Approximately 5,000 participants hurl roma tomatoes at each other as live music and beer flow all afternoon

• Expires Sep 29, 2012
• Must be 14 or older. Ages 14-18 must sign waver. Must provide 21 ID to receive alcoholic beverages.
• See the rules that apply to all deals.

Tomato Battle contestants gather at the Alameda County Fairgrounds on Saturday, September 29, starting at noon. Live entertainment and a costume contest get crowds amped up for the fight itself at 4 p.m., and festivities last until 6 p.m. In the event of a tomato shortage, the festival will go on as planned but will be transformed into a mud battle.

At each of several one-day festivals held throughout the country, thousands of revelers unite in an epic clash of pulp, beer, and live music. Armed with a cache of 300,000 pounds of tomatoes, participants don protective bathing suits and goggles and hurl the fruit at one another during a two-hour battle. Throughout the afternoon, live music and costume contests offer an entertaining respite from the front lines, as bartenders dispense drafts of beer to attendees older than 21, refueling soldiers’ morale before they resign to writing goodbye letters to their produce vendors back home. All tomatoes used during the event are past ripe and already fated for disposal, making the battle an efficient means of tossing them before their cursed transformation into singing Muppets.