• Around 737,000 Bay Area residents are expected to lose access to California’s SNAP food assistance program this year when new guidelines take effect June 1 — the largest in the program’s history. [KRON4]
• Only seven Black students plan to attend the prestigious Lowell High School next year — 52 applied and 13 were accepted, but some opted for other schools, largely due to a lack of Black teachers at the school. [Chronicle]
• Trump called New York Times reporter David Sanger “treasonous” for pointing out that Trump’s military campaign against Iran was unsuccessful at achieving political change there. [The Hill]  
• The SFPD arrested 62 people during a 24-hour operation targeting fugitives with outstanding arrest warrants and open-air drug markets in the Tenderloin, Mission, and South of Market districts. [KRON4]
• Harvey Weinstein’s third New York sexual assault case in which he’s accused of raping an aspiring actress in a Manhattan hotel in 2013, was declared a mistrial Friday after the jury remained deadlocked on a verdict. [NBC News]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Image: Weekly Saturday protest at Tesla showroom (noon–2 pm); Matilda P./SFist

• Dangerous weather, including snow, ice, and sleet, has impacted 37 states, causing the cancellation of more than 10,000 flights. The central and eastern US are experiencing temperatures 10-40 degrees below average with wind chills between -20 and -30 degrees. [NBC News]
• A Cybertruck owner in Oakland has filed a second federal complaint stemming from a frightening experience in 2024 when the back passenger door flew open on the highway due to a latch malfunction — with his baby inside the car. [Oaklandside]
• The protestor who was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis Saturday has been identified as 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital who was trying to help a fellow protestor that agents had pushed to the ground and pepper-sprayed. [Associated Press]

• Hundreds of protestors rallied across the Bay Area in support of Minneapolis Friday and Saturday, including San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza and San Jose's Mexican Heritage Plaza. [KPIX]

• Sebastopol police in Sonoma County arrested a man allegedly wearing Wolverine-style metal knuckles and in possession of a meth pipe who's also suspected of illegally camping and littering the waterway near the Joe Rodota Trail. [Press Democrat]
• A former mayoral candidate in Antioch is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on charges that he allegedly killed his wife in 2015, which was originally ruled a suicide until new leads were discovered in 2024. [Bay Area News Group]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• Community advocates gathered outside the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office Friday in protest of the DA’s decision to not pursue charges against the 19-year-old driver who struck and killed four-year-old Ayden Fang in Burlingame last year. [San Mateo Daily Journal]
• The US Coast Guard San Francisco Sector posted on Facebook asking for information on the owner of a surfboard that was found Friday evening at Ocean Beach, presumably to verify they’re safe. [USCG SF/Facebook]

• A federal judge ruled Friday that federal agents in Minneapolis are prohibited from detaining or throwing tear gas at peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities. [Associated Press]
• A fire hydrant at Broadway and Powell streets in San Francisco began gushing water Friday evening when a car crashed into it around 7:06 pm; no injuries were reported. [KRON4]

• A group of San Francisco elementary school students were spotted protesting ICE in the Haight Friday. [David Robinson/Threads]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• A Gilroy teen found a razor blade inside a Milky Way candy bar this week but wasn’t seriously injured. She said she received it while trick-or-treating in her immediate neighborhood. [NBC Bay Area]
• Oregon U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut ruled Friday that the Trump administration must remove National Guard troops from Portland within 14 days, permanently blocking their deployment and calling his attempts to federalize troops “a gross abuse of power.” [KPIX]
• A group of singles sick of dating apps showed up to a singles night at Costco Thursday thinking it was a quirky one-off thing organized by a person but quickly discovered it was put on by an AI app (although SFist could tell right away when we saw the slick marketing out in the wild). [Chronicle]
• A family in Fremont is searching for the owner of an off-leash dog that attacked and killed their small dog, Cheese, on October 23, then fled the scene; they’re raising funds to pay for $20,000 in vet bills. [KTVU]

• The occupants of a black Dodge Charger were nabbed by the California Highway Patrol and taken into custody by the Novato Police Department when it was discovered they were allegedly in possession of $20,000 worth of stolen designer glasses. [KRON4]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff thinks Trump should send the National Guard to combat crime in San Francisco. He also thinks SF should “re-fund” the police force, as if it were ever defunded. [Chronicle]
• Luigi Aprea Elementary School in Gilroy had a power outage Thursday due to copper wire theft, the second such incident at a Gilroy elementary school in a month. A bill is currently on Governor Newsom’s desk that would tighten regulations and deter the sale of stolen metal in California. [KGO]

• Officials from the South Lake Tahoe church where Mayor Tamara Wallace publicly admitted to stealing funds say that they caught her in the act, and she stole $300,000. The church is still recovering from a fire that caused around $50,000 in damages about five years ago. [Chronicle]
• The crowd was sparse at Fleet Week Friday without the Blue Angels or any other presence from the US military due to the federal government shutdown. [NBC Bay Area]
• San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office informed the American Indian Cultural Center that the city is ending its 20-year collaboration hosting the annual Native American Heritage Night in favor of a different, unnamed partner — here’s their petition. [Mission Local]

National:

• A huge blast at a Tennessee explosives manufacturing plant has killed multiple people, and 19 are missing. Four to five people were brought to the hospital, according to the sheriff. [ABC News]

• A cleverly composed photo taken by photojournalist Jim Watson at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting makes Trump look like he has devil horns. [Huffington Post]

Video of the Day:

Portland protesters are driving home the “boiling frog” analogy with these brilliant frog costumes amid ICE’s ongoing invasion of the city. (The actual boiling frog experiment has been debunked, but the metaphor prevails.)

Earlier this week, an ICE officer sprayed pepper spray directly into the valve of one of the frog costumes. [The Oregonian]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

After years of organizing and advocacy by local volunteers, Gilroy will hold its first-ever Pride celebration on August 2, featuring folklorico, drag performances, and community resources — a milestone in the conservative South Bay town.

As Bay Area News Group reports, Gilroy’s inaugural Pride marks a historic moment for LGBTQ+ residents in South Santa Clara County who have long faced isolation, harassment, and a lack of visibility in the largely agricultural region. The event is the result of nearly two years of grassroots organizing by Pride Social South County, a small but determined collective that also led Morgan Hill’s first Pride in 2024.

One of the group’s co-founders, Terry Hernandez, grew up in Gilroy and remembers the risk involved in simply gathering. Their first meeting took place behind the now-defunct Chacho’s Mexican restaurant in Morgan Hill, where Hernandez marked the space with a Cinco de Mayo balloon. Some attendees feared the meetup might be a trap set by hate groups.

Bit by bit, the meetings grew, despite the risks. Attendees shared stories of being stalked, outed by teachers, or threatened with violence. One couple sought a restraining order after being confronted by a neighbor with a gun. Another local advocate, Carlos Pineda, recalled how Pride flags outside his workplace were repeatedly torn down and run over.

“This is not normal,” Hernandez told Bay Area News Group. “You should be able to live in your community freely and not have a restraining order against your neighbor or worry that you’re gonna go home and hide the flag.”

Over time, the group began hosting potlucks and dance nights, then took the big step of organizing public Pride events. Last year, they helped organize Morgan Hill's Pridefest, and this year Gilroy's. “Pride is a protest,” Hernandez said. “It’s about claiming our space.”

As reported by Gilroy Dispatch, the 2021 effort to fly the Pride flag at Gilroy City Hall stirred controversy. The council ultimately voted unanimously to allow the flag, but then-Mayor Marie Blankley opposed having the city participate in a ceremonial raising.

Former Councilmember Rebeca Armendariz helped lead the push and called it “a leap in the right direction, but a scary one for all of us.” The vote prompted the city to adopt a general flag policy requiring 150 voter signatures and council approval every other year. The flag has flown each June since, as reported by Gilroy Dispatch.

The event’s organizers aim to spotlight both queer identity and Gilroy’s Latino heritage. The celebration will feature a queer folklorico troupe, local musicians, food trucks, and booths offering mental health resources, HIV testing, and immigration legal aid. Hernandez emphasized the importance of the health services, citing a county report showing that Latino men have nearly double the rate of new HIV diagnoses, with Gilroy being the county’s most heavily Latino city.

“For us to have Pride in a conservative area where it’s never been done before... hopefully it will send a loud message to the queer community: ‘We’re here. We’re going to continue to be here. We’re going to continue to fight for you,’” said Augustine Alvarez, treasurer of Pride Social South County and a lead organizer of both Morgan Hill and Gilroy Pride.

Pineda, a local advocate who works with youth, said he grew up feeling like he had to leave Gilroy to understand his identity. “Growing up in a Hispanic household, it’s a lot of ‘we don’t talk about it,’” he said. “You’d have to go to San Francisco to have conversations about how to find yourself.”

“It’s amazing when everybody comes together,” said Hernandez. “At times, we don’t realize what we bring to the table. And Gilroy has pride, family, the love of community.”

Organizers praised support from Mayor Greg Bozzo and Councilmember Zach Hilton. “We went all around here and we got a lot of no’s,” Alvarez said. “But we’re very grateful for the people that said yes.”

Addendum: Rene Spring, a former councilmember of the nearby city of Morgan Hill — and South County's first openly gay councilmember, provided SFist with more background info on the history of Morgan Hill's Pride, which was embraced by city officials much earlier than Gilroy's Pride:

In Morgan Hill, we already celebrated the first Pride Flag Raising ceremony with a small Pridefest back in 2017 for the first time.

This was organized by the City of Morgan Hill per a decision by the Morgan Hill City Council earlier that year. South County Pride didn’t exist yet during those years.

I was the first openly gay elected Councilmember in Morgan Hill (and all of South County), and I introduced a resolution in early 2017, soon after my first election to the City Council of Morgan Hill.
At that time, all Morgan Hill City Councilmembers supported my resolution to have the Pride Flag flown at three different locations in Morgan Hill each month of June.

This has been done every year since then, with support from the City of Morgan Hill. What started as a small event has grown year by year.

It’s part of the LGBTQIA+ community’s history in South Santa Clara County.

Gilroy’s first Pride will take place Saturday, August 2, from Noon to 4 p.m. at Gilroy Civic Center, featuring family-friendly events. There will be an adults-only after-party and drag show later in the evening at Tempo Kitchen and Bar starting at 9 p.m.

Image: helivideo/Getty Images

Gilroy’s got its groove back, as the famed Gilroy Garlic Festival was resurrected in its reeking glory Friday morning. It’s much smaller than before, and sold out, but it now has a free livestream, and you can try your luck in a small ticket exchange.

It has to be cathartic for the city of Gilroy, California, that their renowned Gilroy Garlic Festival has returned after what was effectively a five-year hiatus. There was of course the horrible 2019 mass shooting at the festival that killed three people and injured 17 more, then COVID canceled the 2020 festival, 2021 was an in-car “drive-through” event, and in 2022, organizers simply pulled the plug on the festival for financial reasons.  

But as of 10 am Friday morning, festival organizers announced “The bulb is lit,” and indeed they do have a garlic clove replica torch that they lit up! The gates are now open and the 2025 Gilroy Garlic Festival is underway. Though as KRON4 points out, tickets are sold out, as they are only allowing 3,000 attendees per day, and 9,000 for the weekend. (Previous iterations in the festival’s heyday would draw 100,000 attendees over the weekend.)

But if this does anything for you, there is a Gilroy Garlic Festival livestream that’s going all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s mostly live bands on the main stage, but there are cooking segments each day, and an apparently garlic-themed band called The Stinkin’ Locals playing Friday at 5:15 pm. You can find the full weekend livestream schedule here.

And what’s this? The festival's website does offer a ticket exchange, and as of early Friday afternoon, we are seeing a small number of single-day tickets available for Friday or Saturday only ($35). We do not see the required parking passes on sale, but those parking passes are available on a third-party ticket site ($25).

So if you manage to make it to the reborn Gilroy Garlic Festival, realize it is no longer at its longtime venue Christmas Hill Park. It is now at the vastly smaller South County Grove at an amusement park called Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park (3050 Hecker Pass Highway). So the Gilroy Garlic Festival may be peeled down, but it’s an absolute delight to see the return of one of NorCal’s most charming smalltown summer festivals.

Related: Gilroy Garlic Festival Announces Its Glorious Return for 2025 [SFist]

Image: People lined up to buy garlic ice cream at the 2007 Garlic Festival, Gilroy, California. (Getty Images)

The Garlic Shoppe, a recognizable pitstop for thousands of travelers who relish in the unique garlic-themed offerings at the busy crossroads of Highway 101 and State Route 25 in Gilroy, is being uprooted from its long-time home.

The abrupt move was mandated by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency (VTA), which, under eminent domain, acquired the property to build a new intersection at the location, per KSBW.

It’s reportedly part of a nearly $140 million project to replace Highway 25's two-lane over-crossing with a four-lane over-crossing over Highway 101, increase the length of Highway 101 off-ramp, upgrade traffic signals, and add bike lanes.  The VTA fast-tracked the project at the beginning of this year, according to the Chronicle. And when it did, the Garlic Shoppe location came under fire because it in particular has a higher-than-average rate of accidents.

The owners, brothers Alex and Charlie Larson, told KSBW that they found out days before they were required to move. As Charlie told the outlet, “We've been here for 39 years. Alex is 62, and I'm 63. We are planning to retire a few years...now we have to basically start all over again."

The Garlic Shoppe is apparently planning to migrate to its sister winery, Rapazzini Winery, just down the street. The Larson brothers say they will continue selling their garlic-infused products there until the end of the year, when they'll hopefully be able to find a new permanent home for the store.

Feature image via Google Street View.

A Gilroy man has reportedly admitted to police that he shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and burned her dismembered remains in order to cover up or retaliate for a rape accusation she had filed against him.

31-year-old Ivan Alfaro Escobedo was arrested on August 30 in connection with the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, 33-year-old Alyssa Nicole Salazar of Salinas, but it was only last week that human remains found in burn barrels on Escobedo's sister's property were confirmed to be those of Salazar, as KSBW reported.

Salazar was last seen alive on July 26, after she was seen getting into a vehicle with Escobedo. In April, Salazar had filed a rape accusation against Escobedo, an investigation into which was ongoing as of July. Days before her disappearance, Salazar's family members say they received a threatening phone call from someone they believed to be Escobedo, threatening to kill her and them if their cooperation with police persisted.

As KRON4 reports, Gilroy Police Department Detective Jason Greathead wrote in a police report that neighbors witnessed fires in two burn barrels next to a trailer occupied by Escobedo and his sister which began on July 26. Escobedo also allegedly told a neighbor that he had shot Salazar in his car, cut up her body in the trailer's bathtub, and burned it in the barrels.

Following Escobedo's arrest, investigators found what have turned out to be Salazar’s skull, hand, and rib bones in in the barrels. Also, "red-brown stains [were found] on the front passenger door frame and seat foam" of Escobedo's car which came back positive for blood, also Salazar's.

Escobedo has reportedly admitted his crimes to police, as the Chronicle reports. He was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, and he has been custody at the Santa Clara County jail without bail since late August.

This is the second high-profile case of domestic violence dismemberment in the Bay Area this summer. The other was the case of 27-year-old Rachel Elizabeth Imani Buckner, which as of Tuesday is moving ahead to trial, after a three-day preliminary hearing. Buckner's boyfriend, Joseph Carl Roberts, is accused of killing Buckner in the Pleasanton apartment they shared, dismembering her body, and disposing of it partly on an Alameda shoreline. Parts of Buckner's remains, including her head and hands, still have not been found.

In unincorporated Gilroy, California early Sunday morning, a man barricaded himself inside a home after firing a weapon at sheriff's deputies who had arrived to perform a welfare check, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office.

Officials first confirmed the incident in a tweet Sunday morning, saying that the standoff began at about 8 a.m., when the deputies tried to make contact with the man. The man, whose identity has not been released, responded by pulling out a gun and firing at them, the Chronicle reported.

The deputies reportedly took cover and called for backup, prompting the department's Emergency Response Team and Crisis Negotiations Team to arrive as well at the scene on the 3000 block of Dryden Avenue at Bishop Court.

These teams were "using all available de-escalation tactics for a peaceful resolution," according to the sheriff.

However, as of this afternoon, the sheriff’s public information officer, Russell Davis, told ABC7 News that the suspect continues to fire rounds out at deputies on scene. Davis said that it remains an active scene as of 1 p.m. Sunday.

Authorities did not say whether or not anyone had been injured or released more details. The situation seems to still be developing.

Image via Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons.

The town of Gilroy is officially saying goodbye (for now?) to its internationally known, annual Garlic Festival, which was a major tourist draw over two summer weekends for four decades. And the reason isn't wholly tied to the shooting that occurred there in 2019.

Citing "lingering uncertainties from the pandemic, along with prohibitive insurance requirements by the City of Gilroy," organizers of the Gilroy Garlic Festival announced late Thursday that this year's festival would not happen, and that the festival as everyone knows it is likely dunzo, forever.

"The events that people have been used to for these 42-43 years, that model is no longer going to be used for the festival," said Tom Cline, a board member of the festival association, speaking to ABC 7. "It's going to be a smaller, intimate model."

That smaller model will include a farm-to-table dinner event, similar to one held in 2021, a golf tournament, and a concert series.

While the 2019 shooting, which occurred on the Sunday of the festival's first weekend as festivities were winding down, would have likely put a damper on things regardless of the COVID pandemic — and one festival vendor tells ABC 7 she can't even go near Christmas Hill Park, where the festival is usually held, due to the lingering trauma of the shooting — the reasons for canceling the festival seem largely financial.

Speaking to KSBW, Cline said, "Clearly it was over the 10 years of just losing money — [that] was the main culprit and the main cause of what was going on with the festival and being able to be sustainable and that was the ... root cause of it."

And as Gilroy Mayor Marie Blankley tells ABC 7, "well before 2019 even, [the organizers] were in a predicament that they were going to have to change and reimagine and figure something out because the money was already not there."

As for the "prohibitive" insurance costs that now come with the event — presumably the price tag for that went up after a mass shooting — Blankley says, "When you don't have money, everything's prohibitive."

Certainly having to cancel 2020's festival and then hold a drive-through event in 2021 for vendors of garlicky foods did not help the financial picture either.

The festival had, in the pre-2019 period, outgrown Christmas Hill Park, and it sounds like development encroaching on the area next to it created parking challenges as well — and a need for festival-sponsored buses.

But fans of the event who made annual pilgrimages to the South Bay for their garlic fix can at least hear a modicum of hope in what Mayor Blankley and Cline had to say — some smaller festival might come together elsewhere, in future years.

"Everyone should stop and you know, not look at what has been lost. But instead look at just going back — maybe to the halfway point — and just building it again, under the circumstances of today... which are very different than when the festival started in the 1980s," said Blankley.

The festival first launched as a smaller affair in 1979, and over the course of the 1980s and 90s gained international attention and grew in popularity — helping to solidify Gilroy's reputation as the Garlic Capital of the World.

The 2019 shooting was committed by a disturbed 19-year-old who grew up nearby and whose true motives — beyond a fractured and rage-filled ideology that toyed with white supremacy — remain unknown. Three people died in the shooting, including two children, and 17 others were injured. The shooter took his own life after screaming about being "very angry," though initial reports suggested that police on the scene had shot him.

Survivors of the shooting filed a lawsuit against the festival organizers in November 2019 citing "negligent security measures."

Photo from 2019 by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Photo: Maria Jesus Errazuriz

Two years after a mass shooting at the event that killed three people and injured 17 others, the Gilroy Garlic Festival is returning in an altered, pandemic form, as a drive-through.

The 42-year-old Gilroy Garlic Festival hasn't happened since July 2019, when a 19-year-old gunman with unspecific but anger-driven motives snuck onto the festival grounds and shot indiscriminately into the crowd before being shot several times by police and dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

This year, the festival's Gourmet Alley food vendors are returning for two consecutive weekends, taking pre-orders and serving up their garlicky dishes in a drive-through setup at Gilroy Presbyterian Church (6000 Miller Avenue). The food's being served from 4 to 7 p.m. today and next Friday, and from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, July 24-25, and July 31-August 1.

All proceeds are going to support the festival's nonprofit, which went a full year with no revenue last year — and which has distributed nearly $12 million to local organizations since its founding in 1979.

The menu is as follows:

• Steak Combo: Pepper Steak Sandwich, Shrimp Scampi,World-Famous Garlic Bread, $25
• Sausage Combo: Sausage Sandwich, Shrimp Scampi,World-Famous Garlic Bread, $25
• Pepper Steak Sandwich, $14
• Sausage Sandwich, $14
• World-Famous Garlic Bread: Half Loaf, $10
• Garlic Fries, $10
• Shrimp Scampi, $10

"We’re at Gourmet Alley where all the garlic food that you’ve been waiting to have for the last two years will be here," says Garlic Festival President Tom Cline, speaking to KPIX. "We’ve been challenged, last year with no revenue, we had to re-imagine it. So, this year, our volunteers are doing their service in kind to us raise money for the festival because we need that help."

Pre-orders can be made here, and you can either set up a specific pickup time, or ask for your food ASAP. It does not appear possible, though, to get food at the drive-through without pre-ordering.

The Garlic Festival Golf Classic is still on, and that's happening next Friday, July 30, and there's also a farm-to-table dinner happening tomorrow night at Fortino Winery.

If you can't make it down there for scampi and want to donate to the festival, you can do that here.

A popular pumpkin patch and fall festival locale outside of Morgan Hill is asking for off-duty, uniformed Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies to stand guard through the Halloween season. But the sheriff in those parts says they don't do that kind of thing.

The request comes eight weeks after the attempted mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival that claimed three lives, not including that of the 19-year-old gunman. As an organizer of the pumpkin festival at Uesugi Farms tells NBC Bay Area, "We reached out to the Santa Clara County sheriff multiple times, and they’re not willing to work with us. And I don’t understand why. It's disheartening to me because... I’m trying to protect their constituents, their community."

Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith tells the station that it's simply against policy to let deputies do paid gigs "in uniform," and that's not really how this works.

The organizer crowing to NBC Bay Area did not wish to be identified, but obviously tensions remain high in the region when it comes to festivals with large weekend draws.

A rep for the Gilroy Police Department, whom the organizer apparently also reached out to, said they don't have the staff to cover events outside their city. (Uesugi Farms is in San Martin, in unincorporated Santa Clara County, just south of Gilroy's city limits).

One local resident tells the station she feels "unsafe," and doesn't like going out anymore, so she'd prefer if the deputies were there.

But even with police onsite at the Garlic Festival in July, a shooter still made it onto the grounds and did a lot of damage...