This is a tiny coastal store that caters to people passing by, offering a variety of kites and kite accessories. Of course the candies...
I have been coming here since 2002 when I discovered it going up the coast rebuilding a boutique 100 year old hotel.
I have always flown kites, many kites made of batik cloth & wood from India, custom cloth kites and the new material kites.
There were times where I would go in and have the store to myself at midday during the week and have the luxury of looking and deciding what next to add to my large kite inventory.
And there were other times when I finally decided and saved for a 6ft. delta and 100 pound braided nylon string that has lasted since then; I'd rush to the store and it would be jam packed with nice innocent visitors from the cities in the bay area or people noticing the banner flags and the words Candy & Kites to come in and see what it was about to casual tourists going up the coast in the summer, to gawkers who don't seem to be kite fliers and are afflicted with a loss of young at heart or not realizing C&K is just a country kite shop on the coast trying to do business in seasonal weather.
The owners get hammered by all kinds of folk in peak seasons.
My girlfriend and I would go to the tiny market/ deli across the street and park across from C&K as we would picnic on deli sandwiches & drinks from the back of our Land Rover and just watch humanity fill up the store in waves of smiles, children, hipsters, newbies to the coast, city folk playing bumper cars in the graveled tiny park lot they have.
All the while cars are Zooming up or down the narrow coastal highway in front of the Kite store.
There used to be an older woman who used to work there, I suppose she was the owner before another man appeared in the past 10 years.
The young man told that he was the son (if I'm not too old to remember) and was taking on managing the store because to give the cashier lady (his mother?) a chance to take it easy or retire(?) I may be wrong but in my mind and memory that is what I recall.
It is challenging having a huge demographic of people come into your tiny store to buy small amounts of candy & and an economic kite for Dylan Beach, it is brutal to answer the same questions to different people for 8-9 hours and still smile from the heart.
The service industry is just brutal on tender people who own a kite store on the the driven path.
Despite that .... The Candy & Kites person who called someone a "dirty hippy" is just uncalled for...
I'm positive there are two sides to a perspective or something that happened.
Terseness I have witnessed to employees & customers due to busy pressure, and the 2 women employees when I was there took the owners' misplaced tone in stride. Those employees were angels.
And customers can be enthralled at the candy and eager to fly a diamond attached to a string.
I find it just fascinating how stupid people are with their "precognitions" of how to fly" a piece of beautiful colored paper or new durable material
I go to this place (C&K) out of Peace, Penance to honor someone I lost because we frequented this place. And yes we were looked at with funny stares because were are a mixed race family.
She was a striking french fiance, and our daughter has one brown eye and one blue eye with curly auburn hair (she loves kites still), I am a taller than average asian career LE (law enforcement detective)
And we live in America and we are accustomed to not being readily accepted until we spend intelligently, or we absorb the stares and whispers from business owners of our choice of a 7'ft black delta with an added purchase of a 40'ft. tail in addition to the corresponding high end braided nylon(?) 100-150lbs. weight line to fly that Big Beautiful Delta...
But I digress from my point about the dirty hippy call and the fantastic selection of kites and high end practical accessories; of which some are commercially appealing to the newbie to flying and most are appealing to the intermediate to life long ProFlier of high end kites from tiny tiny to bigger and bigger.
I would love hear from C&K why a representative called someone a Dirty Hippy, unless that review was a fake.
Sonoma & Humboldt counties are full of freelancers making their own livings via whatever they are excel at whether pottery and glazes, artworks of painting or welding, clothing fabrication sewing in multi textiles of cotton muslin or leatherwork.
In these past 6 years farming cannabis is a solid lifestyle of kite fliers and freelancers & Bohemians (hippies) in Sonoma and Humboldt counties.
Again I digress from the truer review. That is to say Candy & Kites was there when I first discovered it 30 years ago with my father, I rediscovered it 20 years ago and am amazed that very little has changed.
I can only encourage would be kite fliers not think in terms of dollars and cents or what their expectations of what a Taffy should be.
The place is a coastal country kite-candy store. read more