Published in the July 22 – Aug. 4, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Marty Cheek, publisher Morgan Hill Life
Morgan Hill Life file photo
Two girls check out the mushrooms during the 2014 Mushroom Mardi Gras.
During the Mushroom Mardi Gras weekend back in May, I attended a ballet performance at Sobrato High School where I happened to sit in the audience next to several people associated with the Gilroy Garlic Festival. During our conversation, one of them brought up how Morgan Hill’s Mardi Gras event could be significantly improved. Curious, I asked what their recommendations might be.
They told me that the Mardi Gras’s downtown venue just wasn’t right and recommended that it be brought back to Morgan Hill’s Community Park. They also recommended that the Mardi Gras charge admission for visitors rather than being freely open to the public — the reasoning was that it would attract a “better quality” of visitors. The Gilroy people also suggested the Mardi Gras should be turned into a three-day event, continuing on Memorial Day. Their fourth suggestion was that the Mushroom Mardi Gras needed more mushroom related food items and paraphernalia.
I recommended that they contact Sunday Minnich, the executive director of the Mardi Gras, and share their wisdom for improvements. With glad smiles, they promised to do this, saying that they knew Minnich well and she surely would be more than happy to receive their friendly critique.
I bring up the conversation because this coming weekend starting Friday July 24, thousands of people will attend the 37th Gilroy Garlic Festival. The annual three-day extravaganza at Christmas Hill Park celebrates the odorous herb that put Santa Clara County’s southern-most city on the culinary map.
To be honest, it’s not really fair to compare and contrast the Gilroy Garlic Festival with Morgan Hill’s Mushroom Mardi Gras. The Garlic Festival is a food event on steroids, a gargantuan affair. Many residents traditionally leave town, tired of the hordes descending on the “Garlic Capital of the World.”
It’s known internationally thanks to the Food Channel and members of the media from as far away as Asia and Europe covering it and adding to its fame.
The Mushroom Mardi Gras, on the other hand, is just small-town America celebrating the fun of fungi. Only local news sources cover it.
The first Garlic Festival was held in July 1978 and was the brainchild of Rudy Melone, then the president of Gavilan Community College. He got the idea after reading a newspaper article about a garlic soup festival in France.
The first Mushroom Mardi Gras was held two years later in October 1980. Morgan Hill Fire Chief Brad Spencer had visited the Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco the previous year and thought a food festival featuring the fungi famously grown in Morgan Hill might help raise funds for fire department equipment.
The Garlic Festival raises money for South Valley nonprofit organizations (distributing more than $10 million over the years) and the Mushroom Mardi Gras evolved its mission to provide scholarships (more than $900,000 over the years) for students of local schools. In past years, the Garlic Festival has brought in six-digit crowds, with 109,067 people attending in 2011, 100,204 attending in 2012, and 102,006 in 2013.
Last year, the Garlic Festival had about 80,000 guests, according to the San Jose Mercury News. On the other hand, the Mushroom Mardi Gras numbers have been steadily rising, with officials estimating that between 70,000 to 80,000 people at the 2015 event. To be fair, it’s more difficult to count the Mushroom Mardi Gras attendees because there are no tickets to collect. But also consider that the Garlic Festival has an extra day.
As for the critique from the Garlic Festival folks I met, I shared their comments with Minnich and some members of the Mardi Gras’s board. The idea of returning the Mardi Gras to Community Park was nixed because the event has grown too big for that venue and parking and logistics would be a major headache.
Charging admission to the festival would mean the Mardi Gras organizers would have to set up fences and gates around the Community Center and Depot Street. If it charged the $20 general adult admission ticket like the Garlic Festival does, the resulting dramatic drop in attendance would most likely offset any revenue from ticket sales. Plus, it would diminish the Mardi Gras’s spirit to be inclusive and invite families and individuals in who might not be able to afford a day out.
Thumbs down, too, for holding the Mardi Gras an extra day on Memorial Day. That’s a remembrance day for Americans to honor the men and women who served and died for their country in the Armed Forces. To hold our mushroom festival on that day would be tacky.
On the other hand, the recommendation of having more mushroom-related attractions at the Mardi Gras is a winner. And I know Minnich and the board of directors have been discussing this for years as a way to improve the Mardi Gras. One idea is to have a friendly cook-off contest for high school students, giving them various ingredients including mushrooms to test their culinary talents.
The bottom-line is that the Gilroy Garlic Festival and Morgan Hill’s Mushroom Mardi Gras are different events for different communities.
The stinking rose and the fun fungi attract their share of guests to the South Valley. Comparisons and contrasts aside, we should honor the thousands of volunteers at both events who give their time and energy to help raise funds for worthy causes that make this region a better place to live.
