There’s no job too dirty for a Gilroy Garlic Festival
volunteer.
They squished through tons of slimy calamari, slogged through
raw sewage and hauled loads of stinky garbage to keep the festival
running without a hitch.
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There’s no job too dirty for a Gilroy Garlic Festival volunteer.
They squished through tons of slimy calamari, slogged through raw sewage and hauled loads of stinky garbage to keep the festival running without a hitch.
Not one of the 4,000 volunteers that make the festival happen has an easy job. But some left smelling of odors worse than just sweat and garlic.
Their shirts splattered with the remains of squid, shrimp and sauces, volunteers with Victory Outreach scrubbed skillets two feet in diameter.
“I like to work,” said Jose Gutierrez, 35, his arms criss-crossed with red welts left by the scalding pots and pans. “I don’t mind.”
“We’re willing to do whatever they ask us to do,” said Ray Jackson, 37, another Victory Outreach volunteer. “It’s hard to get people to wash dishes. We’re doing it for Jesus, not so we get recognized.”
Their post, situated directly behind the flame up stage, provided a prime vantage point for people-watching.
“I like the view from right here,” Jackson said, as a pyro chef slid a pan into the sink of soapy water, yet another in the long line that kept appearing as the festival wore on.
Earlier that afternoon, a potential catastrophe was averted when volunteers managed to unplug a drain that had been clogged with calamari. Gutierrez quickly shoveled muck from the drain to keep the water, and the festival, flowing properly.
While some discarded food landed up in the sink, most of it could be found in the bottom of the hundreds of trash barrels that dotted the festival grounds. And unfortunately, the trash doesn’t take itself out – Gilroy wrestlers do.
Not a job for the squeamish or faint at heart, trash collection was a never-ending activity that made more than a few volunteers want to gag.
“At the bottom of those cans, you have all that calamari juice and all the melted cheese and the beer and then it sits there in the sun for hours,” said Matthew Rosso, 26, describing the some of the day’s stomach-churning encounters.
Javier Martinez, 14, and his fellow wrestlers were towed around in the back of garbage trams, jumping off and on to replace full barrels with clean-ish ones.
“The grossest part is all the liquids,” he said. “But it’s fun to see a lot of people and it raises money for GHS.”
“If you’re squeamish, it might get to you,” Rosso said. “If you’re not squeamish, it gets to you at the end of the day when you go and take a shower and you see all this stuff going down the drain that used to be stuck to your skin. And then you feel a million times better after you get out of the shower. But it’s still pretty gross.”
