Strawberry Festival Is a Hit : Oxnard: An estimated 35,000 people attend the event where they eat--and throw--concoctions made of the fruit.

By KIRSTEN LEE SWARTZ

May 19, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Most people delighted in simply popping plump, dimpled strawberries into their mouths. But for Tom Bales, the pleasure of the county’s largest festival Saturday was letting berry gel ooze down his earlobe onto his beard.

Eric Cornejo enjoyed the sensation of the fruit sticking on his eyelashes.

“It sort of stings but it tastes good, too,” said Bales, who allowed festival-goers to hurl more than 50 of Marie Callender’s strawberry tarts at his face while he and Cornejo peered out from holes cut in a billboard.

Throngs of people from across the Southland spilled onto Oxnard’s 14-acre College Park Saturday for the tart-throwing contest and a myriad of other activities during an event celebrating one of California’s favorite fruits.

The eighth annual California Strawberry Festival moved from the Channel Islands Harbor this year to accommodate the crowds, and organizers were expecting more than 70,000 people during the weekend. At least 35,000 attended Saturday, said Tsujio Kato, chairman of the festival. “That’s the largest ever. It was about 30,000 last year.”

Strawberries were dropped in champagne, smothered in whipped cream, poked on a stick and dusted with powdered sugar, and mashed into margaritas, daiquiris and wine.

“We’re looking for the chocolate-dipped,” said Barbara Gottloeb, 28, who traveled with friends from the San Fernando Valley purely to eat.

Festival-goers created their own shortcake desserts and occasionally sought out food without berries, from gyros to fajitas. Children dipped strawberry cartons in sinks full of soapy water to make bubbles. Artisans sold jewelry and ceramics, live bands played throughout the day and, by midafternoon, cars had lined up for miles to enter the festival.

A grower with a local shipping cooperative expected to sell all of his 250 flats, or some 75,000 freshly picked strawberries.

“But that’s nothing,” said Kenichi Ito. “A couple of weeks ago in Oxnard, 500,000 were picked in a day.”

Oxnard produces 25% of the crop in the state, and California grows 80% of America’s strawberries. Two dozen companies in Oxnard grow, harvest, cool and ship around the world millions of the berries.

“People take them home in the car and eat them on the way,” said Carol Ito, Kenichi’s wife. “At home they want to do fancy things with them. . . . They have such a nice fragrance.”

During the tart-tossing contest, Bales rolled his eyes quizzically from side to side as tarts splattered against the billboard around his face. Bales’ wife, Robin, didn’t bother to pitch from behind the designated line but walked right up to her husband, smashed the tart against his nose and mouth and then kissed it from his face.

Others boldly bombarded the event’s announcer, radio disc jockey Mike Reynolds from KCAQ-FM in Oxnard.

“Help me, please,” Reynolds screeched into his microphone when a tart splattered against his new shorts. “I’ve been tarted and I can’t get up.”

One man and about 30 girls and women with hair colors from amber to orange vied for a title in the strawberry blonde contest.

“I like strawberries in my Cheerios,” 9-year-old Nicolette Dedrick told the judges.

Contestant Sherri Beck, 6, told the audience she only eats one strawberry at a time on a plate covered in whipped cream.

“I make my strawberries that way because I love whipped cream, and I only like strawberries a little bit,” she said.

One of the older contestants compared herself to the fruit.

“I’m probably as red as one right now,” said Sharon Turnbull, 24, of Camarillo. “If you get me up too early I could be a bit tart . . . but I’ll never go rotten.”