Tag: gilroy garlic festival

Beautiful cover on the city of Gilroy’s parks and recreation Summer 2012 Activity Guide shot at the Christopher High School swimming pool with three of Gilroy’s finest young lifeguards. The guide went to the printer weeks and weeks ago no doubt, and, lo and behold, there’s not a word mentioned about activities available at the South Valley Middle School swimming pool. Yep, not going to get many participants when the activity isn’t even listed in the city summer guide. The city staff, clearly, decided to close the pool long before our City Council decided to keep it open. And therein lies a systemic cultural problem that has to be dealt with and eradicated before our city moves forward. As one of our astute Community Pulse Board members commented upon answering the question about whether the city should spend the money to keep the South Valley pool open: “The culture of NO has got to GO.” Not good for a brochure …

As of this week, there's one less brouhaha in town.

Sizzling sauté pans, Southern California sunsets, mesmerizing kaleidoscopes, hot air balloons, cartoonish garlic bulbs in cowboy hats and gregarious chefs in striped pants: The six judges sifting through approximately 24 entries in the Gilroy Garlic Festival annual Art Poster Contest had their work cut out for them.

Gilroy’s Garlic Festival was alive and kicking well before Facebook co-creator Mark Zuckerberg could tie his shoes, but folks spearheading South County’s hallowed stinkin’ rose extraveganza know how to flex their social networking muscles.

The next wave of eye-catching public artwork depicting celebrated Gilroy landscapes, culture, wildlife and American pride will color the Garlic Capital one brushstroke at a time at an intersection near you by mid-April or May.

Polish your garlic press and start practicing mincing Gilroy’s aromatic tenant because the 34th Great Garlic Cook-Off is now accepting recipes.

She’s a stay-at-home mom, Girl Scout troop leader and self-taught gourmet cook by day, but come Saturday local Andora Salcido will become the poster girl for Gilroy and clam chowder.

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.

Ahoy, garlicky royalty hopefuls of 2012: The time is nigh to fill out and submit your applications for the 34th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival Queen Pageant.

Just inside the Dispatch lobby on Monterey Street, a copy of every newspaper printed this year lies fanned in display atop a long shelf.