Back on 'the Scene' (November 2000)

by Mike Wallace
photos is by Noel Hendrickson
Riders = unidentified
Dog = baron

I recently returned to the shore mountain bike scene after a four year absence. I took a job in Indonesia in 96. When I left the definition of cool was substantially different than it is now. If you rode a Brodie or a Dekerf (all hand built) with front suspension you were about as stylin' as you could get. Actually to be fair there were a few Proflexes around with giant pencil erasers for both front and rear suspension but they seemed like more of a novelty than anything else. Of course most everybody was using clipless pedals, 120 mm stems and bar ends. Cool meant not lowering your seat at any cost. We rode Grannies, Severed Dick, Ladies Only, Sex Boy etc. over and over without ever once lowering our seats. And of course we crashed. We crashed hard on to bare knees and elbows. At least in the winter the spandex covered us down to our ankles.

Now the shore scene is just that - it is a scene. In a lot of ways it is identical to the Whistler snowboarding scene. The parking lots are full on weekends, the gear is gorgeous and expensive, the attitudes are there and the air is buzzing. The long list of parallels continues with the steep learning curve made possible by the excellent gear. The slack angles, high handlebar heights, full suspension and disk brakes mean that people are ripping down the shore mountains almost immediately. Was and is the same for boarding. The result of this is you have people out there who really know what they are doing and you have people out there who really know they look good. I have seen guys at the end of a typical Sunday (when the trails are soaked but the sun is out) hanging out the café at the bottom of Seymour wearing about $700 worth of downhill riding gear and they are still clean. I have also seen endless numbers of north shore kids hanging out at gas stations staring longingly at the endless parade of seemingly unattainable bikes strapped to the endless parade of SUVs.

Even the new way of riding is the same as snowboarding. If you have the balls to point it a let it roll chances are you will be a success. The lure of the launch is now huge and searching out the big hits and steeps and doing them over and over is the norm.

The great part is that there is a reason for the new scene. Mountain biking now is fun as hell. It is addictive, it is fulfilling (maybe not a cool word but it is true) and it makes gangs of young and not so young men yell with triumph like they haven't yelled in years.