Garlic Festival is six weeks away and dangerously short
volunteers
Gilroy – Come join the few, the proud – the men and women who tame chaos under a blistering sun.
No, it’s not a call for Marines, though Garlic Festival volunteer Bill Wenholz says the same “gung ho” attitude is required to manage parking, one of the most unappreciated but important jobs at the city’s marquee event.
The Garlic Festival is six weeks away and the parking committee is dangerously short on the dozens of people required to manage and train hundreds of high school athletes, police academy students and other local volunteers who direct traffic flow for tens of thousands of drivers.
Wenholz would like to recruit at least a dozen people to fill long-term leadership roles on the parking committee as a changing of the guard takes place. Many long-term volunteers in their late 50s and 60s are simply dropping out after years of working 14 hour days over the course of the three-day festival.
“These are people who are knowledgeable enough at parking who can take six to 12 inexperienced people, set them up and have them handling cars in a few minutes,” he explained. “Those are parking crew bosses. Then we have people whose job it is to distribute parking crews, basically using 14-foot flatbeds to transport people.”
The parking committee is the second largest of two dozen committees that help organize and run every imaginable aspect of the festival, from the cook-off event to festival security to the Garlic Queen pageant.
Wenholz calculated the parking group relies on more than 400 volunteer parking attendants as well as several dozen upper level managers. Only Gourmet Alley, the main food hub of the festival, has a bigger volunteer staff.
The cooks, food preparers and others who work in Gourmet Alley get showered with attention during the festival while parking attendants toil at the edges of the festival in two lots: one on the ranch site just north of Christmas Hill Park and the other in a dry, hay-covered field to the southwest near Santa Teresa Boulevard.
“I do a lot of work with pole vaulters, and it takes a special brand of insanity to be a pole vaulter,” Wenholz said. “And I think it takes a special brand of insanity to be a parking lot person. It’s chaotic, hot and dusty, but it’s a job that needs to be done.”
Last year’s Garlic Festival attracted 130,000 visitors and helped raise $300,000 for local charities. The figure was the highest single year amount in the 27-year history of the event. This year’s Garlic Festival takes place July 28-30.
To volunteer for the parking committee, e-mail Wenholz at bw******@*****on.net or call the Garlic Festival Association at 842-1625.
