Photo essay: Berkeley Kite Festival proves a visual delight

July 30, 2012 8:00 am by Berkeleyside Editors

Photo by Neil Mishalov

The annual Berkeley Kite Festival, one of the largest of its kind, was held again this weekend at Cesar Chavez Park on the bay. The gathering, which was expected to attract more than 35,000 people, included stunt kites, Japanese kite teams, Rokkaku battles, the beautiful Octopi kites, lashings of good food and music, as well as the traditional free candy crop for kids.

Several of Berkeleyside’s favorite photographers were there to capture the magic of the event.

Photo by Neil Mishalov

Photo by jhk&alk

Photo by Pete Rosos

Photo by Pete Rosos

Photo by Pete Rosos

Photo by Pete Rosos

Photo by Patrick Nagel

Want to get a digest of all the day’s Berkeley news in your email inbox at the end of your day? Click here to subscribe to Berkeleyside’s free Daily Briefing.

6 Comments

Print Friendly
  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UTAORC2LANQF2ONEFJYXBSITTA bingo

    It was beautiful, but biking there was awful.  they had set up cones on the lead in from I-80 and a few surly police kept telling me to be on the road rather than on the bike path which “was set up for buses”.  buses whizzed by me on the road and I had the minor tremors associated with attempting to bike over that wrinkled patchwork of neglected asphalt called a road.  great kites though, as always.  and appropriately windy weather.

  • Anonymous

    inb4 “most nostalgic place on earth”

  • EBGuy

     If it’s any consolation, that’s not the way they were directing bikes (at least on Saturday).  The signs (which weren’t that great) pointed bikes along the Bay Trail north of University and then had you cut over to CC Park at waters edge.  Not that bad, but still, the section that connects the Bay Trail and CC Park (north of East Shore Park along the waters edge) is a dirt (with some gravel and large stones) trail.  I run on hybrid tires which are okay, but I wouldn’t have wanted to do it on skinny street tires. I saw lots of families on bikes (I was one of them) and it was nice that the bikes were segregated from the auto/bus traffic.  That said, the last section of ‘terrain’ was less than ideal.

  • The Sharkey

    Traffic mitigation was extremely poor, and caused huge back-ups at every Berkeley exit from I-80.
    I felt bad for people who were driving into Berkeley from other areas. The lack of signage alerting drivers of road closures must have made things extremely confusing.

    But other than that it seemed like a rip-roaring success and definitely drew a lot of people into the area to check out Berkeley’s marina and spend some pocket money. :-)

  • Guest

    huh?

  • EBGuy

    Sweet… a new bike path is going in behind the Sea Breeze Market to the Marina.  Hopefully it will be in for next years festival.  Link courtesy of BS Berkeley Wire:
    http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_21208860/new-bike-path-berkeley-marina-under-construction