![]() In 1994, Moore went to France as part of a seven-week European kiting tour. Moore himself became one of its top professionals, travelling each weekend to tournaments around the country and earning a national title. Moore had been right about the sport-kite business: he soon opened six stores in Missouri and Kansas, advertising in Stunt Kite Quarterly and other new publications devoted to the sport of kiting. He was one of the first people to fly kites indoors-a boast, since it showed that the kites were so light that they didn’t even need wind. “I could literally walk and move, and my body created enough pressure against this highly controllable feather to orchestrate a whole routine to music,” Moore recalled. He and Bui made sixteen-square-foot sails that were stiff but weighed only three ounces. In the process, he became one of the most skilled kiters in the world. Moore, who has a compact build, a bright smile, and the serious, studious voice of an airline pilot, took his kites on the road, performing at schools and birthday parties, for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and before crowds of thousands at kite expos. The technology they used was modelled on bird bones. They built kites using the shafts of high-performance arrows, which were constructed of lightweight aluminum encased in a carbon-fibre wrapper later, they made their own spars out of tapered graphite tubes that were being used in the production of helicopter frames. Bui turned out to be a gifted scavenger of parts. Moore brought on an aerospace engineer from the University of Kansas named David Bui, and, together, they started reverse-engineering the kites. The problem, he felt, was that the kites he was buying from suppliers weren’t fast or trickable enough-they could only do a loop or two. He watched the sport kites soar, reverse, and double back, and wondered if the kite could become the next bicycle-a vehicle for art, competition, or some combination of the two.Īfter he graduated, Moore opened a kite store in partnership with his mother. Moore was skilled with a yo-yo and had watched riders do tricks on their bikes. But a sport kite-a needle-nosed, fighter-jet-like wing of nylon or polyester-has two lines, which an operator can use to induce acrobatic turns. A traditional kite is tethered to its operator by a single line, and is more or less impossible to maneuver. ![]() He had noticed increasing numbers of so-called sport kites arcing through the skies above his home town of Lenexa, Kansas, outside Kansas City, Missouri. Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.Just as he was graduating from high school, in 1990, Chris Moore had a fanciful idea. Some person she’d never met had helped her assemble the kite, when they saw her struggling.īrosig looked around at the field, the kites in the sky and the sailboats in the bay. It’s so nice to get out and be around people.” Everybody was friendly and in a good mood, she said. Spending an afternoon flying kites turned out to be “so much fun. “It’s a beautiful day and that’s rare in San Francisco,” she said. “I had no idea what 1,500 kites would look like.” Maybe not all of them were flying, Lynch said, but “it’s pretty cool.”īlanca Brosig and her roommates had read about the free kites online, too, on a list of fun and cheap things to do. ![]() She danced around the kite as her dad tried to achieve lift off. Not far away, Stephen Lynch had come from the Richmond with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. “You’re very much at the mercy of the wind,” Barrina said. Hoang joked that it was a little “stressful” getting the kite into the sky. Honestly, it makes us feel like kids again.” It was nice, Barrina said, to “watch everyone run around like kids. Neal Barrina had come from Hayward with Hillary Hoang. Lots of people said it made them feel like kids again. “Flying a kite doesn’t require a specific technique.” You get outdoors, fresh air, family,” he says. He wasn’t surprised the event had attracted so many participants. Crissy Field was the perfect place to fly a kite, he said, all flat and wide open. On Saturday afternoon, he watched them fly overhead. Staff had 1,500 kites on hand and gave them out at a brisk pace, both to people who had planned to come and to others who stumbled upon the site of hundreds of people flying kites together with the Golden Gate Bridge as their backdrop.Īlbert Chang, the owner of Chinatown Kite Shop for 50 years now, produced the kites. The conservancy has been celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the park all year long and the day of free kites was the final event - a callback to similar events that marked the park’s opening and its 10th anniversary.
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