Gilroy Garlic Festival

Background

Named for the town of Gilroy, California, the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival began in 1979 and is the town's top fundraiser. According to Wikipedia, then president of the local Gavilan College, visited a small town in France in which, as it called itself the "Garlic Capital of the World," hosted an annual garlic festival (potentially Beaumont-de-Lomagne or La Foire a l'ail Fume d'Arleux). He brought the idea home, where the last-week-of July annual festival draws 80,000 - 100,000 people each year.

If you neither live in Northern California nor are a garlic aficionado, then unfortunately you most likely learned about the Gilroy Garlic Festival in 2019 after a fatal domestic terrorist attack on its property. On its final day, shortly before closing, someone secretly entered the property wearing a bullet-proof vest, and armed with a WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle and 275 rounds. The gunman unleashed 39 rounds on festival-goers near an inflatable slide, ultimately killing six-year-old Stephen Romero, 13-year-old Keyla Salaza, and 25-year-old Trevor Deon Irby, and wounding 17 others, before taking his own life.

Attending the Festival

Catastrophes like that can damage a small event for years to come; even though a target like a small town food festival should most likely align with the "Lightning Rule" - rarely struck twice. However, it's hard to rebuild consumer confidence and comfort, especially with returning customers who were "there when it happened." The easiest-to-allure future guests will be those who may not follow the news, international travelers who may not be familiar with 2019's events, or people who may be too young to remember the event - the next generation of garlic lovers and expert chefs.

However, before the coronavirus pandemic, Gilroy had planned to host one of the country's most popular food festivals once again, same time, same place, in 2020. So as this event certainly intends to return, here are some first-hand recommendations to know-before-you-go to the best event to stock your system against vampires.

What to Expect

The Festival's website has a nice Q&A to provide some more detailed recommendations; but in general, this is a family-friendly, outdoor food festival. It's settled in a generally large, open field with numerous tents. I do want to highlight "family" though in that this is not a more Millennial or single-person's festival: at least in 2011, it wasn't set up to have a lot of Instagrammable moments, photo-worthy food plating/presentations, Indie or unique, up-and-coming artists, and a lot of really bold, fascinating, interesting cooking - or a happening drinking scene. Despite being one of the most well-known food festivals in America, it's a rural, small-town "crowd-pleasing" family event.

So of course with festivals like this, the main attraction is the expected "carnival row" of food vendors - the pop-up tents with unfurled signs that travel a large geographic region for the sole purpose of existing at festivals. I recall some of these were garlic-themed, some added a garlic dish or two to their menu just for this event, and some were devoid of garlic outside of their normal ingredients.

Of most interest to me, there was a main stage where you could watch live versions of cooking shows, which I had never seen before and was the most interesting. There was also live music throughout - some appearing more formal, on stages, and some more spontaneous - just random performances around the field. I'm rather sure there were also cooking competitions, and you could watch chefs whip up garlic dishes in the open air.

Lastly, as mentioned being a family event, there were inflatable obstacle courses, no shortage of costumes, and other hands-on-activities, like making "garlic knots." I will throw out that I had a friend interning with Procter & Gamble at the time, and who was helping to staff the "Scope Mouthwash" booth, which I thought was pretty smart sponsorship/product placement at a garlic festival. 

Go Day 1

For many things in life, I'm not one to be a part of the "inaugural" or first - I like to wait until something's been well-established, gotten the kinks out, and is running smoothly. However, with the Gilroy Garlic Festival, go on the first day - and only on the first day.

First, it's an incredibly small event. The festival sells single and three-day tickets, as I recall, and there's no way you need more than one day to see everything. Unless there are specific chefs or bands you want to see over multiple days, or you have a goal to try a huge amount of different garlic foods, then there's just no reason to attend more than one day. One must also remember that your stomach is limited by capacity - there's only so much food you can eat in a given period without making yourself sick or hurting yourself - which is of course a limitation for an event solely based on food.

Secondly, it's at the end of July, in dry Northern California, in what amounts to a field. As the days go on, what grass there was gets more and more trampled; and with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, dust gets kicked up into the air. Unless you like your garlic chicken wings with a nice dusting of dirt and grime from tens of thousands of sneakers from across the west coast, go on day one while the soil is still on the ground.

Thirdly, things haven't yet run out. I'm always amazed at how much poor inventory planning happens at food festivals, where sometimes even by dinner on the first day, food vendors are crossing things out on their menu because they've already run out of the ingredients. Festivals will always share with vendors historic and anticipated attendance, and those vendors know which of their dishes are most popular, high or low cost to make, quick or long to prepare, room-hogging ingredients or compact, etc. You're attending a food festival; and therefore, you're going to want the food you want when you finally decide on it. Go on Day 1 to have the best chance of getting that dish.

Lastly, and this is a general rule of thumb I have for any kind of multi-day festival, the vendors, volunteers, and staff are just far friendlier earlier on in the event. Day one is the culmination of everything they've planned for for the entire year. They're ready to reveal their baby. They have yet to deal with any crises in real time. They have yet to be reminded of how rude, inconsiderate, rowdy, or difficult the general populace can be at these events. The decorations and equipment are in top-working order. No chefs, performers, or crew have showed up late or cancelled yet. No food has run out, and they're ready to put their best face and service forward to make some money. By day three, that enthusiasm is waning - hard - after all the normal, expected frustrations of a large-scale event have come to fruition, and the staff are getting tired. Go on day one to get the most positive experience.

Cost

Last but not least, the ticket structure is pretty typical for festivals these days, as far as I recall. There's a general admission cost, just to allow you on to the property. And then once inside, I feel like it was the system where you buy a number of tickets that you can then exchange for food and activities around the field. I always find this internal approach predatory - the cost of the tickets is always more than the face-value of what you want to buy (e.g. a $7 smoothie may in fact require $10 worth of tickets). In addition, these tickets can't be refunded, if you buy too many and end up not using all of them. So I always recommend steering clear of festival pay structures like this; or if you have to follow it to participate, scope the entire festival first for food, events, and souvenirs that you want, run the numbers, and then go get the exact number of tickets you'll need. Just remember that you're paying significantly more than these things regularly cost.

And that's my experience with the Gilroy Garlic Festival! For what it's worth, I do remember enjoying my afternoon there, mostly seeing a couple of friends and watching the cooking demonstrations. When it safely returns, I would recommend spending Day 1 there and seeing what there is to see. Every major city has countless food festivals of a wide variety, so there was something certainly unique and interesting about this more remote festival focused on a single ingredient. Give it a taste!