It’s All Greek to Them : Festival: Three days of dancing and eating draw about 18,000 to a church fund-raiser at Camarillo Airport.

Ray Warren was getting ready to dance Sunday afternoon when yet another curious onlooker asked him about the costume.

Warren, a Port Hueneme car salesman and part-time waiter at a Greek restaurant in Santa Barbara, proudly told the questioner that the white tunic, leggings, red and gold embroidered vest and maroon skullcap is the authentic uniform of the Athenian Royal Guard.

“I went to Athens and got measured for it by the same guy who makes these for the guards,” Warren said, admitting that “it’s not exactly the kind of get-up you wear every day.”

But Sunday was far from just any day at the Camarillo Airport. Thousands of Southern Californians descended on the area to eat baklava and gyros, drink ouzo and dance to the traditional tunes of The Hellenic Sounds at the 14th annual St. Demetrios Greek Festival, sponsored by St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church.

Members of the church, located in an old Air Force Base chapel at the airport, have held a Greek Festival each year since 1978, said festival organizer Chris Pulos of Port Hueneme.

“We’re really trying to bring out Greek culture,” Pulos said. “And this is our major fund-raiser of the year, of course.”

While Pulos spoke, church members bustled from table to table of the church’s small multipurpose room, which serves as central command for the massive cooking effort during the festival.

Several stopped long enough to down shots of ouzo, the transparent licorice-flavored liqueur for which Greece is famous, before heading out the doors carrying large trays of pastry, salad and other foods.

“What you see here is the culmination of months of work,” Pulos said. “Some of the women have been making pastries since February for this weekend, and of course we’re still running out.”

All told, Pulos estimated that the 18,000 people who attended the three-day festival ate 20,000 pastries, 4,000 dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) and 5,000 gyros (beef wrapped in pita bread), along with hundreds of pounds of other Greek items such as grilled souvlakia and fresh feta cheese with olives.

Revenue from the food sales, combined with revenue earned from the sale of tapes of Greek music, religious icons, books about mythology and archeology, and novelties such as traditional Greek fishermen’s caps, probably will total more than $80,000, Pulos said.

After expenses, that should be enough to allow the church to pay off its mortgage in October, Pulos said. “Then we’re going to have a mortgage-burning party,” he said.

The only party that many of the revelers really cared about Sunday was the dancing.

Ann and Arnold Guminski, a fiftysomething couple from Glendale, said they passed up Greek festivals in San Diego and West Covina to come dancing at the St. Demetrios affair. “We’re groupies. We go to all the big festivals,” Ann Guminski said.

“We follow the band pretty much wherever they go,” her husband, Arnold, said. “It’s beautiful music and dancing, and great aerobic exercise.”

The Guminskis said they are part of an informal group of 20 to 30 people who meet at Greek festivals across Southern California.

Another of the self-described Greek dancing groupies was Tom Barr, 50, of Agoura Hills. Barr, a Los Angeles County probation officer, teaches dance at Pierce College in Woodland Hills but also uses his hobby during counseling sessions with gang members at Camp Kilpatrick in the Santa Monica Mountains, he said.

In Greek dancing, men sometimes move together arm-in-arm, or with arms around each other’s waists. At times men even hold hands, something many gang members balk at.

“That’s a big thing--when you tell two guys they have to hold hands while they dance. One of them says, ‘What do you mean? I’m a Blood and I’m going to hold hands with this Crip and dance?’ ”

Kathy and Richard Merriman of Westlake Village said they came to the festival for the dancing, but as spectators rather than participants.

“It seems more popular than ever,” Kathy Merriman said as she munched a pastry dripping with honey and powdered sugar. “And it’s the one time of the year that he can wear that hat,” she said, pointing to the Greek fishing cap her husband, Richard, was wearing.

“It looks pretty bad everywhere else.”

Late in the afternoon, Warren, still bedecked in his traditional uniform, joined two friends in a special demonstration of the Hasapiko, a traditional dance of Greek butchers and sailors.

He lamented the fact that Greek dancing has lost much of its popularity in Greece.

“There’s a lot of this kind of dancing in Greece, but not as much as I’d like,” Warren said. “You can find it if you go where the Greeks go, but I think there’s too much disco there now.”