Garlic fest back on? Yes, but not in Gilroy
Stockton businessman's announcement has organizers saying they aren't involved
Garlic enthusiasts got a whiff of excitement Sunday after hearing that a reboot of the Gilroy Garlic Festival may be in the works.
The news seemed to contradict last month's announcement that the festival had been called off for the “foreseeable future” because of pandemic-related issues and excessively expensive liability insurance required after a fatal mass shooting at the event in 2019.
As it turns out, there won't be a garlic festival in Gilroy after all, either this summer or in the near future. But there might be one in San Joaquin County that has nothing to do with Gilroy or the traditional festival's organizers.
What stirred the confusion was an announcement of the festival's reboot by the Noceti Group, a Stockton-based events company that organizes festivals, including last weekend's San Joaquin Asparagus Festival.
According to a spokesperson for the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association's Board of Directors, the Noceti Group hasn't even contacted the association to talk about its plans.
“It is not a sanctioned Gilroy Garlic Festival Association event,” spokesperson Marci Bracco Cain wrote in an email. “Stockton is not the successor of our community's homecoming event to support our essential non-profits here in Gilroy, the Garlic Capital of the World. The board is happy to see the enthusiasm the Noceti Group has for Garlic but asks that they communicate directly with the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association with those ideas.”
Tony Noceti of the Noceti Group said in an interview he has been trying to get in touch with the Gilroy
organizers but all his calls have gone to voicemails that aren't set up yet and that the festival's website “seems shutdown.” (As of May 5 , the Gilroy festival's website and its contact page were still active.)
Noceti said the new garlic festival, which won't include Gilroy in the title, will be held at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds Aug. 13-14. So far no vendors have been secured, Noceti said, but he aims to line up about 150 of them including some of the Gilroy festival's original vendors. Noceti said he will be releasing the name of the new event within the next week and promised the festival will have “a lot of food, a lot of people and a lot of entertainment. And giving back to non-profit groups.
“So, long story short, we're not stealing their festival,” Noceti said. “We're taking it because they announced that it was going away.”
According to his website, Noceti is a farmer, entrepreneur and auto racer experienced in event planning and motorsports. On the website's “About” page, he claims to have rebooted Stockton's dormant 99 Speedway in 2009 and revived the San Joaquin Asparagus Festival in 2014.
This weekend's asparagus festival will feature 200 vendors, and about 100,000 people are expected to attend.
Christopher Ranch Garlic executive Ken Christopher, whose grandfather Don Christopher cofounded the Gilroy Garlic
Festival, said in a text message that the garlic festival's success will depend on whether Noceti works with the original festival's organizers and vendors.
“If there's no formal association with the Gilroy Garlic Festival Board, then it sounds a little opportunist and a bit like a copy cat event,” Christopher wrote. “If they are coordinating with our volunteers and Garlic Festival leaders then we wish them all the best, and will look forward to building a partnership. Otherwise this seems like (a) vulture feeding on a wounded animal.”
The Gilroy Garlic Festival, which was held every year since 1979 at Christmas Hill Park, was the site of a mass shooting in 2019 when three people were killed in addition to the gunman and 17 people were injured. The festival was canceled in 2020 and a drive-through version was held in 2021.
The festival, a mainstay of the South County city of about 60,000 residents, drew massive crowds where vendors sold garlicflavored foods from seafood and meat platters to garlic-flavored ice cream. The event also served as the city's largest fundraiser, bringing in more than $12 million over the years for local schools and nonprofits.
On April 22, the Gilroy organizers said they were unable to host the 2022 festival — and that future events were unlikely — because the city was requiring multimillion-dollar liability insurance.
Prior to the 2019 shooting, the organizers obtained $1 million insurance, but no company was willing to cover the much higher amount.