Bikepacking and popcorn: Bergamont’s BAM!

There are those who arrive at BAM! with a bike, those with a tent, those with a story. This year Bergamont arrives with a backpack. Not just any backpack, but one of those that are full, overfull. With things attached outside, stuffed inside, forgotten at the bottom and then found again at the right moment.

Inside there are not only bicycles. There are encounters, kilometers, detours, mistakes, people. Because in the end that’s always where it comes back to: the bike is the means, but what matters is everything that happens while you use it. And Bergamont doesn’t tell this from a stand. It takes it around, puts it among people, makes it happen.

At BAM! they don’t show up with a “program”. They show up with a way of being inside the festival. It’s a presence that moves, that changes, that lets itself be contaminated. It starts even before, with the ROAD TO BAM!, together with the Brand Avocado, a community that feels like it comes out of a night around a fire: spontaneous, imperfect, real.

Then there are the stories. The ones that make you stop even if you were just passing by. Pietro Franzese will bring his Shardana Adventure project, which is travel but also sharing, and he will be one of those you can actually talk to, not just listen to. It’s not a talk, it’s more like a conversation that stays with you.

And if you feel like understanding what’s behind a bike, taking it apart and putting it back together at least with your eyes, then you end up inside a “build your gravel”. A moment where the bike returns to being an object, piece by piece, until it becomes road again. Together with Franzese and the State of Bike team, without too much theory and with plenty of reality.

Then the backpack opens again and something happens that often happens at BAM!: the terrain changes. From dust to snow. Because those who travel in one way often travel in another too. And so two films arrive, two different stories but with the same perspective.

One is the climb to Monte Rosa starting from the most unlikely place possible, the living room couch, told by Alessandro Sozzi in the film by Simone Armanni. The other is the Spluga, with Teto Balatti and Luca Gianola, in the film signed by Giovanni Levi. Two ways of saying the same thing: you don’t have to do it. But if you want to, really do it.

And then there is a moment that is worth more than many words. The Garbage Ride, a simple, almost silent ride that changes your perspective. You pedal, you collect, you observe. You notice what we leave behind and, for once, also what we can fix. It’s not just a ride. It’s a way to put the meaning of travel back together.

In the end the backpack stays open. Not because something is missing, but because there is always space for another story. And maybe that’s exactly the point.