American Kitefliers Association

Thanks Mel!

The question is WHERE did all the L.A. kiters Go??

In San Diego, our annual Club Festival was mainly about inviting the L.A. fliers.
I will name names if asked. Time for bed now.

Sometimes I really wish I could just take Liana and all my kites and leave here for Home. So much potential in Region 12 and not enough promoting being done,

over 5 million people there or something like that?!

IMHO

I wonder if it is just the curse of numbers. Imagine an event. Imagine getting a parking place. Imagine the freeways. Having said this, I wonder what an event on Terminal Island , in sight of the Queen Mary would be like. I wonder if the old Marineland property is out of bounds. What if there was a fly-in at Pepperdine?
Cpt.A.

Similar to Austin, and San Diego' s Ocean Beach ,Long Beach CALIFORNIA had a kids kite festival going back to pre WWII. Venice beach pier had a festival and a kite shop. Mile Square Park in Orange County had a kite club and festivals.

Speaking of freeways one of the most risky kite fields is Tecolote Shores in San Diego. Interstate 5 is very busy and downwind from it.

I agree completely. The Los Angeles "void" is significant. I'm only aware of the Redondo, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach events. The congestion must be extreme when it comes to parking. What would happen if a horserace track was re-purposed for a weekend and hosted a kiting event?
Cpt. A.

As a long time So Cal kite flier I too wonder why interest in kiting has dwindled in this area. IMO there is no question but that it has.  The reasons, who knows?  There has been a lot of discussion about it but no real answers.  It is a conundrum.  I can say this, years ago our local flying was at what  was basically an unimproved regional park.  By unimproved I mean no restrooms and only a small area where there actually was grass.  Still that small area was several acres and only a very few small trees.  There was so much kiting activity we used to have to “layer” the kiting areas.  In the front, down wind, we had sport kites.  We could get maybe a dozen kites fliers on 100 foot lines across the front and it was so busy we had to take turns.  Actually we honed our flying skills flying next to each other like that, but I digress.  The next layer was reserved for single lines.  Given the prevailing wind the single lines could go up and over the sport kites.  It worked out well.  As the years went by a couple of things happened.  The number of kite fliers started to go down and they began to “improve” the park.  Picnic kiosks and restrooms were added and they expanded the meadow areas.  Kiters then started having to compete for these areas.  Then the soccer players discovered these same open areas.  They pretty much took over the entire park and their cleats were doing a fine job of tearing up the turf.  In order to discourage this activity and promote more of a multiuse family park guess what they did, they planted trees.  We had to beg and cajole the local officials to get them to leave a space for kiting.  Even so the area was never to be as it once was.  With both diminishing interest in kiting and the lack of a locus for the activity.  Well the rest is history.  Suffice it to say that there is no longer any serious kiting activity at this park.

Someone mentioned traffic and parking.  I would suggest that both are issues.  The SoCal area is quite spread out.  Yes we have millions of people to draw from when it comes to kiting interest but they are so geographically spread out they will have a hard time finding each other.  Even if they do traveling distance can be an issue.  Especially with fuel prices being what they are these days.  For example I am a member of the San Diego Kite Club but I live nearly a 100 miles away.  Flying with the other club members at Tecolote is not an inexpensive day out. Then there are parking/entrance fees.  At my local beach and many others the day use fee is $15.00.  To some that doesn't seem like much but to others its prohibitive.  Further, forget weekends in the summer.  You will find the beach parking lots full and closed well before noon.  Even if you were able to find parking you would find no open space to safely fly.   I still see lots of kites at the beach but not many “kiters.”
So, there ya go,  nothing I've said explains why there isn't more interest in kiting in the area, there just isn't.  I will make another observation.  I don't see many young people interested in kiting or kite building.  I suspect neither do most of you.  Its scary how many of my kiting peers are now member of the empty places in the sky club and I don't see a younger generation taking their place.  To me who has been the recipient of so much joy from kiting this is a sad turn of affairs.   To my mind that's a serious issue when we talk about kiting being “sustainable”, whether here on the west coast or elsewhere.

Hi Old Goat, I'll add a comment to your's about younger people coming into the hobby. Clubs across the country do kite workshops with THOUSANDS of children every year,,, and they have a great time , why don't we see any of those youngsters comming along. I know we compete with field sports and electronic games...do we need to change our message?  Do more of us need to think more about the public and less about our own kites when out flying? Are we sharing enough  fun and excitement ?

CLIFFORD

cliffordjquinn wrote:

why don't we see any of those youngsters comming along. I know we compete with field sports and electronic games...do we need to change our message?  Do more of us need to think more about the public and less about our own kites when out flying? Are we sharing enough  fun and excitement ?

Kiteboarding needs to be added to this equation. When you navigate away from this conversation, and back to Google or wherever, try typing in kite boarding, kite surfing, snow kiting. You will find communities worldwide, videos, photos, etc, and tens of thousands of active participants who call themselves "KITERS" and call their sport "KITING".

Watching TV I see shows about L.A., Orange, and San Diego beaches and a lot of them have the "horseshoe-shaped" LEI power kites in the background and on the horizon going around.

Since I fly mostly SLK's and Fighters, and that's all I flew back in the Day, the early 1980's in San Diego, I kind of felt that same distance from sport kites as many of you feel nowadays about traction and kiteboarding.

After all my struggles to help promote kiting, I'm seeing the world of kites as changed and Yes, many of our genres are really dying off it seems. However, Kiting is not dead at all, just Different now.

Now is the time to bring the Kids and Family crowd up and away from "newspaper & sticks" , and likewise bring some of our own people, (and Especially the Kiteboard Joe-Cool Dudes also)out of the clouds and "elite circles" and out on the field handing the handles & straps over to a kid and newbie, get them going and "infected" by the Kite Bug!

It would also help to put a few of them "Show Kites" up once in awhile at the beach (in a relatively safe open area)on another day besides just at Kite Party.

I could go on about kites being expensive but that's not the case either entirely. Between the lower priced Premier and New Techs, and the X-Kites at Wal Mart offering decent entry level kites of many types, not to mention the menacing "China copy cats" the public has access to more kites than ever before at all price ranges.

Perhaps this is all a reflection on society in general, people getting "jaded" easily and the simplicity of anything less than a 10 meter Cabrinha or other "C" kite lifting a boarder 50 feet in the sky, not enough to hold their attention and keep them around ?

I kinda lead this thread off subject ,,,sorry about that.  But talking about places to fly ,yes they are getting scarce because park designs include "tree's" and the Soccer people now dominate. Guess we have to taylor our kite stuff to smaller fields and fly smart. Sport kiters fly on shorter lines and SLK people don't put out hundreds of feet of line. Maybe that will get us closer to family's and kids. Not sure, but worth a try.

CLIFFORD

ooops ,double clicked