By ROY MORLIDGE
Beat Columnist

On June 5, 1909, the city of San Leandro celebrated its first Cherry Festival in honor of its main crop with great success. Though it hasn’t been held every year, this year’s festival, held on June 6th, was one the city just couldn’t miss as it was the Cherry Festival’s 100^th anniversary.

The Cherry Festival has been near and dear to my heart for years now. I have many good memories of past festivals and, when I was much younger, participated in two Cherry Festival parades.

In honor of the 100^th anniversary, this festival was marked by a short parade saluting the original 1909 parade with actors portraying the Cherry Festival Queen and former San Leandro Mayor John Gill. There were also children dressed up in period clothing and representing historic San Leandro residents.

Tying in to the historic value, this year’s festival was held on West Estudillo Ave, in front of the San Leandro History Museum and the historic landmark of Casa Peralta. Even though I thought this was pretty cool, I think that a more open location such as Marina Park, which has hosted the festival in the past, would probably have made a better choice as people did bottle up in some places.

But the main issue I had with the festival was that there were not enough cherry themed booths. In fact, there were many vendors who seemingly had nothing to do with the cherry. Even the farmer’s market seemed to devote half its space to selling cherries.

But for all this, there were some cherry themed food items available. One booth sold cherry pie at $4 a slice. Meanwhile, the festival’s official cherry store sold, in addition to t-shirts, items such as cherry BBQ sauce, cherry salsa, cherry jam, and cherry vinegar.

Even though I was content with my bag full of fresh cherries, raspberries, and strawberries; I did feel slightly disappointed when I left after spending only one and half hours there. The 2009 Cherry Festival just didn’t live up to my expectations.

But having said that, I really hope that San Leandro considers holding the festival again next year. It is an important celebration of the city’s heritage that has unfortunately often been neglected over the past 100 years.

E-mail Roy Morlidge at californiabeat@gmail.com. Join the California Beat on Facebook, and get breaking news headlines, story alerts and previews when you follow us on Twitter.