Pacific Airshow set to zoom back into Huntington Beach, where reactions are mixed
Kevin Elliott’s son is now 20 months old, and Elliott was quick to pull up pictures on his phone Thursday morning at a Pacific Airshow press event held at Lyon Air Museum in Santa Ana.
The name of Elliott’s son is no surprise to anyone who knows him well: Jett.
“Future air show owner,” said Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, smiling to the toddler’s dad.
Elliott, the Pacific Airshow executive director, has always loved aviation. Growing up in the area, he would build and fly remote control airplanes with his own father in the garage and remembers spending plenty of afternoons flying gliders at Fairview Park in Costa Mesa.
He and his company, Code Four, have built the Pacific Airshow into one of the biggest air shows in the world. The eighth edition of the three-day event, which has also been held in Australia the last two years, hits the beach in Surf City beginning Friday. It will again feature favorites like the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team.
Officials said an estimated 700,000 people attended last year. But the reaction among locals has been decidedly mixed.
Some have said the air show now feels political after, in May 2023, the city settled a lawsuit with Pacific Airshow LLC for up to $7 million. Elliott had sued the city and then-Mayor Kim Carr after the third day of the 2021 air show was canceled due to an oil spill. Carr has said publicly multiple times that she did not cancel the air show and in fact did not have the authority to do so.
“Obviously, the settlement and all of that was hard fought on both sides,” Elliott said Thursday in an interview with the Daily Pilot. “People can have their opinions about it. I know what my opinion is, and that is that we were financially completely devastated by that situation and that the city breached the permit, and a bunch of other things that I’m really not able to talk about because of the confidentiality.”
The full settlement was ordered to be disclosed by an Orange County Superior Court judge in July, after Ocean View School District clerk Gina Clayton-Tarvin won a lawsuit demanding it be unsealed by City Atty. Michael Gates.
After the full settlement was released, Clayton-Tarvin called it “a shameless giveaway to air show operator Kevin Elliott.”
There is currently no long-term contract between the city and Pacific Airshow LLC, though the settlement includes potential terms and conditions that could be used for such a deal.
“I never wanted it to go down that way,” Elliott said of his lawsuit Thursday. “Who wants to have to be a position to have to sue their hometown? Not me. That’s the last thing I ever wanted to do. To the extent that the event has become political, it’s really unfortunate. It’s not what I wanted. You know as well as everybody, I was friendly with all of the politicians regardless of their political affiliation until that oil spill happened. Then it sort of pitted folks against each other, to a degree.”
Elliott said tickets are selling better than ever, but there is certainly a local contingent that now refuses to support the air show and the negative aspects they believe it represents.
As a 23-year retired veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, Tamantha Bowman seems like a good candidate to enjoy the show. But the Huntington Beach resident said she will be doing more mundane things like cleaning her garage this weekend, before she leaves town on Sunday.
“It feels dirty to me,” Bowman said. “To be honest, even last year we weren’t really for it. It’s just really sad … Kevin Elliott has done some things in poor taste, I feel like. As a businessperson and someone that lives here in Huntington Beach, him making fun of the settlement, from what I’ve seen, it’s not really cool.”
In June, Elliott posted a picture of himself on Facebook forums with digital sunglasses and a gold chain, as well as smoking something. The words “Airshow Life” are written above him.
The post reads, in part, that Elliott was “toying with a new look for [Surf City Sentinel page owner] Mark Bixby and his pack of sycophants. Do you think Gina Clayton-Tarvin will still try to date me? I’m happily married so NOT INTERESTED.”
“That probably was very counter-productive,” Elliott admitted Thursday. “I should be smarter, but I had it up to here and I was trolling them … They posted pictures of my children online.”
Lifelong Huntington Beach resident Christine Mulholland said she worries about the effects of the loud jets for pets and elders, as well as wildlife in the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.
She said the air show would be better as a one-day event and that she is not too outspoken about her views in her hometown.
“They want to shame you immediately and put you in the ‘Karen’ box, not caring about being patriotic,” Mulholland said. “How does an air show have anything to do with if I’m patriotic? It’s so much more nuanced than that.”
Darby Ziegler, by contrast, looks forward to the Pacific Airshow’s arrival each fall. She has been working part time for the last five years as a concierge at the Waterfront Beach Resort, a Hilton Hotel.
Ziegler, who lives in Huntington Beach, said most of the people who get the oceanfront suites will book their room for next year when they check out on Sunday, so they can get the same experience.
“At our hotel, people are renting out the oceanfront cabanas for like $3,000 or $4,000,” Ziegler said. “Those all include a 20% service charge, and guess who that goes to? The kids that are working. I know the owners of a lot of restaurants, and they’ve got their tables booked. I’ve got a table at BLK, they are sold out. They would never be sold out Friday, Saturday and Sunday at that restaurant, you know?
“I know people get all mad because the lot gets shut down and parking [costs] more. That money, I get it, it goes to the city coffers, but I look at all of these people that I know who are trying to run businesses and how much money it brings to them.”
Ziegler said she was at the same BLK Earth Sea Spirits restaurant, located in Pierside Pavilion, during the air show’s first year. She was sitting next to a group of Japanese people who spoke no English — that is, until the Air Force Thunderbirds showed up.
“They all started, in English, singing the theme song from ‘Top Gun,’” Ziegler recalled with a laugh. “I mean, [the air show] inspires patriotism, in my opinion.”
Torrey “Superman” Ward, from Van Nuys, is one of the civilian pilots flying in this year’s event. Ward, who has been a pilot for 42 years, is flying at the Pacific Airshow for the first time in a SubSonex JSX-2 microjet that weighs in at just 490 pounds.
“I am humbled to be at this air show,” Ward said. “It’s over water, and it’s not a common environment for air show pilots to fly over water, so it’s super-exciting.”
Elliott is also looking forward to a good weekend, despite the controversy, especially if the pesky fog at the beach clears out each day. New features include short takeoff and landing (STOL) planes that will land on the beach during the show, allowing spectators to sit in and interact with the pilots.
“We’re just trying to move this event forward,” he said. “We’re going to move past the baggage, and it may take a little bit of time. Hopefully time will heal these wounds, and people will realize that this is really a community event ... The air show should be for everyone. This isn’t an event for half the community, it’s an event for everybody.”
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