Stacks of fun

The Rockaway Beach Kite Festival will lift your spirits

By Emily Lindblom

For the TODAY

Colorful kites will soon dance in the sky over the Rockaway Beach Wayside, as the 46th annual Rockaway Beach Kite and Art Festival returns this Friday, Sept. 16 through Sunday, Sept. 18.

Brothers Dylan and Cardin Nguyen plan to be among the kite fliers performing at the festival.

Dylan, 18, said the two of them have been flying kites all their lives and have been demonstrating their skills in festivals and competitions for the past nine years.

Rockaway Beach was one of the Nguyen brothers’ first festivals. Since then, Dylan has gone on to compete in American Kitefliers Association National Sport Kite Championships. In 2019, he won seven first place medals.

Dylan is looking forward to trying some new maneuvers he has been experimenting with.

“Rockaway has been really cool because it has a beautiful beach with good wind and a nice amount of space so you can do all these things,” he said.

He said it’s also a time to learn from the other flyers about different types of kites he doesn’t have experience with, including the giant inflatable ones shaped like whales or teddy bears.

Dylan and Cardin both fly dual-line and quad-line kites.

Cardin, 15, said he has great memories of how he has progressed at the festival over the years.

“I practice the tricks I know and I’ll occasionally attempt new ones,” he said. One trick he likes is called the “flic-flac,” which starts with the kite flying straight down and then alternating between facing belly down with the nose pointed away and belly up with the nose pointed toward him.

In festivals like at Rockaway Beach, flyers will coordinate their kite maneuvers to songs of their choice or opt for what’s called the “mystery ballet,” where the announcer will choose the songs.   

According to Dylan, the kite community is really close.

“With festivals like Rockaway the thing I’ve loved is being out on the beach with people I call my friends,” he said, adding he enjoys getting to interact with people watching the kites, too. “Not everybody comes to the beach expecting a kite festival, and even if they do, they don’t expect the things we can do.”

For onlookers wanting to participate in the festival, Dylan will hover his kite in one spot in front of them so they can grab it out of the air.

Cardin also enjoys walking around the beach and interacting with the audience or letting them fly his kite to get a feel for it.

“Sometimes I’ll see somebody struggling to keep it in the air and I’ll come up and give them lessons on how to control it,” he said.

The Nguyens were born into a family of kite fliers, as their parents are also avid flyers and even make their own kites.

“They took me to the beach before I could walk to go to festivals,” Dylan said, recalling some of his first memories of trying to fly a kite. “I remember being pulled by a kite and my dad would have to hold me.”

Dylan shared another memory from when he was about 12 years old at the Rockaway Beach festival. After the sunset at the beach, the Nguyen family hooked up LED lights to the kites and flew them in the dark.

“It was really fun to experience,” Dylan said.

The brothers are part of two kite flying groups that perform together — Team Island Quad and The Kite Collective.

“We have choreographed routines we fly to with music and we’ll be synchronized down to the lyrics,” Dylan said. “For a lot of people watching it’s impressive to see all these kites flying together and not crashing into each other but synchronizing in a routine.”

The Kite Collective does a synchronized routine to the song “Ex’s and Oh’s” by Elle King. Four kites dance together in the air, weaving between each other, flipping, spinning and following each other in a choreographed pattern.

“We’re all performers at the core of it,” Dylan said. “We like to put on a good show for the crowd.”

Captain of The Kite Collective, Spencer Watson of SeaTac, Washington, also plans to perform at this weekend’s event.

“We have fun doing our performances and playing around as a team,” he said.

Also an American Kitefliers Association National Champion, Watson has performed in nine different countries and throughout the US, including at Rockaway Beach.

“It’s a great beach and there are plenty of local flyers who can put on a good show,” he said.

In addition to flying both outdoor and indoor dual line and quad line kites, Watson builds his own.

“After 17 years I’m still learning new things,” he said, “and finding more to play with, through kite making, different types of kites or designs, things like that keep everything interesting long term.”

The festival and vendor fair hours are Friday, from noon to 6 pm, Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm, and Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm. For more information, go to rockawaybeach.net.