Popular Gilroy Garlic Festival hoping you won't notice lack of actual garlic
 

The famed Gilroy Garlic Festival, popular not only with residents of Northern California, but with owners of local dry cleaning establishments, will shoulder on despite not having any actual locally grown garlic.

People enjoying the Gilroy Garlic Festival Saturday may not know that while the garlic may seem plentiful the area's garlic farms are disappearing.

Only three growers remain in Santa Clara County because of land-use pressure, economics and plant disease.

Garlic farmer Louie Bonino's farm used to be 40 acres, but the small farmer's crop now only covers 10 acres.

The county's garlic production has fallen due to economic pressures that have sent farmers east to the San Joaquin Valley and to China, where labor is cheaper.

Local residents who complain that they will miss the site & smell of the lovely garlic flower that grows on the cities ancient garlic trees, are reminded that they live only 45 minutes from Andersen's Pea Soup in lovely Santa Nella. "For those who miss the smell of garlic, be reminded that on a cool summer's day, when the wind is just right, the smell of pea will still fill our valley and arouse our senses."

Andersen's Pea Soup, in response, said that they are proud to represent the area with their famously undistinguished & mediocre green pea soup. "We do one thing," the founder of Andersen's pea soup once said, "and we do not do it well."

I am pea-ing reading your post.

Interesting....I was just commenting to my wife the other day that the Garlic Stuffed Olives I usually buy are almost twice the price of the same olives stuffed with pimentos; a year ago they were the same price.

Eh, if Venice can still lay claim to Venetian glass despite actual glass blowing being nearly illegal within Venice (what's now commonly called Venetian glass is actually made in nearby Murano due to strict fire codes within Venice itself), Gilroy can survive as a figurative garlic capital.

No more Orange groves in Orange, CA, and precious few in Orange County. Such is the nature of things. Orange did stop having its May Festival, which celebrated the harvest with a fair and full parade, back in 1991. Looking at the pictures from the years past had me wishing they hadn't stopped it.

Bah! I've been to the Garlic Festival in Gilroy. It's boring. It made me want to shoot myself in the mouth.
The lame Artichoke Festival in Castroville and the racist Festival of Lanterns in Pacific Grove both suck too.
Bleh!

While I imagine them boring and have yet to go to the artichoke, garlic and avocado festivals - they are three of my very favorite things on this planet, and I should go once, at least.

Meh. Just go to the produce section of a Whole Foods with some balloons and a bag of popcorn and there you have it.
:D

Anyone going to the Tofu festival in Little Tokyo?

For the most part I've found all produce festivals to share about 98% of the same genetic material. If you've been to one then you've probably been to almost all of them.

Though the worst was the Pumpkin Festival in Half Moon Bay where we walked the whole thing and hardly saw any pumpkin food. Gilroy is better than most in this regard.

LOL GC, let me know when you decide to party at Whole Foods, okay? I'll bring my camera...

I wanna go to the avocado festival!!! Where is this? I love love love them! {unless they are brown, then, yuck!}

I would love to go to the Pumpkin Festival in Half Moon Bay. Well...only if I could stay at the Ritz-Carlton for my weekend visit....I'm sure they'd serve some pumpkin pie that I could eat curled up by the fireplace.

You got lemons, make lemonade. Enjoy where you are.

Even if it is in the produce aisle at Whole Foods!

{but Gilroy? That is like a pitstop along the way to Monterey from Yosemite, right? And it stinks!!! Egads, no, no garlic festival for me, thanks!}

I have never gone to the Garlic Festival, but I have wanted to. I have been to Gilroy and found it cute. I guess you can fine the boring in someting if you want to but I prefer to find the fun. Life is to short.

There are very few Strawberry fields left in Garden Grove, but they still host the Strawberry Festival every year. It's part heritage, part celebration of the favorite food- no mater where it comes from.

Orange County started with wine grapes. I'm glade we don't live in Grape County. Disease whipped out the vineyards and they switched to Celery and Beans, if memory serves. Celery County sounds even less attractive. That's the problem with crops, they only seem to last so long, things change.

Aww, I hardly think Murano isn't Venice. Same public transportation system and everything. You can practically sneeze on one from the other. That's like saying the Lido isn't Venice. Sure, it's on the other side of the canal... but...

Do they make danish in Denmark? Hamburgers in Hamburg? French fries in France? I think not!





(I had a point in there somewhere... But I'm not sure what it is...)

Avocado Festival is in the fall at some point. I should go this year. It's "last call" for me.

Avocado Festival website.

First weekend in October. I'll have to see what my schedule is, I may try to work in a day, but I won't know until probably a week in advance.

What I want to know is if WendyBeth ever gets over to Wallace, Idaho for the Huckleberry Festival.......

Homemade Huckleberry Icecream .....best in the World!

I am going to miss it again this year.....I'll be in Orlando fighting off hurricanes and whatnot:( /:D

I'm glad I visited the Gilroy Garlic Festival once. I bought a "Stink Wars II: Attack of the the Cloves" shirt. I tasted garlic Jelly Bellies. I ate skewered meat flavored with garlic. I never need to return.

I might go to a Nutria festival in Louisiana. I've never tasted Nutria.

Ew. I had to go look it up, but still, ew. :p

I went to the Gilroy fest many moons ago, lots of good garlicy food and hotter than hades, I need not return. I'll lounge at home, in the foggy weather and over garlic something in the wok and enjoy it all the more.

Thanks for the link! Carpenteria, hmm, that is in a good place.

And, no offense about Gilroy. It is a bustling little town. But. The last time we went through there, the smell almost suffocated me. My sense of smell is extremely sensitive. I guess added to the heat, it was smothering.

So, I know I couldn't enjoy the festival. :(

We've done the Garlic Festival twice in the eight years we've lived here. The first time we were warned of the traffic and in an abundance of caution we were there by opening.

It wasn't hot yet, it wasn't too crowded and we really had a nice time of it and were on our way by early afternoon (with enough time for a really nice backroads drive, getting from Gilroy to Oakland without ever using a freeway).

This time it was a spur of the moment decision when we couldn't think of anything to do with our Saturday, we didn't leave until 10:30 and it took 90 minutes from the time we left the freeway in Gilroy to get into the parking lot. It was blazing hot and the mood just wasn't there to have a great time, though in the end it was pleasant enough. But we were only there for about 3 hours.

Frequently Lani and I just use these produce festivals as an excuse to go somewhere we might not otherwise go or get there by a route that we've not been on. Probably the biggest one in the area we haven't yet made it to is the Almond Festival up NW of Sacramento (can't remember the name of the towns involved, but on the way to Cache Creek Casino).

Gilroy will always hold a special place in my heart as the nearest town to a campground called Casa de Fruta.....stayed there with my family on the way to Disneyland back in 1982:)

Gilroy has an In-N-Out and some pretty good outlet stores, too.
Casa De Fruta was a trip. They're like the ultimate roadside fruit stand. :)

I'm not sure there is a festival involved, but Apple Season in Oak Glen is fun from what I remember.

Pretty much every town in the Bay Area now has In-n-Out so that isn't the attraction it once was.

I've driven past Casa de Fruta many times but we haven't ever stopped. We should do so.

Casa de Fruta! Always our stop on the way to San Jose when we visit Tom's family.

Yeah, and Burbank is Hollywood.

Casa de Fruta, is that the place on the south side of the freeway? Heading West from Gilroy? Interesting looking place...

I've always called it Murano Glass not Venetian Glass.

I think it can be argued that Burbank is more Hollywood than Hollywood is Hollywood-- but that's another story.

Which is exactly my point. If people can still talk about "Hollywood" even though precious little actual movie making is done there anymore, then people can still talk about "Gilroy" as the garlic capital, even though precious little garlic is grown there any more.

Burbank shares a mayor, public transportation, etc. with Hollywood and is barely separated by some hills. But there's no doubt that the industry once synonymous with Hollywood has largely shifted over those hills. It's a small geographical shift, but important. And yet, "Hollywood" remains the moniker. Same goes for Venice and Murano (although as NA illustrates, Murano apparently thinks itself separate enough from Venice to have done a good job of making its own name for itself) and it seems Gilroy/the rest of the central valley.

Way back before the 101 corridor linking San Jose to Gilroy was built, there was Blood Alley, a trecherous 2 lane nightmare in the fog, but home to tons of great farmstands, orchards and produce galore.

I love Casa de Fruita (and any farm stand I run across) there's one I like near Solvang off 101 heading South to LA. Not sure if it is still there since I've not done the drive in a while.

Locally, Sf Farmer's Market is great and while I'm at work, Sigona's in Redwood City, a veggie feast!

The term Venetian Glass refers to the area of the Venetian Republic, not the city if Venice. Murano has been the site of Venetian glass making since the 13th century.

I learn more on LoT every day than I do at school.

Regarding "Hollywood" - the word really has 2 meanings - (1) the actual geographic area, a district of Los Angeles and (2) a general term for the film industry. It's sort of become a generic term like Kleenex or Jello.

Thanks for putting the Jello song in my head.

Again, exactly my point. When tourists come and want to see "Hollywood", they mean both. At least, they think they mean both. And so they go see the walk of fame, Grauman's, the Hollywood sign, line up outside the Kodak theater for the red carpet, etc. They are hardly aware that Universal Studios isn't in Hollywood. And, save for the real geeks that know what they're doing, they certainly don't spend a lot of time wandering the streets of Burbank, Glendale, Sun Valley, and North Hollywood. And yet they feel like they've seen "Hollywood", both the city and the idea.

Geez, this is getting way too in depth. Point being, in reference to the thread title, it's not much of a stretch for a geographical location to continue to be associated with a particular industry long after that industry has dispersed from said geographical location.

I hope people don't come to Portland expecting to sample cement.....the Lorax lost here and trees rule;)