Garr Novick was glowing.
”
We’re from New Jersey,
”
Novick yelled in a signature Garden State accent as he and his
wife, Carol, posed in front of the smoking garlic head that greets
patrons when they enter the festival.
”
J-O-I-Z-E-Y,
”
he clarified.
BY Chris Bone Staff Writer
Gilroy – Garr Novick was glowing.
“We’re from New Jersey,” Novick yelled in a signature Garden State accent as he and his wife, Carol, posed in front of the smoking garlic head that greets patrons when they enter the festival. “J-O-I-Z-E-Y,” he clarified.
The couple was visiting from Cherry Hill, N.J., for the wedding of their nephew, Larry Cirina. Larry’s mom, Rosemarie Cirina, said she scheduled the matrimony to coincide with the festival because she had never been.
“This was the one thing I didn’t do before I moved to New Jersey,” said Rosemarie, a former Irvine resident who said she couldn’t wait to try the garlic fries and garlic ice cream. “I’m very interested in all things garlic, whatever it has to offer.”
Friday’s crowd stacked up to those of the past, according to Jody Childers, one of the festival’s ticket vendors.
The dozens of families, teenagers, couples and children who swirled from tent to tent proved Childers’s point, many of them gravitating toward Gourmet Alley at the same pace its barbecue smoke billowed into the air.
“The flame is lit at Gourmet Alley, and the bulb is lit,” said festival President Judy Lazarus, referring to the Volkswagen Bug-size smoker shaped like a garlic head that greets folks entering the park’s west side. “Everything’s up to par. I ordered 85 degrees, and that’s what we’re getting today! It’s just fabulous,” she said with a smile while Gerry Foisy, or “Mr. Garlic,” mingled with those in the moving line.
“Don’t be afraid,” Foisy said as he wrapped his bare arms around a couple who wanted a picture, sliding between them in his foam garlic head costume just like Donald Duck or Pluto would do with kids at Disneyland.
Behind all the fun-loving good times, Adrian Ayllon and other paramedics rode around on bicycles making sure everybody remained hydrated and healthy, but the San Jose resident volunteering for his fourth consecutive year said nobody had suffered from the sun so far.
Gilroy Police Sgt. Jim GIlio contributed to the merry scene by reporting that there had been no arrests as of 5:15pm Friday, but he cautioned that Saturday afternoons in the past have been the department’s busiest as far as alcohol-related arrests are concerned.
As far as the heat’s concerned, most of it came from the “pyro chefs” and the balls of fire shooting up from their grills at the end of Gourmet Alley closest to Uvas Creek.
With his name stenciled in white thread across his black apron, pyro chef Jon Vickroy showed a crowd of about 30 picture-happy people how to make garlic tomato sauce.
“Garlic!” he announced, tossing a handful of the diced herb onto a tire-size skillet. “Pesto, oregano, chili pepper,” he continued, throwing the respective ingredients through the flames creeping over the pan’s lip. Salt and pepper came next, followed by the juice from two lemons and a scoop of tomato sauce. It was all over in about 10 seconds.
“That’s all,” he said to the crowd with outstretched arms as people snapped photos. “Three minutes, on and off, that’s it.”
“The pyro chefs are the stars of the stage, with all those flames and all those people watching them,” said Mike Davis, a Gourmet Alley volunteer who managed the backstage area where dozens of volunteers chopped parsley, oregano, onions, and prepared food for all the chefs and vendors.
Two of the festival’s official vendors were Katie Bailey and Diane Stephens. The two women managed the Garlic Mercantile Tent as a roving band of three saxophones and an oboe serenaded customers with “The Pink Panther.”
“Everything’s going so well. We’re selling a lot of Herbies,” Bailey said, referring to the 2,750 official bobble-head mascots that the festival sells throughout the weekend, making sure that “there are still Herbies for those who come(this weekend).”
“The wine glasses always go quickly, too,” added Stephens.
“Oh, colanders, too!” Bailey interrupted. “I don’t think we have any left.” It was only 11am, but jars of garlic peppers, garlic-stuffed olives, and barbecue sauces remained for those quick enough to snatch them.
Despite all the hustle of the growing crowd Friday afternoon, two festival veterans from Berkeley sat quietly.
Sisters Noelle and Anjuli Martin leaned against hay bales on the gray blanket they had spread beneath a tree, Noelle casually sipping her frozen pink lemonade.
“We take turns getting food,” said Noelle, who works as a technology marketer in Alameda, “but one of us always watches the blanket.”
Not everyone, though, was this relaxed Friday afternoon.
Beer vendors kept their eyes out for underage drinkers, and authorities guarded every beer tent.
“You have to watch for young people passing drinks out to each other,” said Mary Humphrey, a member of the festival’s beer committee for the past four years. “Saturday it gets pretty rowdy at the amphitheater, and Sunday afternoon, too,” she said.
Humphreys didn’t know of any drinking-related problems as of late Friday afternoon, but it was still early, she said.
Nearby Brian Jones dealt with lighter problems.
He represented ConAgra Foods in a green carnival tent, offering himself as the go-to authority on garlic that he has become after 25 years as the company’s garlic seed manager.
“Time stops when you’re talking about garlic,” Jones said. “There’s no romance to commoditized crops like corn or wheat, but there’s a romance to garlic and each grower.
“I sit and smile because I’m a part of it,” he said in reference to his planned trip to Oregon after the festival, where he’ll harvest garlic for its seeds. “I just love being a part of this festival.”
The only people who were really sweating bullets were the skateboarders, bikeriders, and rollerbladers on the Got Milk? half-pipe.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, a whole festival dedicated to garlic,” said Shane Yost, a professional rollberblader from Melborne, Australia, who performed on the crowd-drawing half-pipe Friday afternoon. “I love garlic. It’s one of my favorites. I’m always using it when I cook.”
The Gilroy High School wrestlers and basketball players were sweating as much as Yost riding in a trailer behind a small blue tractor. The tractor stopped every 20 or 30 feet, and the students would jump out, grab a cardboard barrel trash can, lunge it over the trailer’s wooden siding, and then shake out the rubbish before plopping it back on the ground.
Their sweaty faces contrasted with the shaded smiles of the people packing the picnic tables, eating garlic calamari, stuffed mushrooms, pepper steak sandwiches and garlic fries as barbecue smoke drifted through the crowd.
One man stabbed a rack of ribs he had just finished grilling, sacrificing it to the sky and rubbing his belly as passersby stopped to take pictures of the garlic-lover.
