FALLBROOK —— The 19th annual Fallbrook Avocado Festival went off without a hitch Sunday, organizers said, attracting more than 70,000 people and prompting a record number of vendors to re-order their space on the street for next year's festival.

As expected, the green fruit dubbed "green gold" by some occupied the center of attention during the eight-hour event, which featured a mile-long street fair on Main Street combined with events at the Fallbrook Airpark, the Fallbrook Historical Society and Del Rey Avocado.

Near the northern intersection of Main Street and Mission Road, first-time vendor Miriam Morel said she regretted not bringing any of her avocado cooking oil to sell.

"I'm not selling here. I'm promoting," said Morel, vice president of Temecula-based Pacifica Culinaria, which sells avocado oil in flavors such as raspberry melon and roasted garlic. "I'm sending people over to the Old Grove market (to buy the oil). Our focus is on small stores —— boutique-type businesses."

While hundreds of vendors selling everything from "sand art you can eat" to fake tattoos dominated the street scene, Sunday's festival was characterized by the innovation with which local businesses have turned an agricultural niche into a thriving economy.

The cooking oil that Morel was promoting at the intersection of Ivy Street and Main, for example, is high in healthy unsaturated fats and has a high temperature threshold for frying or other hot stovetop uses, she said.

Avocado oil by itself is bland, but by the time a $9.75 bottle is shelved, it has become a culinary specialty on par with peanut and other vegetable oils used for cooking, Morel said.

The variety of edible avocado products seen at the 2005 Avocado Festival included green chips, an abundance of guacamole, and even avocado-flavored ice cream, which was devised by the Old Grove market and has become a staple at Fallbrook's annual festivals.

By mid-afternoon, vendors seemed to be doing well. In front of a booth rented by a local restaurant selling fried avocados, a man announced that he had no more avocados to fry. And near the intersection of Beech Street and Main, Robert Jiminez shouted that he was on his last box of 10 avocados for sale to support the Fallbrook High School Warrior football team.

"We're trying to raise as much money as we can to pay for buses for away games," said Jiminez, a 15-year-old defensive tackle.

Across the street, Vera Damouni was selling eight-ounce cookies under a banner that read "Planet Cookies, Inc." "This is a very good show," Damouni said, adding that the only time she has not been at the Avocado Festival in recent years was when vendor spaces were sold out. "From the time we opened up until now, we haven't had time to get lunch. It's kind of nice." Avocado Festival chairman George Archibald said shortly after the festival closed that thanks to temperate, breezy weather and a strong advertising campaign, attendance seemed to stretch beyond the coveted 70,000-mark for the day.

"I think we probably had one of the biggest crowds ever," said Archibald, who has been chairman of the event for several years.

Bob Leonard, executive director of the Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce, agreed.

"I think it was really in our grand tradition of doing things right," Leonard said Sunday. "The crowds came early and stayed. And it was breezy —— just a great day to be in Fallbrook."

He added that this year's festival seemed to draw tourists from further away than in past years, suggesting that a renewed focus on Web marketing has helped promote the event beyond Southern California boundaries.

"We were kind of surprised when we found a couple who had come all the way from Ohio to come to the festival," Leonard said. "They had been scouting out events on the Internet and found this one to be interesting. Those kinds of things make you feel excited." Besides drawing more tourists for whom Fallbrook is a distant destination, this year's festival integrated events off-Main in what Leonard said was an attempt to show off more of Fallbrook's character.

Bo Donovan, the manager of Fallbrook Airpark, said after a series of water-drop demonstrations by a firefighting helicopter that between 3,000 and 6,000 people filtered through the display of classic airplanes throughout the day.

"I thought that Copter 2 was given a great opportunity to meet the community," Donovan said of the aircraft, which is based at a helipad on the southeast corner of the airpark's property. "It has to be reassuring to know you have that kind of equipment and talent available when you need it." From the breezy hilltop airpark, Fallbrook looked as calm and collected as it does on any other Sunday. But at the corner of Main and Alvarado, Tim Ritter said a solid stream of tourists had been shuffling past where he was handing out American flags since early in the morning.

"I've been standing here on the corner for the past couple hours, and I can't tell if there's more people than last year," Ritter shrugged. "But every year you can count on it being nice and sunny."

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 731-5799 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.