Kite Lines - Vol.1 No. 2 - KiteLife

News From Here & There(Continued)able location, with the park on top ofthe bluff above the beach, and thebeach itself wide and long and withample parking . These help make theLong Beach Kite Festival one of thebest you could find anywhere .This year was the 51st for the festival,so they have had plenty of practice,but Maria Sharpe is still not satisfiedand is always looking for ways to makeeach successive event more memorable. She has her work cut out for her,because this year something extra wasadded in the attendance of 19 kitefliersfrom the Tokyo area, who broughtsome remarkable kites with them .Once again, more familiar facesappeared on the scene : Bob and HazelIngraham, Founder and past ExecutiveSecretary, respectively, of AKA ; BobFarquhar, now of Phoenix ; Ace Hallof Napa, surely one of the oldest activekiters ; and among the Japanese, IchiroHike and Takeshi Nishibayashi, whomI'd met in Japan last year. The festivalopened on Friday, April 22, with adinner for Bob and Hazel, at whichthe Japanese visitors were introducedand two films were shown .The flying started on the beachnext morning and continued untilthe late afternoon . This event is sponsoredby the Long Beach RecreationDepartment and the Long BeachRotary Club . It is primarily designedfor the pleasure of the youngstersbut now attracts adults up and downthe coast, from San Francisco to SanDiego .There is an immense amount ofpreparatory work carried out in theschools . Winning entries from eacharea are judged during the day, and ittakes much planning to keep the flyingareas separate . The prize-giving itselftakes up quite a bit of time, and thereis somewhat of an air of regimentation,which is probably unavoidable for anaffair of this magnitude and type .Nevertheless, there is plenty of spacefor the adult fliers, who had kites upall day and who had two contests oftheir own . The Highest Flier and Best-All-Around classes were won by twoJapanese visitors, Messrs . Yoshida andNishibayashi .At the end of the afternoon, therewere kite-fighting contests, which area growing interest in this area largelybecause of the efforts of Tom Joeand Vic Heredia . This, to my way