I actually think you've missed the soul of the article.
Land managers are flipping back the other way
It's difficult to reconcile that article with what's happening in Tasmania these days.
I mean mtn biking is just such a positive thing here. Economically, socially, health, community etc...
It's been a bit of fairy tale because it's breathed so much new life into areas that really had nothing going for them.
Sure the whole "enduro-bro" branding is over done....but I think the evolution of bike design has still been about trying to design better bikes that do
everything better, not just fit a marketing brief (I admit, others in the industry would know more about this than I)
But...
I can 100% related to the authors' view if I look at it as a parallel to snowboarding.
I started snowboarding when I was about 12 or 13 (around 1990) and it was still actually illegal/banned in many resorts. We used to use self tapping screws to hold the bindings to the boards. A mate used to make his own bindings out of sheet metal & brackets.
We were hated. And it felt awesome. I loved being a snowboarder. It was new and punk as fuck.
But over the years I got more and more frustrated with its culture. And just like mtn biking it attracted weak-as-piss rich kids with no sense of adventure. I nearly went postal when I realised snowboarding was actually feeding a new culture of freestyle skiing!
And then one day I saw an ad on the side of a bus for some lame product with a generic image of a snowboarder plastered across it.
......and I knew it was over.
