charles, enjoyed pepper steak, penne con pesto, mushrooms and scampi. Charles said she has attended every festival since 1979, and Madril said she’s come since “I couldn’t walk.”
“We just love this place. I have sisters and nieces from Phoenix who also come here,” Charles said, adding she would save the $12 necessary to get into the festival if she had to. As she dipped her bread into scampi sauce, Charles looked out into the crowd, perched on the same bail of hay as her granddaughter.
“I love people-watching,” Charles said as Madril nodded her head in between chews.
“We came here today just to eat,” Madril said. “Tomorrow for the entertainment and dancing and to have fun, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like this year without Shaboom. Just bring back Shaboom,” she said, referring to the classic rock cover band that was a mainstay for the festival until this year.
The premier of the festival’s bicycle parking lot also succeeded, with about 70 people biking to the festival. To encourage more bikers, the festival decided to move the bike parking lot even closer, to an area just near the intersection of Miller Avenue, 10th Street and the levee, Garlic Festival Association Executive Director Brian Bowe said.
“That way, more locals will have those ‘Aha!’ moments and hopefully bike here the next day,” Bowe said.
Bowe made sure to add that he took advantage of the complimentary mouthwash Target distributed.
As the crowd and the heat thinned out, a refreshing coolness descended on the park. At day’s end, police had arrested three people for public intoxication, possession of a controlled substance and assault on a horse.
“Someone apparently hit a horse, which is like hitting an officer,” Bowe said in a trailer as the festival wrapped up. Other than those minor incidents, everything went swimmingly, he said.
Bowe could not immediately provide any attendance estimates but described the crowd as “great.” Patrons described the crowd as typical for a Friday, just a prelude to the big days Saturday and Sunday.
