Stockton Stalks, Spears a Trendy New Identity

The town that used to be known derisively as Mudville and Fat City was gunning for a new identity over the weekend: Stockton, Asparagus Capital of the World.

It was a serious and apparently successful campaign, helped along by a little sun, a little music and a lot of asparagus: asparagus bisque, asparagus quiche, asparagus popcorn, asparagus bread sticks. Milk chocolate asparagus bunches. Asparagus cookies. Coffee with an asparagus-spear stirrer.

By the time the second annual Stockton Asparagus Festival ended Sunday more than 60,000 visitors had gobbled up 12,000 pounds of asparagus dished out by 2,500 festival volunteers.

The festival is “a heck of a lot better than anything this town’s had to offer before,” said local resident Jack Cosgrove, 29, sitting under a willow tree and sipping a beer from an asparagus-emblazoned stein.

“Like Gilroy and garlic--that’s going to be our name now, the asparagus capital of the world,” added his friend, Dan Sharp, 29.

The city’s convention and visitors bureau dreamed up the idea of the festival several years ago after a series of bizarre political scandals left the town’s image badly tarnished. In one incident, a white Stockton resident was elected to the City Council after campaigning as a black. In another, two council members, each claiming to be the stronger anti-drug candidate, conducted urine tests in front of reporters.

“You’re never going to stop bad political publicity, but the question is, what else is there?” asked Kathy Post, promotional director for the festival. “Finally Stockton has its ‘what else,’ its thing.”

In turning to a vegetable for help, Stockton followed the lead of Gilroy, a small garlic-producing town south of San Jose, that transformed its smelly agricultural staple into a tourist attraction through an annual Garlic Festival. Stockton was not alone. Since Gilroy’s success, Castroville now has an Artichoke Festival, Vacaville an Onion Festival, and Morgan Hill a Mushroom Mardi Gras.

In the Public Mind

“Due to the fresh vegetable syndrome that has taken place in the U.S., mention garlic or asparagus or what-have-you and people will follow,” said Bill DePaoli, executive director of the California Asparagus Growers Assn., which donated the Stockton festival’s asparagus.

Asparagus seemed a natural for Stockton: The San Joaquin Delta area around the city produces 65 million pounds of it every year, making it the leading asparagus-growing region in the country. And promoters figured that the vegetable’s gourmet image was just what the former “Fat City” needed.

“Asparagus has the connotation of being the Rolls-Royce of vegetables,” DePaoli said. “It’s the classiest vegetable, as opposed with all due respect to broccoli or cauliflower.”

It may be gourmet to the world, but in Stockton asparagus is unquestionably the vegetable of the people.

“Everywhere you go now, it’s deep-fried asparagus,” said Valerie Sotelo, munching an asparagus-shrimp salad at a picnic table with her husband and some friends. “It’s as popular as nachos and cheese.”

“I would say we eat it two or three times a week when it’s in season,” said Cliff Severson, 42, the manager of a local youth soccer team that was selling asparagus-flavored popcorn. “Then we blanch it and freeze it and eat it year ‘round.”

For some, though, even with asparagus there can be too much of a good thing.

Russell Knight, 50, worked in the fields harvesting asparagus as a teen-ager. “You’d better believe it was hard and dirty. I did it because there wasn’t much (other work) to do,” Knight said. Now working as a mechanic, he was enjoying his deep-fried asparagus. Back then? “Sometimes you didn’t want to look at it.”

And Bryan Morse, 34, a stockbroker who was helping prepare 10,000 pint-size dishes of mushroom-asparagus pasta, said that the festival had given him “a much deeper and more earnest respect for asparagus and what you can do with it.”

Still, Morse admitted, after last year’s festival, “We couldn’t look asparagus in the spear for a month.”