Tag: brian bowe

The Gilroy Garlic Festival Association announced that Brian Bowe, who has served as Executive Director for the festival for 14 years, has officially resigned....

What started in 1979 as a small community food festival centered on the small, stinky, cousin of the onion has since turned into a...

Knock, knock.

San Benito County food and wine producers will have a chance to promote locally-grown or produced items at the first San Benito Olive Festival, slated for Oct. 19, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Paicines Ranch. The one-day festival admission is $20, with a website to be set up soon that will offer discounted admission for $18.

Nearly six months after $18,000 went missing from Garlic Festival ticket booths, Gilroy police detectives are still carrying out an open investigation, but remain tight-lipped on any leads or suspects.

Something stinks in the aftermath of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, and no, it’s not of garlic.

In preparing for more than 100,000 visitors to descend on the Garlic Capital for three days of eating, dancing and wearing funny garlic hats, the minutiae associated with executing an event of this magnitude is a story unto itself.

Let’s start with a couple of Super Positives … First, the Gilroy High wrestling machine. We ought to have a Decade of Dominance banner downtown noting the 10 straight Central Coast Section Division team championships – and get the team a spot on a flatbed for the upcoming Memorial Day Parade. Think about what an absolutely awesome accomplishment that is. Imagine 10 football or 10 basketball or 10 CCS soccer or field hockey titles in a row. Even though the competition has become fiercer, Gilroy High has remained steadfast at the top, this despite every team gunning to take them down (pun intended). Loved reading Sports Editor Josh Weaver’s stories about the state championships online over the weekend as the drama unfolded in Bakersfield. Two GHS state champions emerged, Willie Fox and Nikko Villareal. Both are great stories – Nikko in his last-chance match beating a “shoe-in” favorite, three-time state champion Alex Cisneros from Selma, in the waning seconds of the final period and Willie, frustrated for two years at the CCS and state levels, erasing both demons  and dashing off with the state title in dominating fashion. More important than the winning is the spirit Coach Greg Varela and the supporters of GHS wrestling have developed in the young men. They displayed that collective graciousness and class at a recent school board meeting when they showed up to rally around the cause of creating a respectable wrestling practice facility at GHS. They were focused, yet humble and so appreciative. They deservedly won the hearts and minds of the trustees, performing in life as they do on the mat. At the state meet, GHS Principal Marco Sanchez, a former Olympic wrestler, was overcome with emotion. He knows what it takes – the practice time, the pain, the mental toughness to be one-on-one under the spotlight, the discipline to get it done. From the Gilroy Hawks to the state title, it just continues to be a story of triumph about a program that is the stuff of legends. Now there’s a screenplay idea ...

Rough 49ers loss. This made matters worse: having to listen to Joe Buck on the TV broadcast. He's unfathomably annoying. Can't Sony or another leading edge TV manufacturer figure out a way to put the AM radio in the TV tuner and sync up the broadcast so you can watch the game and tune into the local radio broadcasting team? Perhaps some bright techie type in audience land has solved this problem. If so, let me know so I can pass on the good news and help stop the Buck stop here.

Oh, yeah, that's what should be on Gilroy's priority list – a new tobacco ordinance that forbids smoking in our parks, at the designated areas at the Garlic Festival, on our golf courses and, what's next, on our back porch? I get it - smoking is bad for you. But I believe that government believing it has an unlimited right to socially engineer everyone's life is just as bad, and perhaps worse. Gilroy has an obesity problem, so let's outlaw potato salad and the selling of Carl's Jr. bacon burgers within the city limits. It's amazing the things that make the priority list just because some advocacy organization, probably slyly funded by taxpayer dollars, received money so that bureaucrats can claim a "purposeful" livelihood. Who's going to enforce this ordinance? The police do nothing about all the hooch smokers at Las Animas Veterans Park and Christmas Hill Park near the amphitheater now. The Council should send Breathe America and its social engineering lobbying effort packing. Enough already. Educate, but do not dictate.