GILROY
– Gilroy Garlic Festival XXVI may be over, but the work
continued for hundreds of volunteers who picked up trash and tore
down tents to restore Christmas Hill Park to its natural, pre-fest
condition.
”
I was out there yesterday afternoon, and it looks like things
are coming down pretty fast,
”
said John Zekanoski, Garlic Festival president, Tuesday.
”
The refuse guys have been in there, and I think they had most of
the papers and trash picked up. It’s amazing how fast things come
down.
”
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Gilroy Garlic Festival XXVI may be over, but the work continued for hundreds of volunteers who picked up trash and tore down tents to restore Christmas Hill Park to its natural, pre-fest condition.
“I was out there yesterday afternoon, and it looks like things are coming down pretty fast,” said John Zekanoski, Garlic Festival president, Tuesday. “The refuse guys have been in there, and I think they had most of the papers and trash picked up. It’s amazing how fast things come down.”
By Tuesday morning, little evidence of the many food, vendor and shade tents remained on the park and ranch side grounds. Gourmet Alley was all but cleared out and the temporary fencing around the perimeter and within the festival area was out of sight. The festival will completely clear the park by noon today.
Organizers and volunteers spent more than a week before this year’s festival preparing the grounds, including laying turf and readying the parking lot for thousands of cars.
At final count, 122,675 attended the 26th annual fest. That’s comparable to a few years ago, which organizers say they were looking for. Last year’s silver anniversary was well attended and 2002 was a particularly good year, as well.
“The 25th anniversary, we just gave it a lot of attention and there was a subsequent attendance spike, but we just couldn’t afford to pour that much promotion dollars into it every year,” said Dick Nicholls, executive director of the Garlic Festival Association. “We certainly didn’t expect to equal last year’s attendance.
“You always want more, but we certainly were blessed with great weather and our preparation was exceptional, the fest ran very, very smoothly: There were, just, almost zero glitches, and the ones that we did have were very minor.”
For example, on Saturday afternoon when lines for the parking lot shuttles grew a bit long, organizers called for a delivery of water bottles to cool the crowd standing in the sun.
Attendance on Friday was 24,168, on Saturday it was 55,377. On Sunday, 43,130 people attended.
All those guests leave a mess that was still being cleaned up Wednesday morning.
“We’re basically working on the parking area, collecting all the barrels and policing it,” said Dan Collins, refuse co-chair and next year’s chair. “We’ve got to police it very, very carefully because they’ll (till) it later in the year and this is the city’s land, so we’ve got to return it the same way as we found it.”
Refuse volunteers on Monday were collecting the many brown barrels and manually picking up any piece of litter in the park and out in the parking lots along Santa Teresa Boulevard.
Recycling also needed to be collected and it appears there could be more than ever this year.
“They ran a … program to have the vendors separate food waste and recycling from other waste and that went over very well,” said Collins, whose day job is with Intero Real Estate Services.
This year, volunteers from Gilroy High School’s boys baseball and girls softball programs, Victory Outreach and Silicon Valley Extreme, an elite travel baseball team, are helping to sweep up the park, working 12-hour days.
“It takes almost four days to help set up in the park, then the festival is three days and it takes another three days to clean it all up,” Collins said. “Sometimes, we’re still out here Wednesday night – we even police into the residential areas.”
The final counts from Gourmet Alley are still coming in, but Chair George Minerva estimates revenue was more than $400,000 over the course of the fest.
“I think we did a pretty good year,” he said, which was comparable to the average for the past five years.
The Gourmet Alley sales from Friday and Saturday show that most items sold less than last year – when attendance was up by 10,000 people – except the sausage sandwiches, soda and combination plates.
The total number of combo plates #1 and #2 sold this weekend surpassed the totals for the solo combo plate sold last year. Many folks at the fest appeared to be purchasing one of each plate so they could sample all the Gourmet Alley offerings. The two-combo choice was a committee decision, Minerva said.
“That’s the whole purpose of that, to give you an opportunity to see what you want to eat,” he said.
In 2003, garlic-lovers bought 7,113 combo plates on Friday and Saturday. This year, they bought 8,242, or 4,899 of combo #1 and 3,643 of combo #2.
Minerva said the two combo plates will definitely be back next year.
“I know we did well, just how stuff was flying out of the alley,” he said. “We were real pleased, it looked like it ran real smooth.”
The penne pasta con pesto, though, will be “re-worked,” he said. At the fest, it never quite tasted the way it did when the association tried it out.
“All weekend we were trying to re-create it.”
SakaBozzo’s new garlic fried bologna sandwich was another hot seller, said Sam Bozzo, who with Gene Sakahara created the sandwich and sold it in half-sized samples near the Cook-off stage.
“I think we were real close to our goal (of 6,000 halves),” Bozzo said.
Again, Sunday’s numbers are still coming in, but 2,800 servings sold Friday and Saturday and he thinks another 2,800 sold Sunday.
“We did hear that it could come back, and the only request that I made was, if it’s going to come back, could you please keep SakaBozzo together,” Bozzo said, “because I had the chicken stir fry (at Gourmet Alley) and it was a little difficult logistically. … Gene and I always say that without the Saka, there’s no Bozzo and without the Bozzo, there’s no Saka.”
Retail sales also did “exceptionally well” this year, said Connie Sanchez, retail chair.
“I know I’ve beat what I’ve done in past years,” she said.
The 3,500 Herbie bobbleheads sold out Sunday; 1,500 commemorative wine glasses, all numbered, sold out Saturday around 2 p.m.; the short and sturdy $5 collector wine glasses sold out Saturday, although Sanchez got three more cases from Gilroy Rotary for Sunday. A new item that flew off the shelves was the “bottle jersey,” a sleeve to keep wine bottles cool that was in the shape of a baseball jersey with the Garlic Festival logo on the front.
“I had ordered 500 of those and, of course, you never know what people are going to like and not going to like,” Sanchez said. “I actually pulled some of those for Saturday and after selling out Friday, those were gone in the first hour Sunday.”
The Mercantile also sold out of posters, tee shirts and aprons with the second-place poster design of a flame-up.
“The first place art poster, this is the most we’ve sold in several years,” Sanchez said. “We sold over 300 of those.”
