No. 1, With an Asterisk : Cheese Shop Owner Is Tired of Hollow Victories in Parade Float Contest

It’s not always what it’s cracked up to be when you’re the Top Dog. The Head Honcho. The Big Cheese.

Take Samantha Gastineau, owner of The Cheese Store in Ventura.

She has won the county’s top parade float competition for businesses the past two years.

But she says it’s a little embarrassing because she is the only one who has built a float in the commercial float category of the Ventura County Fair Parade in recent years.

“I feel dumb not having competition,” Gastineau said as she made a sandwich in her North Fir Street shop. “I put out all this energy and win great trophies and it feels wonderful, but it feels like there should have been more competition.”

Because she’s found so little challenge in the past, Gastineau sent a letter to the Ventura Chamber of Commerce this year daring other businesses to compete against her. And, so far, one group has entered.

Gastineau said she is thrilled at having a competitor. That way, if she wins again, she won’t feel so cheesy.

“Winning a first place when there is no second or third place is almost meaningless,” she said. “It’s an emotional letdown.

“I would like to see more people get out and compete in it,” she added. “I hope that there’s more than just one before the entries close.”

Gastineau said she was attracted to the parade three years ago when she watched it from her shop.

She entered the next year with a float of a mouse surfboarding on a piece of Swiss cheese.

And last year, the float depicted a mouse peering from a hole in a giant slice of papier-mache Swiss that measured 13.5 feet by 13.5 feet by 13.5 feet.

Gastineau said this year’s float is by far the best that she has created, but she is keeping the design a secret, saying she won’t “let the mouse out of the bag.”

“I don’t want to help my competition,” said Gastineau, 43. “I just want some competition.”

She said she is not too worried about losing to others.

“I have more practice than anyone else at this point,” she said, glancing at the pair of two-foot-high trophies on a table in the shop.

Gastineau said she had never worked on a float in high school before embarking on the surfboarding mouse design in 1989.

She begins the projects two or three weeks before the parade, setting up shop in the driveway of her Ventura house.

“The neighbors thought I was crazy,” Gastineau said. “They thought I was building a B-1 bomber.”

The papier-mache floats--constructed over wood and chicken-wire frames built around two bicycles--typically take about 120 hours of work and cost about $120 in materials.

She also sews mouse costumes for people who dance around the structures and help to push them along the parade route.

During float season, Gastineau said, she spends as much time as possible on the projects.

“On any day that I don’t have a major order, I will leave the store as soon as I can and go home and spend the afternoon and evening working on it,” she said.

Valerie Buckley, a county fair employee who handles entries in the annual parade, said of The Cheese Store’s past triumphs:

“They were No. 1. They were the only one.”

Buckley said that in recent years the commercial float competition has attracted fewer entrants than the other float competition categories for schools, adult clubs and youth clubs.

But she said she hopes that more businesses will enter this year.

Contestants have until July 26 to enter the parade, which will start at Ventura High School on Aug. 17, Buckley said.