Businesses, locals, and tourists react to Artichoke Festival farewell
jose.romo
CASTROVILLE, Calif. (KION-TV)– Businesses, locals, and tourists alike are feeling all choked up. The annual Artichoke Festival is officially calling it quits after decades on the central coast. After 65 years, the artichoke festival is bidding farewell to Monterey County.
The event helped put Castroville on the map — the small town now known to many as the artichoke capitol of the world.
“We just drove down for the day for Mother’s Day, and I did hear that the festival was closing down, and we’re sorry to hear that,” Jeff Gliever mentioned. “Had a lot of good times here, and it’s too bad, but we’re gonna still eat artichokes.”
Jeff, who is visiting from San Jose was sure to make a stop on his way home for artichokes. He, like many others, is sad to see this tradition go away.
“There’s like a 65-year history and then all of a sudden it just got canceled,” Josie Weisner from the Bay Area said as she picked a few artichokes from the grocery store. “It’s always nice, these kinds of events for the community.”
Most of the nation’s artichokes are grown in California, with two thirds of crops coming from fields around Castroville. The festival first began back in 1959, moving to the Monterey County Fairgrounds in 2014. This year it was scheduled to be hosted in Salinas for the first time.
“We were going to do all their fried artichokes for the festival so that’s like a thousand pounds of canceled fried artichokes that we had, you know, ready for them for the sale, but after that, it was just sad because it stops promoting artichokes.”
Jose Salazar has owned the iconic Giant Artichoke Restaurant for over twenty years. He says the festival increased sales by about 70 percent back when it was still in Castroville. Since then, his small business has taken a big hit.
“When they moved to Monterey, it was only about 30%. So the first big mistake they made is moving it out of Castroville,” he says. “I think, for all the local businesses here in town, that lost out on that income.
The festival’s board of directors say rising costs to host the event have made it no longer feasible, leading to the difficult decision of a total cancellation. Still, Salazar thinks the years of tradition left its mark on the community.
“It just makes you happy, and it makes you kind of willing to work harder and say, hey, we can create more dishes, we could do this because we have more and more people coming out to enjoy artichokes.” Salazar, owner of the giant artichoke restaurant, hopes the community can bring back the festival to Castroville.