Business

Closing in on the climax of garlic-mania at the Gilroy Garlic Fest, Christopher Ranch hosted a tour of its fields and processing plants in a tour organized by Bay Area McDonald’s Restaurants. Connecting where the source of their Gilroy Garlic Fries comes from, the four-hour tour lifted the veil from any questions one may have of growing and processing garlic. As it turns out, there's a lot to it.

Oaxaca is thought to be the gourmet food capital of Mexico, with dishes that mix food from the native tribes surrounding one of the country’s southernmost states with colonial Spanish-style cooking.

Jeannette Close has been named the associate publisher at New SV Media and will head up all advertising and circulation at the Gilroy Dispatch, the Morgan Hill Times and the Hollister Free Lance. She is based out of the Gilroy Dispatch office in downtown Gilroy.

For over 20 years Kimberlee Rossi, owner of Leedo Art & Framing has been making Gilroy a bit more arty. The sign above the store at 7436 Monterey St. sums it up: “Because the earth without art is just eh!” a play on the letters in earth.

The scaffolding along the old Hall’s Building at Sixth Street in downtown Gilroy has come down as the transformation of the former clothing store into a restaurant with housing above continues apace.

Marvin Thomas’s whole life has been spent putting together complex puzzles. He owned Thomas Appliance Service, where he fixed the most intricate, challenging and stubborn refrigerators, stoves, washers dryers, dishwashers and sub zero freezers—to name a few of the machines that are dread of even the most skilled home repairmen.

Ken Ludewig is hooked on trains. The jack-of-all trades who spent years felling trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains and later ran the famous San Martin Christmas Tree Farm has started a new chapter of his life with an old friend, a gas-powered train that he built from scratch.

It was the jukebox in a family friend’s basement and all those 45 rpm records that put the bug in Scott Tarasco as a kid and set things in motion for his adult obsession.

For local athletes seeking to get bigger, faster, stronger or leaner, Robert Otis, 40, owner of Fact Fitness has the plan to get it done. Otis, the head girls basketball coach at Christopher High School, crafts individual training programs based on the athlete's individual goals.

There’s a new alternative for developmentally disabled adults and their families in Gilroy now that New Perspectives has opened its doors at 6400 Monterey Road. The sparkling facility, housed in the old Gilroy Dispatch building, is loaded with activities such as an art room, computer room, kitchen and even a stage that includes musical instruments such as guitars, a keyboard and a drum set.