Got an email from (An)Drew Vassallo, designer of the Icarus. He has been out of kiting for about a decade and came back to find (in his words):
Bilboquet wants 400 Euros for an R-Sky kite
Blue Moon is out of business
GWTW is out of business
Kite Studio is closed
No retailers for Icarex, Toray or Texlon
For me, 10 years ago, just looking at my 2003 photo album:
I was living in Cupertino
flying at Shoreline Kite Park
using my son's 3MP Fuji 3800 for pictures
we bought a rainbow E2 at the Berkeley Kite Festival
John Welden and Steve Hall were there
Steve LaPorte kicked my butt at OIF
David Barnby flew kites with us in a suit in the rain
taught my buddy Ross how to fly at Ocean Beach
Kite Party 1 happened
Dodd Gross, David Barnby, JimB, Ken McNeill, Jon Trennepohl, Mark Reed
Steve Brown, Farmer Rob, Mickey McKay (Jim had that amazing Masquerade)
Won the prototype C21 Extreme Prototype at the auction
Made the first GWTW calendar (2004)
David and Emmalee Kirk came to Shoreline to fly
I was competing as an Intermediate at BASKL events with my Lithiums
Won a Krystal in a contest
The Opium was pretty popular
Team AirZone was testing Level One kites
Paul Shirey was making kites
Gary Dromgold, Marty Sasaki, Shane Hill and OzoneJim were still alive
Shivas were hanging in there
went to the San Ramone festival
Too Much Fun, Penny, Dave Sabilino, John Barresi, a slew of others
JimB visited in California with his vented Impact
flew to Kite Hill and met up with JohnW, RonG, Ari and geezer
drove to Chico for a fun fly (Paul Horner in attendance)
bought a 2nd generation Katana
bought the Unicorn Rainbow Ronin on the Swap Meet
flew my gifted mylar Mamba
dressed as a giant bee to compete
designed the Kite Addiction logo
convinced Paul Shirey to split one of the panels on the Spica
which he did (creating the Spica Pro)
photographed many people who were 10 years younger
Wow, that was a lot.
Maybe kiting has slowed down.
https://picasaweb.google.com/chilesej/2003Kites