We all have a dark side. Whether it's tapping into our quiet urge for galactic domination, watching too many horror movies, or maybe just indulging in the quiet "I wonder what would happen if..." while daydreaming at work, it's in every one of us. Some never let the darkness out, so to speak, keeping it buried deep inside. Artists have a unique way to explore the darkness, though-they can edge through it in writing, sculpture, song, paint, or other sort of medium. This bike-Kim Suter's exquisite experiment in sheetmetal-is one such piece of art.
You can see why we went crazy for "the S&M bike" the moment our editor pulled out the pictures. Those curves! That rear tire! The engine! The paint job! It looked like it had walked off the set of either a metal band video or a high-budget vampire movie-a ride for an immortal hero, perhaps, both fleet and sexy. A bike you'd like to make a quick escape on, but maybe not meet in a dark alley.
A bike as smooth looking as this must be the culmination of months of planning, right? You'll be surprised to find out it's more of a platform for parts than a carefully plotted masterpiece, a sort of guinea pig for Kim and his crew. "It was our first attempt at handmade sheetmetal," he said. "We were going to have it done for a bike event, but once we got going we kept expanding it, doing all these shapes in metal."
The dominatrix theme for this bodice ripper is partially owed to its construction. "There are certain shapes of metal that you can't go across with flames or artwork," Kim explained, noting that the bike had a two-inch ridge down the center of the gas tank that would screw up any conventional graphics they tried to lay down. Prior to that, Kim and his wife Cheryl were at a rockabilly street rod festival in Las Vegas and Cheryl picked up a t-shirt with a girl, a whip, and ready to play? splashed across the front. The girl on the shirt became one of the two babes plastered onto the gas tank.
Oh, that's right. This ride doesn't even need models hanging all over it-it's got two girls that come as part of the package. One of them is, as noted, from the t-shirt; the other... "Well," Kim said, "One of my artists said he had a book on domination, and he brought it in, and we ended up using that as a guide...he might be a pervert." Cheryl oversaw the painting and made sure the guys kept it tasteful; the girls are both suggestive and seductive, but there's no excessive nudity (they do, however, carry whips...hmm). The girls-done in blue-gray with the faintest blurring-are set off by the otherwise bold brandywine-on-black coloring that coats the rest of the sheetmetal.
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