Record Crowd Enjoys Strawberry Festival

Ventura County’s annual homage to its patron fruit wound down Sunday on a high note with record crowds streaming in to celebrate the strawberry and the city that made it famous.

“I can’t think of any one thing that’s bad about a strawberry, and for me that’s a good enough reason to celebrate,” said Sharon Stack of Canoga Park as she carefully wound her way through the crowd with two trays of the ruby-red fruit. “They’re wonderful.”

Stack was among the estimated 89,500 people who attended the 16th annual California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. The crowd was the largest two-day total in the event’s history, organizers said.

Under bright blue skies, throngs of people milled about the 75-acre site at Oxnard College to eat, shop and celebrate the strawberry and its place in the pantheon of the county’s agricultural heritage.

Since its start in 1984, the festival has grown from being a showcase for local growers to a top-notch event that attracts people from across Southern California.

The event included all the festival requisites--food, games and crafts--plus a few bonuses, such as performances by R&B; vocalist Taylor Dayne and pop mainstay Rita Coolidge.

For aficionados of the sweet juicy fruit, there were more than a few berry-based concoctions to be had, including strawberry pizza and fryer-fresh funnel cakes dripping with mashed red pulp. Strawberry margaritas were a hit with many, as were the tall glasses of mineral water with whole berries stuck inside.

There were carnival-like activities, such as the ever popular pie-in-the-face booth, piggy rides for kids and a petting zoo.

And then there were the crafts.

Over the years, the festival has come to be as much about the trinkets and curios on sale as it is about strawberries.

It was recently ranked one of the Top 100 craft shows by Sunshine Magazine and includes the handiwork of about 350 people ranging from custom windsock designers to sculptors of polished wood pens.

Rick Irby has been a regular vendor at the festival for almost a decade and said his collection of mind-bending puzzles always draws a crowd.

“But a lot of the time they leave frustrated,” he said.

A self-described “metagrobologist”--a baffler, that is--Irby creates and sells “wire disentanglement puzzles.”

For one of his works, dubbed “Nightmare,” he has a special deal.

“If they can figure it out in five minutes, it’s theirs,” he said.

Jon Nelson and his father-in-law, Peter Basone, spent almost 20 minutes trying to free a length of string tangled in Nightmare’s Gordian knot of twisted chrome wire.

They failed and left to find an easier endeavor: eating strawberries.

“Nobody’s figured that one out,” Irby said.

On the festival’s final day, chairman Don DeArmond raced around the grounds making sure the event ran smoothly.

“It’s been a great year, definitely one of our best,” he said. “It just seems that with every year that goes by the festival just keeps getting bigger and better.”