37th annual event will honor Mushroom Mardi Gras founder Brad Spencer
Published in the May 25 – June 7, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Sunday Minnich
Sunday Minnich
This year’s Morgan Hill Mushroom Mardi Gras will be a poignant one with the loss in July of our festival founder, Brad Spencer. We intend to celebrate his life and the spirit of Santa Clara County’s second largest festival (after the Gilroy Garlic Festival) which every year raises tens of thousands of dollars for local educational opportunities for students.
The festival’s story starts in 1978 when California voters approved Proposition 13, which reduced property taxes for California residents. Almost immediately, as the Morgan Hill Fire Chief, Spencer saw an already lean capital expense budget whither away. “We were down to barely affording light bulbs, PG&E bills — the bare essentials,” Spencer once said.
Spencer searched frantically for a way to keep up with the increasing demand for fire protection. The department tried various fundraisers — dances, dinners and other small endeavors. But when they found out how much money was raised after all the stress and work involved, it would have been easier to go around and ask each firefighter for $10.
Photo by Sunday Minnich
A volunteer wears the Mardi the Mushroom costume during last year’s festival.
Still looking for a fundraiser to buy needed equipment, Spencer took inspirations from a weekend trip to the annual Charles Dickens Christmas Faire in San Francisco. After the fair, he thought this could work in Morgan Hill. So Chief Spencer and his firefighters came up with this festival.
Spencer, along with Irv Perlitch, owner of Hill Country, and Ed Lazzarini, put on the first Mushroom Mardi Gras in October 1980. The event was a huge success. A net profit of $400,000 was raised and divided between nonprofit organizations and new fire equipment for the fire department. After two years, the festival was moved from October to Memorial Day weekend.
Hill Country was home to the Mardi Gras for the first seven years. It moved to a dusty field along Cochrane Road for two years before moving to Community Park, finding a home there from 1989 to 2004. In 2005, due to construction and remodeling at Community Park, the Mardi Gras was once again forced to move and now finds itself in downtown Morgan Hill.
In the spirit of Spencer’s desire to promote our community, we’ve made sure that the Mushroom Mardi Gras is a free admission festival to enter to ensure that all families, regardless of income level, can come in and have a fun time with their children. Everyone can dance to the great live music on several stages and enjoy the talented street performers. Our festival has grown a reputation throughout the region as a fun way to kick off the summer, with about 80,000 people attending every year to eat tasty foods and browse for beautiful creations from our artisans and crafters.
Photo by Marty Cheek
To entertain young ones at the festival, this year we’ve invited several Disney film characters. On Saturday, “Frozen” heroines Elsa and Anna will wander around and have their photos taken with kids. On Sunday, we’ll have “Aladdin” characters Jasmine and Aladdin doing photo ops.
The festival focuses on helping local young people gain a good education in college. This year’s Mardi Gras is the 37th annual and during the years we’ve given more than $1 million in scholarships. In 2008, we started a mini-grant program to give support to elementary and middle schools for special projects presenting checks totaling $46,000 since we began that program. And over the years, we’ve given about $500,000 to school groups and nonprofit organizations that help young people. Annually, we give between $70,000 and $80,000 in donations, making the Mardi Gras the largest monetary donor in Morgan Hill. Because the 2015 festival was so successful, this year we’ll give $55,000 in scholarships, including two new Brad Spencer Memorial Scholarships valued at $1,000 each. These two are based on community service by students at Live Oak and Sobrato high schools. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the festival go back to the community for education purposes.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Our town is proud of our title of the Western Mushroom Capitol of the World, and we work with the Western Marketing Mushroom Association and local growers to really promote our region’s farming and mushroom industry. Several years ago, the Rotary Club of Morgan Hill helped the festival set up a mushroom education exhibit to show our visitors how the “fun fungi” are grown and the health benefits from this vegetable. Two years ago, the mushroom growers took over from the club to show that mushrooms are still a very important part of our heritage in Morgan Hill — and they taste great!
This year at the festival, we’ll have several celebrity chefs doing cooking demonstrations. We’ll host Morgan Hill resident Steve Caposio, the winner of a Food Network’s “Cutthroat Kitchen” episode and a local chef who is developing his own cooking show. We’ll also host Gilroy resident Alexis Higgins, a 10-year-old girl who was on “Master Chef Junior” on the Food Network. Other celebrity chefs will be the famous SakaBozzo pairing from Gilroy, “Untamed Chef” Albert Hernandez, and Patti Tartaglia from Patti’s Perfect Pantry. We’ll also have a kids cooking contest on Sunday morning to show off local culinary talent among our high schools.
To help visitors discover the mushroom sampling opportunities in our food plaza, we’ll have special “feather signs” guiding hungry guests to such culinary delights as Portabella steak sandwiches, Cajun deep-fried mushrooms, Philly cheese-steak sandwiches and lot of other great mushroom dishes. Debuting this year is a special pork and mushroom sausage made locally which is “to die for.”
Thank you for taking time to visit the Mushroom Mardi Gras. When you enjoy the free music and entertainment, think a moment about Brad Spencer and how your support of the festival he started is a fun way to support young people in building great futures.
Sunday Minnich is the executive director of the Mushroom Mardi Gras. She wrote this column for Morgan Hill Life.
