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If the first day of the Garlic Festival was a dress rehearsal, today is the real thing.

Throngs of carousers flocked through the front gates, spurred on by the lingering scent of garlic. Every patch of shade was crammed with overheated festival-goers, thousands of people jammed both sides of the park and long lines formed at food stands in Gourmet Alley.

Cars crawled along U.S. 101 all morning. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper all the way back to Cochrane Road in Morgan Hill, with cars tooting their horns at each other while baking in the late-morning sun. The drive from Morgan Hill to Gilroy, typically 10 minutes, turned into an hour long journey.

When people arrived, many headed straight to the beer booths for a frothy Budweiser to quench the thirst they worked up in the traffic jam. True to tradition, the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce manned the beer stations. A line formed starting at 10 a.m., said Susan Valenta, the chamber's president and chief executive officer.

"We have very loyal customers," she said with a smile. "And with loyalty comes thirst."

Many beer drinkers sipped their brew out of souvenir tin cups sporting the festival's logo. Of the 3,500 available, 900 had been sold when the festival closed its gates Friday, Valenta said. Herbie bobbleheads had also been a hot sale Friday, but there were some still available, vendors at the Garlic Mercantile reported.

"Today seemed like a great day," said Brian Bowe, executive director of the Garlic Festival Association. "The crowd ebbs and flows but the parking lots were full, the traffic was backed up to Morgan Hill, those are all good indicators of the great turnout."

Although the festival association won't have exact numbers until Sunday evening, gauging from the reports of vendors, the numbers seemed to be up, this year's festival President Ed Struzik said.

He guessed one reason for the influx of guests could be that skyrockting gas prices are keeping families closer to home, rather than traveling out of town on vacation - a "stay-cation," he called it.

Families may have escaped outrageous gas prices but they couldn't escape the heat, which reached 89 degrees with an unobstructed sun. Emergency medics estimated that they received 100 to 150 calls for service, 70 of which were 911 calls from inside the park. Six patients had to be transported from the park, said Mario Bena, chairman of emergency services. The calls for service ran the gamut from minor bee and hornet stings to cardiac and diabetic problems.

"It's a little worse than last year," Bena said. "We've got a ton of heat-related calls."

Sunday's forecast is for cooler weather, with a high in the mid-80s.

Many overheated guests found solace in the shade with a cup of sangria or a mimosa in hand. The 21 cases of orange juice that in 2007 lasted a whole weekend at the Gilroy Foundation's wine cooler booth were drained by midday today, volunteer Leighann Perales said. She suspected that a larger sign advertising the booth accounted for the flood of thirsty customers.

Despite the never-ending stream of customers at the beer and wine booths, police only had to make six arrests today, Sgt. John Sheedy said. The Alcoholic Beverage Control made an additional eight. Of the Gilroy Police Department arrests, several were fueled by alcohol, two were for fighting in public during ShaBoom's performance and one was for obstruction of justice. A total of six arrests were made yesterday, Sheedy said. All in all, the number of arrests is similar to at last year's festival, he said.

While a few alcohol-infused guests kept police busy, a few young ladies weaved through the sweaty haze of guests, looking cool and collected in comparison. The Garlic Queen and her court tried their hand at garlic braiding, conquering the task with varying amounts of success.

Mike Pando, 24, of Sunnyvale looked on as several friends clumsily braided the dried out stalks. But he wasn't there for the garlic braiding. He was there for the food.

"Definitely the food," he said. Having tried a majority of the food, he came to the conclusion that the stuffed mushrooms reigned supreme. The only downside of the festival was the lack of the strawberry lemonade offered in previous years.

"That kinda bummed me out," he said.

Andre Pagan, 28, said he comes to the festival for a few reasons: the peppersteak sandwiches, the scampi and ShaBoom.

"ShaBoom rocks," he said. "They are the heart of the Garlic Festival. They bring together you and old friends and families ... they're our band."

Celebrating their last performance together, ShaBoom went all out, drawing a crowd that didn't stop dancing for a second. Their last show will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday, ending 25 years of performing at the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

After an hour and a half of all-out rocking, the band members packed up their gear and headed out.

"We've loved every minute of it," said singer Dee Quinet. "We still haven't figured out why these people love us so much. They treat you like you're really somebody."

With ShaBoom's last performance, a Battle of the Bands face-off and Garlic Showdown, Struzik expects a similar turnout tomorrow.

"There are some big acts tomorrow," he said.