50 Years of Vintage Days

From dance parties and air guitar to family-friendly attractions, spring festival connects campus and community

By Eddie Hughes (’05)

Grab the keys to your ’75 Mercury Cougar convertible, start the engine, pop in that Doobie Brothers 8-track and get ready to cruise down Memory Lane while taking a swig of nostalgia.

It was spring of 1975. Gerald Ford was the United States president, and the country was entangled in the Vietnam War. Minimum wage in California was $2. A tank of gas was about 53 cents per gallon, a loaf of bread just 38 cents and — perhaps of interest to college students at the time — a six-pack of beer averaged $2.55.

The modern Fresno State campus that we know today, located at Cedar and Shaw avenues in Fresno, wasn’t quite 20 years old (though the university dates back to 1911 at its original location). In 1975, Dr. Norman A. Baxter was the university president and the campus was a hotbed of political activity.

Fresno’s population was 297,000 and Fresno State had an enrollment of 15,000 – about 63% of what it is today. And despite all the challenges of the times, some visionary staff and students came up with an idea and executed it — leading to 50 years of springtime memories and traditions that have helped define student life at the university.

That vision in 1975 became known as Vintage Days, a name paying homage to the lush vineyards on a campus known for its Viticulture and Enology Department. This past April, the university welcomed about 50,000 people to campus for the 50th edition of the springtime festival.

What a Vintage Idea

Photos: Colorful balloons and banners added a festive feel to the Fresno State campus during the Vintage Days spring festival, as shown above outside the University Student Union.

The man largely credited for creating Vintage Days is Gary Bongiovanni, who was hired as the assistant program director of the College Union at Fresno State in the mid-1970s after graduating from Chico State. It was there he became intimately familiar with Pioneer Days, a celebration for Chico State students, and he envisioned creating a similar vibe on Fresno State’s campus.

“I thought we should do something to liven up the social image of the school,” said Bongiovanni in a 2013 issue of The Collegian student newspaper. “I managed to talk the university into holding an open house. The combination of open house and a variety of activities ended up being called Vintage Days.”

Those early years of Vintage Days were a true party atmosphere, including concerts and movies in the amphitheater, food, drinks, games and quirky competitions amongst students — the type of things college traditions are made of.

“Our campus sometimes gets segmented by your college, school or major,” says Peter Robertson, director of alumni connections for the Fresno State Alumni Association. “When you go to Vintage Days, it’s more about student life. Those walls or categories disappear, and we’re all Fresno State Bulldogs for a weekend. Vintage Days is a place to embrace the student body outside of the classroom. Those are the memories — beyond dissecting a frog.”

Bongiovanni hired Riverside native Reggie Rush to work on lighting and sound for Vintage Days events. Soon after, they met another person who would become instrumental in the success of Vintage Days — student musician Mike King, then a drummer in a band called Union Pacific.

King says he was working at a local music store in 1975 when he met with Bongiovanni and tried to sell sound equipment to Fresno State. “I didn’t sell the equipment, but they booked my band to play a noon job,” King recalls. “We played real well, and they liked us so they hired us for Vintage Days. I played the first Vintage Days.”

Rush set up the sound and lights for King’s band, and “we really hit it off and he invited me to the Residence Dining Hall,” King says. “I stuck around, and we became friends and the next thing you know I was out there running sound.”

Rush and King created the College Union Sound System (CUSS), and went on to coordinate staging, lighting and sound for decades — an entrepreneurial effort that eventually led to their careers.

All three men — Bongiovanni, Rush and King — went on to run successful businesses that tied into their
Vintage Days experience. Bongiovanni co-founded Pollstar with the late Gary Smith; Rush founded Live Light, Inc.; and King founded Speeda Sound, a sound company he ran for 43 years until selling it to PCE shortly after the COVID pandemic.

King recalls some big acts performing at Vintage Days over the years. “Papa Doo Run Run packed the amphitheater on a Sunday,” King says. “Everyone was out there in bikinis and swim trunks, all the girls on the guys’ shoulders, and it was just jamming.”

Other acts from those early days of the event included Jan and Dean, the Go-Gos and Tom Petty.
“For the students, it’s just a big release of pressure from going to classes and studying all the time and hard work,” King says. “It was a big release for them, so they were ready for it.”

Vintage Traditions

Photos: In the early years, the beginning of Vintage Days was marked by a ceremonial parade in which students from various clubs and organizations made shirts showing off silly team names (such as the “V.D. Crabs”) and were judged for creativity. From tug-of-war to arm wrestling, tricycle races and frog jumping contests, Vintage Days has been beloved for unique and quirky traditions over the years.

Another popular event was the street dance that once reportedly drew up to 20,000 people on Maple Avenue, just north of Shaw Avenue, near where the Kremen Education building stands today.

Students and attendees also competed in tricycle races, inner tube water polo, cow chip tosses, frog jumping, a massive tarp slip-n-slide, casino nights and root beer chugging.

“There were concerts in the amphitheater, games and competitions between fraternities and sororities and parties at night,” says alumnus Chris Miller, who first got involved with Vintage Days as a student in 1989 and now works as marketing director for Cumulus Media, which has sponsored the event for 30 years. “There was something going on every day. You would sign up for competitions almost like you were in the Olympics.”

In the early years, the beginning of Vintage Days was marked by a ceremonial parade where students from different clubs and organizations such as fraternities and sororities, made shirts showing off silly team names (such as the “V.D. Crabs”) and were judged for creativity.

But perhaps the most well-known Vintage Days tradition of all — the one so many alumni from the ’80s and ’90s share memories of — is the air guitar competition, where people would come on stage and strum their hands and rock out as if they were actually playing an instrument.

A tradition so legendary (and so entertaining) that it was brought up by every alum interviewed for this story.

Julie Logan Lindahl, the general manager for Fresno State’s broadcast radio station 90.7 KFSR, says Vintage Days is responsible for the direction of her career.

As a student in the mid-1980s, Logan was involved with a student team competing in the air guitar competition. Popular local rock station KKDJ helped run and promote the event, and Logan’s personality caught the attention of the station program director.

“He told me I should be on air and offered me a job,” Logan says. “My career plans were to work behind the scenes, so I told him I would practice at the on-campus station and then get back to him.”

Logan went on to work for KKDJ and other local radio stations for more than 25 years as an on-air personality.

Robertson, a four-time Fresno State graduate who most recently earned his doctoral degree in educational leadership in 2022, fondly remembers “Rocky Horror Picture Show” viewings in the amphitheater when he was a student in the 1990s helping to plan and coordinate Vintage Days.

“We didn’t have performers ready, people just came dressed up as characters and would go on stage and perform. It was very organic. It was a lot of fun,” he says.

Robertson is quick to point out that, in a day and age where seemingly everything is expensive, Vintage Days is a free, family-friendly event that students, alumni and the community at-large are welcome to enjoy. “It’s one of the largest free events still in Fresno,” Robertson says.

And while much has changed over the decades, that fact has not.

Evolution of Vintage Days

Photos: In a modern twist of the times, the 50th Vintage Days was highlighted by a drone show filled with visuals and music that creatively tapped into Bulldog spirit and many of the unique traditions that have marked the festival over the decades.

Vintage Days has long served as a fundraiser for campus clubs and Greek organizations, many of which host food booths selling things like pineapple treats, tri-tip, chicken kabobs, lumpia and elote.

While Vintage Days began as a student-centered event, it has evolved over time to attract families and children from all over the Central Valley. On average, 30,000 to 50,000 people attend the event over three days each year.

In the early 2000s, several world-record attempts were made, including the largest water balloon fight, the largest game of musical statues, the largest world map made of shoes and the largest video game controller.

Fresno State’s Student Involvement team, led by Dr. Amy Allen, Shawna Blair, Eddie Dominguez and a team of students, work year-round to plan Vintage Days. Their goal is to keep Vintage Days traditions alive while
also mixing in some fun, modern wrinkles.

“It’s important to remember that Vintage Days is largely a student-planned event,” says Shawna Blair, coordinator for major events and staff development at the Student Involvement Center. “For decades, students have gained valuable, hands-on experience in helping to plan and execute this large, community event, and our team is intentional about including students in every phase of planning.”

To celebrate the 50th birthday of the campus festival from April 19 through 21, Fresno State’s Student Involvement team planned a birthday block party featuring concerts and the first-ever campus drone show, in which dozens of drones are choreographed to display colorful imagery and words in a nighttime celebration.

Think of it as a modern fireworks show, but with neon-lit drones flying in formation, rather than pyrotechnics.

Today’s Vintage Days also features a kids’ zone with inflatables and pony rides, a large craft fair with vendors offering everything from temporary tattoo art to jewelry, food and drink vendors and a beer and wine garden.

One longstanding tradition is the food booths to raise money for campus clubs and Greek organizations. “I was in Sigma Nu and we had a food booth, a tri-tip booth,” says Miller, the Cumulus Media marketing director who has been involved with Vintage Days in some capacity since he was a student in 1989. “We had a line at our booth for days. We made so much money. We couldn’t buy enough tri-tip — we were running out of meat.”

Concerts remain a main attraction at Vintage Days, though they are no longer held in the amphitheater, a space that had not been utilized for decades and was reimagined as part of the new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Student Union constructed in 2022 to serve a growing student population. The building’s architecture incorporates elements of the old amphitheater in an outdoor space that is used to host university events.

In 2023 and 2024, with major infrastructure projects underway across campus on the lawn where Vintage Days is normally held, the festival has taken place on the lawn and parking lots surrounding the
new Resnick Student Union.

In 2020, an unparalleled time in history when students, faculty and staff were studying and working remotely because of the pandemic, the Student Involvement team pivoted to plan a virtual Vintage Days – keeping the tradition alive as best they could under the circumstances.

For alumni like Miller, who have seen firsthand how Vintage Days has evolved over time, the possibilities are limitless to what can be accomplished with the festival — whether that means re-embracing past traditions or coming up with innovative new ideas.

“I always tell the kids, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it,” Miller says. “I say that about going to school and getting an education, and I say that about being involved on campus. The more you’re engaged in school, the more you’ll get out of it.”

It’s been 50 years since Bongiovanni and others brought that innovative idea for Vintage Days to the Fresno State campus. The event created the types of memories that have become legendary among alumni and community members alike —whether they were part of the raucous party crowd from the early years or the wholesome family entertainment of recent times.

“As long as you’re having fun, it’s a great opportunity and a great way for the school to showcase itself to the community,” Miller says. “There are not a lot of campuses still doing these types of celebrations. To have it last for 50 years, still going strong, something good is happening here.”

– Eddie Hughes is senior editor for Fresno State Magazine.