‘Go Fly a Kite’ Opens Up Vista for New Adventure

‘I like it when you can make nature work for you--sailing, hang gliding or flying a kite.’

--Bill Johnson

Some men go deep-sea fishing for marlin off Mexico. Some grab their rifles and hunt for caribou in Canada. Others play football in Mission Valley or build skyscrapers in downtown San Diego.

And some men fly kites on the jetty at Seaport Village. But no wimps here; as kite flyers go, these are real men.

Men who intentionally fly their kites into trees, “park” them and then fly them out of the limbs, free and unscathed. Charlie Brown, eat your heart out.

Men who intentionally plummet their shark-like kites into the drink, then pull them back out into the sky, wet but flyable, to the applause of tourists aboard the harbor excursion boats.

Men who intentionally entwine their lines with one another, yet maintain individual control of their kite and then separate the lines to fly free again, or who coordinate their stunt tricks in an exercise called “team flying.”

Men who fly a train of 50--or 100--kites attached to one another; men who wear gloves so they don’t get string burn; men who lean over almost parallel to the ground against the tug and pull of their kites and wear soccer shoes for good traction; men who spend hundreds--and thousands--of dollars on their toys and talk about kite manufacturers with the same respect and awe that teen-agers talk about surfboards and sports cars and fashions.

Backyard kite flying was never like this.

“It’s good to hear the oohs and aahs from the people watching when you do something spectacular,” said Bob Carr, 44, a Navy machinist who finds nothing wimpy about this pastime.

Carr isn’t allowed to fly his kites on ship deck because they interfere with the radar, so he joins the likes of Bill Pressler, 40, a security officer at General Dynamics, and Dan Plummer, 26, a postal carrier, on weekends and whenever else they can get away to fly their plastic sheets at Seaport Village.

On a breezy day, a dozen or more kite flyers carefully space themselves out on the sidewalk and grass of the jetty extending out from the shops, and fill the sky with all colors--and shapes and sizes--of stunt kites that are maneuvered with two strings, whizzing overhead like hyperkinetic artworks.

If it is a crowded day, they display etiquette by taking turns sharing the airspace, giving each flier his time of glory, and comparing notes while standing by and talking about the latest in designs and nosing around in one another’s equipment bags.

These stunt kites have dual string controls at the end of their 150-foot lines, giving the fliers incredible control in darting the kites one way and another. They have kite fights. They perform precision ballet maneuvers, choreographed to music. They can attain speeds of 100 m.p.h. in a 30-m.p.h. wind. They make figure-eights and perfect squares. They spook the birds and amaze the tourists.

There is even a slow lane, for people like Bill Johnson who just like to run their 10- and 16-foot wingspan, delta-shaped kites into the air 500 feet or so, then sit back and enjoy the aesthetics of their colorful toys parked virtually motionless in the bright blue sky.

Spinners Make Kites Stand Out

Johnson decorated one of his kites with three dizzying spinners on the trailing edge, a little gimcrackery that makes his kite stand out all the more. As kids walk by, he invites them to pull on the string and they do, gleefully, marveling at the tension on the line.

Johnson spent 20 years as a bureau chief for Time and Life magazines in the United States and abroad, and later was a journalism professor at the University of Southern California. He and his wife, Liz, retired to San Diego, where they live in a downtown condominium, and Johnson now can be found almost daily at Seaport Village with his two custom kites, built for him by a local kite manufacturer.

“I like it when you can make nature work for you--sailing, hang gliding or flying a kite. And I just like these damn things. I liked to fly kites as a kid and could never walk by a kite store without stopping,” said Johnson, who is 77.

“My wife seems reasonably content with this arrangement,” Johnson said of his hobby. “My kites keep me busy and out of her hair.”

Johnson bought his kites from Jerry Sinotte, a one-time charter boat skipper off Key West, Fla., who spent years as a drummer for Las Vegas house bands before deciding to change his life style--markedly.

“I was realizing I was becoming an old man in music. I grew up with ‘50s and ‘60s music and I didn’t want to be known around Vegas as the old man,” said the 52-year-old Sinotte. “I had always liked flying kites as a kid and when I bought one a few years ago, I decided I could have built the same thing a little bit nicer.”

So Sinotte purchased the rights from another San Diego kite builder, Don Tabor, to build Tabor’s “Avenger” stunt kites, and has designed his own kite as well for commercial sale.

“I use to drive Porsches and Mercedes and live in a house with a pool,” Sinotte said of his previous life style, “but there weren’t the psychic payoffs that I get now, in kite building.”

In fact, Sinotte is moving from San Diego to an even slower pace--a beachfront home in Ocean Park, Wash., where he says he’ll be able to design and test new kites on ocean breezes without fear of having his ideas stolen by less-reputable competitors. That has happened, he said, when he has flown test kites at Mission Bay Park, only to see his design appear two weeks later on someone else’s string.

Sinotte and Tabor, who hold each other in high regard, both talk of the advancements in kite flying since the days when kids would slap newspaper onto wooden dowels with Scotch tape and throw on a cloth tail for stability.

Today’s kites are made of spinnaker cloth, rip-stop nylon panels in hot pinks and blacks and purples and yellows, with reinforcements at stress points made of the same stuff used for automobile seat belt webbing. Struts are made of nonwarping fiberglass and graphite; the string is made of Kevlar, the same material used in bulletproof vests, which has five times the strength of steel for its weight.

And there’s no longer a need for a tail--save for decoration--because of the precision balance of these new kites.

“Each kite is like a tailor-made suit; I sign each one and give it a signature,” said Sinotte, who uses hot scissors and a sewing machine to carefully turn strips of nylon into flying patchworks.

“I have a log of each kite I’ve built and how it tested when I flew it. I don’t sell a kite unless it will fly perfectly straight, without tipping one way or the other,” said Sinotte. His kites, which cost $70 to $250, come with lifetime warranties unless the flyer is negligent in caring for the kite.

Collapsible Kite

Sinotte builds a collapsible kite that can fit in a briefcase. His kites are sold at 125 outlets around the United States and by direct mail through kite magazines.

It’s big business, if not for Sinotte--who runs a two-man operation--then for Tabor, who employs 30 people at his Top of the Line Kites factory in Ocean Beach and who expects to gross $1 million in sales this year.

“The business is going crazy,” said Tabor, 45, who was a commercially rated pilot until he was grounded by a hearing problem and turned a kite flying hobby into a full-time profession.

“We are all little Charlie Browns who got our kites eaten up in trees. With the kites we have today, though, we can blow the leaves right off those trees.”

Indeed, Tabor and his stable of flying buddies, who are among the most decorated kite fliers in the United States, give precision kite flying demonstrations around the country, including when the Blue Angels performed a few weeks ago at Miramar Naval Air Station.

The lure of kite flying?

“For some people, it’s vicariously being in the sky without your feet leaving the ground. For others, it’s an exercise in complete concentration, and for others, it’s meditation,” Tabor said. “Some people put on their headphones and listen to their favorite tape or station and have their kites dance to the music in the sky.

“People fly kites for different reasons. But I have yet to meet a single person who hasn’t enjoyed it once I put the kite handles in their hands. They see it as an extension of themselves in the sky.”