GILROY
– The Gilroy Garlic Festival celebrated the start of its 25th
season at Bonfante Gardens Family Theme Park Saturday on the same
weekend the park closed its gates for the season.
GILROY – The Gilroy Garlic Festival celebrated the start of its 25th season at Bonfante Gardens Family Theme Park Saturday on the same weekend the park closed its gates for the season.
Mayor Tom Springer gave a noteworthy nod to the festival’s founder, the late Rudy Melone, during the proclamation ceremony kicking off “Garlic Day,” and Val Filice, the festival’s co-founder and Gourmet Alley master chef, announced during a cooking demonstration that jars of his pasta sauce would soon be hitting the supermarkets.
Springer told the crowd he would make a proposal at tonight’s Council meeting to rename the ranch side of Christmas Hill Park after Melone, the man who conceived the idea for Gilroy’s July gala.
“We have never properly recognized Rudy Melone’s contribution to the Garlic Festival,” he said. “We want the festival goers to realize the amount of effort that he put into establishing the festival.”
He said other council members did not know of his proposed idea to rename part of the park after Melone.
“It’ll come as a complete surprise to them,” he said.
Filice, a close friend of Melone, said the proposal was “a wonderful idea.”
The concept for Gilroy’s famous festival was spawned in 1978 when Melone, then the president of Gavilan College, read in article about a garlic festival held in the French village of Arleux. That town called itself the “Garlic Capital of the World” because their annual festival brought in more than 80,000 people over a three-day period to sample garlic soup.
Melone decided Gilroy could do a successful festival as well. At a Rotary Club lunch, he told Gilroy leaders about his idea and described how it could benefit the city by bringing in money for various community nonprofit organizations.
Several local leaders were skeptical about the idea – including Filice.
“Not only was (Melone) a good educator, but he was a good promoter of Gilroy,” he said.
Garlic Day at Bonfante Gardens included several cooking demonstrations allowing park visitors to watch professional chefs prepare garlic-based dishes.
Gilroy’s horticultural theme park was filled with larger crowds than usual this weekend, as many visitors came to enjoy rides and attractions before the close of the 2002 season.
Earlier this month, park directors laid off about 50 full-time employees for the season and said plans for a six-weekend holiday light show will be scrapped as they wrestle with long-term strategies to keep the park financially afloat. Park employees and volunteers told a Dispatch reporter they were told not to discuss the matter with the media.
Despite the uncertain future for Bonfante Gardens, the parking lot was filled with vehicles and many visitors seemed impressed with the rides and the family-oriented ambiance.
“I really like the roller coaster,” said Evan Coulter, an 8-year-old Santa Cruz resident who has come to the park several times on his family’s season pass.
He said the rides were fun for children his age, but the park also needed attractions for teenagers who would keep coming to the park.
“One thing I would like to say about the park – there’s nice people, no litter and it’s clean,” he said.
His mother, Susan Bruckner, said she bought the season pass in June and took Evan to Bonfante Gardens several times this year because of the wholesome family-oriented quality of the park.
“It’s so beautiful. It’s so peaceful,” she said.
She said she came to the park this weekend because she heard it was going to close for the season, and her son wanted one last spree on the rides.
Santa Cruz resident Richelle Noroyan said she and her friend Jim Jensen came to the park because they heard it was closing for the season this weekend.
“I think they need to market it better to adults,” she said. “I think if I was the marketing director, I would promote it at garden centers in the Bay Area. It’s so beautiful here.”
Noroyan and Jensen attended a cooking demonstration at the park’s amphitheater given by Garlic Festival chefs Sam Bozzo and Gene Sakahara.
During one such demonstration, Filice said he is working with Tomas Foods, a marketing-distribution company, to put out a pasta sauce product called “Garlic Godfather.” The recipe would be the same pasta sauce cooked at the festival, and the label would include a picture of Filice on it.
“It’s the best pasta sauce you’ll ever eat in this world,” he said. “I’m not cutting down on quality. If it costs a dollar more to make, we’ll spend that money to make it.”
The product will be sold nationally and also in Japan, he said, and is part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the Garlic Festival. A retail price has not been set for the sauce.
