Kites Float Into the Heavens at Angels Gate Park

For John Smith, the good life is a breeze. Preferably a steady one.

Smith has a workaday existence as a machinist at TCI Aluminum in Gardena, but on weekends, the burly 46-year-old Torrance resident spreads his wings at Angels Gate Park in San Pedro.

He flies kites.

“I fly for fun,” Smith said.

“I fly until my wife tells me to come home.”

Smith and a small group of kite aficionados began using the park several years ago. Now weekend fixtures at the park, they have become its most colorful attraction.

With the glittering Pacific Ocean as backdrop, Smith can be found about noon most weekend afternoons, unpacking gossamer creations of all sizes, shapes and colors with ritualistic absorption.

Big kites, such as his majestic parafoil, a parachute-like affair with 108-square-foot wings and a tug that could loft a baby. Medium-sized kites, such as the delta wing that swoops at 70 m.p.h. in the precision maneuvers required for competition kite-flying. And little kites, such as the 17-inch deltas that stack one behind the other until a dozen fly hooked together, a ladder in the sky.

About half-past lunch, more often than not, a breeze will spring up off the ocean.

“Come on, wind,” Smith pleaded on a recent Saturday.

His prayers were answered 10 minutes later.

The dead-looking rag on the grass that was Smith’s enormous parafoil stirred as if awakening. The deltas propped like giant resting butterflies began to tremble.

Smith lifted a section of the parafoil and a panel of nylon cloth bellied out. He tugged at another section and another, until the entire mass floated slowly upward with the slow-motion grace of a jellyfish.

The deltas were another sort entirely. Their owners gave a deft jerk on the dual kite string, and they began to cavort. The swift kites made zooming sounds as they dive-bombed the lawn beside the Korean Bell shrine. Children with parents in tow stopped to stare.

“When the wind is blowing, we draw a crowd,” said Chuck Bradford, a longshoreman and member of the Zephyrus Flying Team, which competes in local kite contests. “When I started here 1 1/2 years ago, no one was up here.”

“Worse than drugs, very addictive,” commented Ray Hasenstab, another regular.

Using two-handed controls, Bradford, Hasenstab and Jim Richey took a trio of deltas in formation through intricate swoops and swirls. They were practicing for the Belmont Open, a kite-flying competition on the West Coast that will be held in San Diego in March.

So far the Zephyrus team hasn’t won anything, but team members say that has not dampened their enthusiasm.

Smith’s love of kite flying is so strong that when it came to making money or flying kites, he chose kites, he says. He used to run a mail-order kite business in his spare time under the name Kite Connection, but dropped it this spring.

“I don’t want to mess with the politics of kiting,” he said, explaining that kite-shop owners, mail-order operations and manufacturers had been at odds over pricing.

While Smith and his group fly kites strictly as amateurs, a whole industry has grown up in the last decade.

Few fly the old-fashioned two-stick, diamond-shaped kite that dates back 2,000 years to China, or even the sturdy box kite that was invented in 1893 by an Australian. And modern kite fliers rarely try, as did countless childhood predecessors, to see if a kite can be flown so high it cannot be seen.

Nowadays, there is an organization for devotees, the American Kitefliers Assn., brand names vying for recognition and prices soaring as high as the product.

The parafoil that Smith is so proud of costs about $700 and he takes no chances that it might get away. A braided Kevlar string with a test strength of 750 pounds keeps it tethered.

“I’ve had it up in 20-to-25-m.p.h. winds and you couldn’t pull it down,” he said.

He has a stack of 12 Hyperkite deltas, but that is far from the record: As many as 253 have been flown in one immense ladder.

Drawn to Angels Gate Park that sunny Sunday by Smith and his friends was San Pedro resident John Bonebright and his son, Johnny, who is 3. They carried a kite.

“These guys,” Bonebright said, pointing to Smith, “come over and give me all kinds of pointers. I like that.”

His kite had a green brontosaurus against a red and blue background.

“Johnny, you want to fly your kite?” the father coaxed. “Why don’t you take hold of your kite?”

But Johnny wasn’t interested. He wandered off. His father kept flying.

A few minutes later, a tearful toddler came back and tugged at his father’s belt.

“He wants to go home,” Bonebright said. “I want to stay.”