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Support your LKS


SHBKF

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Support your LKS

 

I started reading the kite forums with some intensity over four years ago.  I had used computers for many years even back before the days of the WWW.  It has been quite awhile since I’ve seen that initialism used in any context.  I had previously been on a few forums of interest but I was really fired up wanting to learn anything kites.   I saw mention of an initialism LKS, Local Kite Store.  Out here in the mountains of western Virginia there was no such thing.  Maybe a toy store with a few single line kites & a hobby shop that had small selection of dual line kites, both located over sixty miles away in eastern Tennessee.  It is five & one half hours, three hundred & forty-four miles, to get to my Local Kite Store, Kligs in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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I try to support the kite stores that I visit with a purchase or two & enjoy talking to the people working them.  Some are active fliers, some are just working retail that happens to sell toys & kites.  I have been to a store in Mystic, Connecticut that was not much larger than a walk in closet.  Most seem to be around the size of a shoe store.  Kligs is a very large store with hundreds of kites on display.  My first serious kite came from Kitty Hawk Kites back when they had only one location.  There are many on the east coast that I still have not visited.

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I always check for anything in a bargain or clearance mode & have come away with some nice items.  I have learned to ask if they have any used or demo kites also.  Scored a nice vintage Prism Alien that way as well as a Sun Oak delta & a couple Revs.   Sure, these kites may not be the color I might want or the latest but I get a deal & the sale helps the cash flow of the retailer.  I have bought many kites at full retail with no regrets knowing it might help them especially in the off season.  Support your local store. The few bucks you might save elsewhere will never make up for a small business lost forever.

SHBKF

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When new to (serious) kiting in the end of nineties I got some (25min?) initial advice there (in the LKS in Stockholm at the time), but found out that the Prism kites then offered was slightly to expensive for me then (I then chose to honor kite selling shops on the Swedish west coast selling HQ kites instead). Life got periods when getting the bacon on the table is the main focus and others when the focus can be more of not to miss out on what life has to offer*. When I started over again with kiting I bought three old kite models (kites that I had drooled over in the past but now could get to a very good price) and one new (4D). After the Stockholm city situated shop closed I've only bought smaller stuff like a Prism tube-tail, The advanced way to fly DVD, higher quality yo-yo for me and as gifts... But would I ever look for a Zephyr (which seem to be highly rated by members in KL) I know where I would go. B.t.w. today I saw that they still offer an Alien according to their web site.

I remember when I went there to by a Prophecy at close to 50% discount. He went to the shelf where the kites were kind of inserted, searched and the retracted the hand empty. He said:
  "Ohh.. it looks like we have sold the last sample unfortunately"
He then paused and then looked at me while appearing to picture something for himself and said with a lowered voice:
  "But it is a fantastic kite"
To say that I was disappointed is an understatement . Don't misunderstand me, the shop owner is a very helpful and patient person. However, whenever there is a video with a Prophecy in it, I still prefer to peer hard to make the vision blurry so that I can pretend that instead that there is an Illusion being shown. That was also the kite I ended up buying that day. A few months later, when asked, he never hesitated selling me the three last remaining spare (brittle and discontinued) LLEs (even though the Illusion was the shop owners own favorite)  - he just said:
  "Yes, you may."


* What things cost is kind of funny. Today I was at the dentist's because one of my teeth is ruined and that needed a crown/implant (the previous "budget" fix was broken). After 20min (of total 1:45 exhausting hours) they said ohh... we need a pillar as well that is 1500SEK (~150USD) extra. Discussing the matter is hard with lots of stuff in your mouth. This extra sum would correspond to an Echo kite and the total sum, I fear, might correspond to almost two Fazer XXLs (has anyone done this sort of multi kiting?:))! There have been occasions when I have had way more fun for my money than I've had today. Also they said until the next visit in three weeks, only eat soft food like porridge and soup. Could this be a way to financially compensate this since porridge is cheap food?

Thumbs up for your LKS support SHBKF!

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