It’s an eye-catching shop. Colorful windsocks, wind spinners and other bright decorations hang outside in the breeze. Year after year, driving past Four Winds Kite Shop, I’ve thought about stopping.
For 16 years, I never got around to it — not until Wednesday.
Shop owners Erv and Gail Crosby sent an e-mail earlier this week with the subject line “Thank You Community.” Saturday afternoon, their business on Broadway in Everett will close its doors for the last time.
That will be a sad day for the region’s kite fliers, who’ve come to rely on Erv Crosby’s expertise and the kites he builds in a back room at the shop. It’s a much harder time for the Everett couple.
Erv Crosby, 70, learned last November that he has cancer of the esophagus, and that his disease had spread to his liver. Although hurting, he hasn’t given up his hobby-turned-vocation, kite-making.
Once the shop closes, he plans to create his kites at the couple’s home near Forest Park and sell them online. They hope to spend next April selling kites at Tulip Town, a Mount Vernon farm, during the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.
Their love affair with kites began as instant infatuation in 1991. That summer, friends took them to the Washington State International Kite Festival on the Long Beach Peninsula.
“I bought a kite when we came back from Long Beach, a $50 kite,” Erv Crosby said. His wife’s birthday present that year? A more expensive kite — as much a gift for himself as for Gail.
By 1992, they had opened their small kite shop across the street from its current location at 1911 Broadway. Gail Crosby, 69, ran the shop for three years until her husband retired. He had worked 37 years as an elevator serviceman. It was time to chase a dream — or in their case, kites.
A man of few words, Erv Crosby didn’t hesitate when asked about the hobby’s appeal. “When people are flying kites, they’re forgetting about work. They’re forgetting everything. It’s just them and the kite,” he said.
Teamed up with the Everett Parks and Recreation Department, they’ve shared their kite-flying passion with kids at annual events on Jetty Island. This year, they said, about 100 kids came out to try a kite called the Frustrationless Flyer.
Ron Phipps, of Everett, is the designer of a high-performance stunt kite called the Nebula. He has worked and flown kites with Erv Crosby for years. Crosby was the hands-on builder of Phipps’ design.
“I wanted a kite others hadn’t made yet. I brought an idea to Erv, and he stuck with me on it,” said Phipps, 44. “He ended up making a kit. I came up with the shape and dimensions, and he built it and came up with the graphics.”
Forget the sticks-and-paper kites of childhood. Phipps described a complex process of constructing a kite with a carbon-fiber frame and a light but strong fabric called Icarex. The weave is deliberately placed for proper flight. Seams are first glued, then sewn.
Erv Crosby is a master, Phipps said. “He’s been doing this so long. It’s never been a headache or a job. It’s just fun,” Phipps said.
Before development encroached on the space, the grassy field at Everett’s 10th Street boat launch was a favorite kite-flying spot. “Every Saturday after we closed, we’d go to 10th Street. We’d take our lawn chairs and we’d barbecue,” Gail Crosby said.
“Kite fliers, you’ll never meet better people,” Phipps said. “It’s a complete disconnect. You just lose yourself. The worries kind of blow away.”
He can’t escape concern for his kite-flying friends. Asked about the closure of Four Winds, Phipps said, “It’s sad, it feels like the end of an era.”
Erv Crosby is “a very, very good flier,” Phipps said. “Putting my kite together, he put my dreams in the air.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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