Last night I watched the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, about the birth of skateboarding as we know it today. I have also watched Bones Brigade: An Autobiography. Both of those movies showed the passion, the attitude, and the altheltecism combined with art, all the things that make skateboarding more than just riding a skateboard, and both of those movies struck me and inspired me, and got me thinking about the current state of mountain biking.
Perhaps mountain biking was never about attitude, perhaps it was all just a bunch of hippies riding bikes in the mountains to get high among pretty flowers, but then i think of the movie Kranked and others like it, i think if Brett Tippie, Wade Simmons, and Richie Schley pretty much inventing free riding, and i think of the attitude, and i wonder what the fuck happened?
Mountain biking has seemed, to me, to have lost it's edge. It's gone from the exploration and a bunch of guys riding bikes and getting rowdy and having fun to a bunch of roadies on dirt, making sure the trails are smooth so their STRAVA times are good, they are strong but have no skills, they can get up the mountain but don't like coming down the mountain.
It feels like mountain biking has lost it's edge, and it's balls. There is still Crankworkx and people like Kerry McGarry doing ridiculous backflips over huge gaps, and i'm thankful for that, but mountain biking feels like it's losing it's soul.
We need a group of guys to inject some life and spirit into mountain biking, we need a mountain biking version of the Bones Brigade, guys (and gals) who just want to party, get rowdy, and express themselves artistically and soulfully and aggressively by riding their bikes with style.
I don't even know if it's possible, perhaps i'm the only one who thinks like this, and i doubt it will ever happen, i don't expect it to.
I just don't want to see the freewheeling cool spirit of mountain biking (assuming there was one in the first place) to get killed off by lycra and heart rate monitors.
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