YOUR WEEKEND: Go fly a kite at Hollywood Recreation Center

The second annual Las Vegas Kite Festival takes place from 10 a.m. to noon March 14, so if someone tells you to go fly a kite, chances are, they mean it kindly.

The festival celebrates the ancient art of kite flying while embracing the relatively new sport of kite flying. A kite can be as simple as the classic diamond kite made of two sticks and some paper to elaborate airborne sculptures.

“We were at a festival in California and a gal brought out a home made kite shaped like a Ford Mustang,” said Kent Kingston, owner of A Wind of Change, a local kite store. “There are a lot of unique kites out there, and you can get them to fly, it’s all a matter of how you have them bridled.”

A basic diamond kite is usually unbridled. The line just attaches to the keel, or the center of the kite. More elaborate kites require a bridle, a network of lines or strings attached to the kite to give it its shape or help with its stability.

“You could fly a sheet of plywood if you had it bridled right,” said Kingston. “Aerodynamics does enter into it, but you could get it up into the air and keep it floating, although. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it when it was flying.”

Kingston’s company was a big part of the inaugural kite festival last year.

“We had a kite making class where we made kites and flew them,” he said. “Parents and kids came together and made a couple of kites.”

The kite making will continue this year, thanks in part to the positive response to last year’s event.

“We did pretty good last year,” said the Hollywood Recreation Center’s Amy Orenic. “A lot of people came in last minute.”

The activities aren’t limited to novices and simple kites.

“Last year we did a fun fly with some of our professional pilots we had some pretty big stuff,” Kingston said. “It was pretty neat we had a lot of kites up in the air, a lot of different things. We fly a little bit of everything. We’ve got indoor kits that you can fly indoors all the way up to the big vented kites you can fly in 30 to 35 mile an hour winds.”

The kite festival is $5 at the door. Hollywood Recreation Center is located at 1650 S. Hollywood.

— F. Andrew Taylor/View File Photos