The Bakery: Revelling in the Joy of Our Anarchy

I recently had the opportunity to help with promoting The Moment - a documentary about the history of freeride. Most of the people I reached out to were thrilled with the idea of the film and with having a showing in their town, but a few of the responses I received back surprised me. 

"Does the film reconcile or reflect on the change in times or does it revel in the joy of anarchy?" 

This question wrapped up a larger message of concern about "weed talk," rogue riding culture, and the lack of marketability the film would have to an all-ages audience. Another response I received was in respect to taming down mountain biking's extreme image.

"I'm trying to promote mountain biking to women and I'm not a huge fan of promoting the gnarly stuff like Rampage and freeriding because I think it scares a lot of people away from the sport." 

Don't get me wrong, at the heart of both of these examples are genuine issues that people are considering. This is a time of hypersensitivity around illegal trail building in some places and I do understand that the mainstream media version of mountain biking may not be truly representative of what is available in the sport to everyone. But since when does that mean we shouldn't celebrate our history or that we should leave out the bits that are inconvenient to our current (or sometimes individual) concerns?