WattyRev.com

Viral video from Windless 2013

Watty — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:18:11 +0000

A few weeks ago, I went to the Windless kite festival up in Long Beach, WA. A friend, Matt Cyphert was able to record and upload my competition performance to YouTube. From there, I posted the link to Reddit without terribly high expectations. Not long later, the reddit post had hundreds of comments and thousands of upvotes.

The video is now at over 377,000 views and still counting a week later. The video has been posted on NBC Sports, Right This Minute, and Q103 Albany Radio to name a few.

Always fun reading the comments of people seeing these things for the first time. Aside from the usual virginity and homosexuality comments, most comments are in good spirits.

The performance embeded below is to an instrumental version of the Rolling Stone’s “Paint it Black” by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Bay Area Street Kiting

Watty — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 06:56:40 +0000

On a recent trip to the Berkeley kite festival, John Barresi and I took some time to tour around San Francisco and do a bit of urban kite flying. Here’s some video:

Competition at WSIKF 2012

Watty — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 01:20:08 +0000

For the 2012-2013 season of AKA competition, my good friend, John Barresi and I are competing against each other in Masters Multiline Ballet, Masters Multiline Precision, and Open Indoor Ballet. The Washington State International Kite Festival is the first competition of the season, so we unveiled new outdoor routines, and began the battle that will end at the AKA National Convention come October 2013.

For Indoor ballet, I took second place with my usual indoor performance to Apocalyptica’s cover of “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones.

For my outdoor ballet, I took first place with my ballet to the Mission: Impossible Theme.

In addition to our competition, Team FlyForm had a chance to do a demo at the end of the indoor show.

Viral video from SOKF!

Watty — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:51:38 +0000

I was at the Southern Oregon Kite Festival in Brookings, Oregon performing as an individual and as a part of team iQuad. One of the team performances to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded and uploaded by YouTube user Debbie Miller. On a whim, I posted the video to http://reddit.com in hopes of getting a few hits. Within a few days, the video broke 200,000 views!

Rockaway Beach Kite Festival

Watty — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:25:14 +0000

This last weekend was the Rockaway Beach, OR Kite Festival, put on by the Chamber of Commerce. Here’s a bit of video from one of my performances there:

Windless 2012

Watty — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:26:58 +0000

The twelfth annual Windless Kite Festival in Long Beach, WA was one of particular significance. This was the last year that the event will be organized by Scott Davis. To celebrate Scott’s contributions to the longest running indoor kite festival in the world, we had more competitors and demos than ever before.

The invited guests for this year were Lisa and Ian Willoughby, Amy and Connor Doran, John and TK Barresi, and I. As an added bonus, John, TK, and I took this opportunity to debut our new indoor kite team “FlyForm.”

After hearing news of the invitation to this year’s Windless, John, TK and I began work on our FlyForm performance. The idea of FlyForm began about a year ago as nothing more than a name and a concept. Windless provided the perfect opportunity to turn this idea into something tangible. With one last minute practice at the gym Friday morning, we left for Long Beach.

After finishing our choreography Friday evening, we had our first performance in front of an audience on Saturday. When performing to Pump It by the Black Eyed Peas, the three of us brought a new energy never before seen in indoor team flying.

Saturday consisted of demonstrations and competition with twenty-some fliers. This competition was of some significance because it was the first time I had the chance to compete against my mentor, and close friend, John Barresi. Alas, John prevailed and took first place in the Masters competition, followed by me in second.

Sunday followed with more demos, and the Hot Tricks competition where I got redemption against John Barresi by coming in first, followed by Ian Willoughby in second.

Photos by Brad Bixby

2011 Urban Rev Party

Watty — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:50:45 +0000

Spence “Watty” Watson, Eli Russell and John Barresi take their Revolution quad line kites to some favorite urban flying sites in Portland… Flying B-Series PRO (race frame, 30′x50# LPG) on the East Waterfront, under the Morrison Bridge (west side) and on top of an undisclosed 9-story parking garage downtown.

Antelope Island Stampede Festival 2011

Watty — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:06:39 +0000

Gearing up for the Stempede Festival in Antelope Island, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but I knew it was going to be a good trip. With live music, hot air balloons, BMX bikers, and kite flyers, this was not your average kite festival. The thing that stood out the most to me about this festival was that it did away with the usual kite festival format. The festival was much more loose-weave than other events I have been to. There was no big marked off field, and there were no limitations. The public was part of the festival, and was not held back by a piece of rope. One of the things I was told right off the bad was “Do whatever you want.” It is rare that an event organizer tells me this, and it instantly brings a grin to my face.
I spent most of my time at this festival on short lines flying right in front of the stage and the venders in the middle of the crowd. I was able to land on anyone and anything in sight, and often times played keep-away with the kids. Anyone can sit there on 120 foot lines and fly around all day, but when you get into tight spaces with living, moving obstacles, that’s when the fun begins.

NTUC Income Indoor Kite Flying Fiesta Singapore

Watty — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 06:07:12 +0000

Going to fly in Singapore was a fantastic opportunity, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Meeting up and flying with people of all different types is what it is all about for me. Only through kite flying can groups be brought together when they would other ways be fighting. During my 23 days in Singapore, I did a lot of flying, tried some new things, and met many new people who I will never forget.

The trip begins with the flight from Portland to Singapore. With stops in Seattle and Narita, Japan, my mother and I did not arrive at the hotel in Singapore until a full 24 hour after leaving home. Being my first time out of North America, this was quite an exhausting day for me. Even though we arrived at 1:00 in the morning, the jet lag only allowed us to get a couple hours of sleep.

In the morning we went down to the hotel lobby to meet with Danny Lou of Malaysia, Jing Torno and Jose Lloyd of the Philippines, Qian Jian Guo of China, and Lin Feng Yuan of Taiwan. Together we made our way to the HDB Hub via the subway. Upon arrival, I met with locals Patrick Tan (Layangman), Ck Loh, and Chun Ti Cheong. This day was my first opportunity to try out the space, and see what sort of spaces the organizers will be throwing me into.

The venue at HDB Hub was in the central area of a shopping mall. Even though it was the center area of a mall, the space was fairly exposed. The ceiling of the mall was elevated off the walls a few feet, and one of the four walls was missing all together. Because of this, all of the indoor kite fliers had to fight the occasional breeze blowing through the building. Soon after testing the space a bit, the organizer asked me what I thought, and told me that this would be my life for the next nine days. And they were not kidding. Every day for the next nine days the other kite fliers and I went to HDB Hub from noon to 8:00 in the evening. I was scheduled to open each hour from 12:00 to 3:00 and from 6:00 to 8:00 with a ten minute performance.

HDB hub seemed to be a people’s mall. This was where the average person went shopping. So, we managed to get some decent crowds, and even meet a few crazies now and again. On different occasions throughout our time at HDB Hub, we had the opportunity to fly to live music by a variety of musicians including Magadalene Wong on the harp, Andy Chia on the traditional Chinese flute, and others. This made our appearance at HDB Hub quite a classy event for such an ordinary place.

Come July 25th, Lin Feng Yuan, Jing Torno, Jose Lloyd, and my mother returned to their respective homes. For the next few days, I was unencumbered by the event schedule, and was free to do as I pleased. As one could guess, I spent those days flying kites. Over the next few days I flew at a couple local flying fields including East Coast Park, and the Marina Barrage. Ck Loh even took me out street kiting, where I got kicked out of a mall. If security isn’t chasing you, you’re not doing it right. I met some fantastic local fliers and even led a 6 pack at one point. I was very pleased with the quality of the fliers in Singapore. While they weren’t all familiar with the team maneuvers, they had the skill to be able to learn.
Soon, the Calvary arrived. John Barresi, TK Barresi, and Steve DeRooy arrived in Singapore, making tall white me slightly less of a minority. During their stay, we managed to mingle with the local kiting community and see how things are working in Singapore. We found a surprising amount of drama among the kiting groups, but we managed to pull all the kite fliers together to fly by the end of our stay.

The next venue was the ION Orchard shopping center. This is a very high end mall, giving a different type of audience than we had in HDB Hub. The degree of class displayed by this venue is best summed up by the fact that our performance space was directly in front of a Dior. Unfortunately, the Dior is on the outside of ION Orchard. This means that the venue is a bit more exposed than HDB Hub was. In reality we were flying in front of the mall, and had to constantly fight the breezes coming through the space. But, being the people that we are, we flew through it all and put on quite a show.

The scheduling of this portion of the event was much more relaxed with only 3 hours spent at the venue each day. Every evening from 6:00 to 9:00 the North American group and the other international and local fliers flew to music and put on a show for the people of ION.

After our time at ION finished, we all made the long journey back home to resume life as normal. I came home for about 5 days before leaving again to Long Beach, WA for the annual kite festival.

Photos by Jing Torno and Monika Hawkinson

Portland Streets 2

Watty — Mon, 02 May 2011 06:07:22 +0000

John Barresi and I hit the streets once again for some more street kiting.

WattyRev.com

Viral video from Windless 2013

Related Event

Bay Area Street Kiting

Competition at WSIKF 2012

Related Event

Viral video from SOKF!

Related Event

Rockaway Beach Kite Festival

Related Event

Windless 2012

2011 Urban Rev Party

Antelope Island Stampede Festival 2011

Related Event

NTUC Income Indoor Kite Flying Fiesta Singapore

Related Event

Portland Streets 2