Our first day in Long Beach was gorgeous, sunny, and warm–perfect weather for attending the ongoing Kite Festival. My expectations were low. Given that this is a rather small town, I thought that perhaps there would be two grizzled old men fiddling with kite strings and a tourist’s kid poking seaweed with a stick. From previous kite-flying experience in the flat midwest, where the only stiff breeze immediately precedes a tornado, I knew that kite-flying involved a lot of running back and forth across a public park with a kite dragging on the ground behind you, and the activity basically stopped when you were tired of running and involved zero kite ascent. I wasn’t actually sure that kites could fly, and always assumed the Mary Poppins “Fly a Kite” song was a form of cruel taunting and the scene featuring kite-flying involved the best special effects the sixties could muster, that kite-flying in general was a myth perpetuated to children, much like Santa Claus. Imagine my surprise when we arrived, and hundreds of kites fluttered in the air, while others were tossed into the sky effortlessly. Where was the running? The frustration? The cursing?

As the kite displays wound down, we made our way back down the main drag with our purchases and on my insistence, stopped for pictures at the wooden standees.