The Gilroy Garlic Festival’s garlic-headed mascot is working up
a sweat this year, and it’s not from searing calamari or grilling
garlic-packed sausages.
Gilroy – The Gilroy Garlic Festival’s garlic-headed mascot is working up a sweat this year, and it’s not from searing calamari or grilling garlic-packed sausages.
This 2007 version of Herbie, a collectible bobblehead doll that inspires a strange mania at the festival each year, has stepped out of the kitchen and onto the race track. The 8-inch doll is sporting white sneakers, red jogging shorts, a blue tank top, and has a towel draped over his shoulder.
The new look is a far cry from the past two years, in which Herbie donned a barbecue apron and a chef’s jacket.
“He’s our little health-conscious Herbie,” said Karen Scorsur, head of the festival’s retail committee this year and the person who chose Herbie’s outfit.
But Scorsur and other organizers of the 29th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival are not suggesting that visitors pass on pepper-steaks and other calorie-packed eats at the event and opt instead for a healthy jog. Instead, Herbie’s outfit pays homage to a bygone tradition, one that helped promote the city’s premier event for nearly a decade.
The yellow “G” on Herbie’s tank top hints at the inspiration for his outfit, said Scorsur, one of a dozen or so people who once participated in a running group known as the Garlic Centipede. During the ’90s Scorsur and others in the group would help open the festival gates by racing from one entrance of Christmas Hill Park to another. They also ran in San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers event, a race across the city that ends with a concert in Golden Gate Park.
Fans and even bands cheered on the group, each member of which was tied together by garlic braids and had a letter emblazoned on his or her tank top. Together, the shirts spelled “Gilroy Garlic,” a fact not lost on the crowd as Scorsur and others threw garlic bulbs to onlookers.
“The more I thought about it, I realized the centipede is the epitome of the Garlic Festival,” Scorsur said. “We’re all chained together for a common goal. As the centipede, the goal was to finish the race. At the Garlic Festival, the goal is to benefit the community and local charities.”
Each year more than 4,000 volunteers help run the three-day event that draws tens of thousands of people to the city. Those volunteers steer their “wages” – to the tune of more than $100,000 annually – to local charities.
Herbie, now in his sixth year, has been a major draw for the festival, with many visitors arriving at 6am so they can be first in line at one of two mercantile tents selling the collectible. The doll, which has increased from $12 last year to $13, often sells for two or three times its sale price on eBay. On Wednesday, a 2005 Herbie in a chef’s apron was selling on the Internet auction site for $20.
Just 2,750 of the dolls will be sold this year, with limited amounts available on each of the three days. The festival runs from 10am to 7pm Friday, July 27 through Sunday, July 29. Tickets are available at the festival or in advance at www.gilroygarlicfestival.com.
