“Playboy for Cyclists”

Grown-up boys, eyes ablaze, looking at beautiful women, great soccer, or even beautiful cars: we thank you, Michael Embacher! Thanks to you, these eyes can now light up for something entirely different. Because, of course, you could have parked your private erotica collection in your attic and kept it to yourself, forever: But no, you were so kind as to entrust your fleet of vehicles to the industrial photographer Bernhard Angerer and his assistant Benedikt Croy. For four months, so that they could treat these bicycles like fragile eggs, setting them in the most erotic light, like super models or sports cars. Emerging from this is a smart photo volume, a playboy for cyclists, at home on every coffee table. Never before have exposed bike frames, severe chains and chain guards as well as naked brake cables and Bowden cables been photographed more sensually than for Smart Move.

Chain reaction
We are also thankful that there is nothing missionary about the book. For years, others have invoked a holy wrath trying to convert us to urban cycling. You don’t! Your story, in which you tell of gaining too much of a tire around your middle and amassing too many parking tickets, speaks for itself. Also, the switch from car to bicycle setting off a long chain reaction sounds entirely plausible: pushing the pedals everyday you burned off your own body fat rather than the fuels that lead to climate change. You always found a handy parking space, enjoying quite a laugh, you and the bike, and all those stressed-out car drivers. And naturally, you saved a lot of money.

Pin-up
We aren’t entirely sure if the thus accumulated savings were enough to finance the opulent Embacher collection: Most likely not. But we have no problem with that. It is simply beautiful to watch as you stroke the leather seats and rubber wheels of your filigree track bikes that you’ve hung up there on the filing cabinets like the pin-ups construction workers hang in their lockers. But they’re not there simply for appraisal, but also to pull down quickly and jump on, to speed off fast as a bike courier to building talks. It is also simply beautiful to listen to you, an expert on design and aesthetic, when you reflect on the great art of bicycle making: “Unbelievable how much technical know-how goes into it. On the one hand, a bicycle has to be light, but on the other, sufficiently rigid. It’s simply sexy.” Consequently, you have also made space in your attic to house a few evolutionary dead-ends, for example, the 15.3 kilo heavy suitcase-bike: With a good conscience, it really is only representative of a real suitcase, and you wouldn’t even want to wish it on your worst enemy. And another fundamentally flawed model is the rickety folding bike dreamed up by a Rolls-Royce engine developer: watch out, that bike’s heading for a  crash!

Out for a spin
The rebuilt model from the Viennese manufacturer Capo is no off-the-rack model. In your photo volume, it is categorized as a “cross between an ice skate and a bicycle.” According to the story, the first owner is meant to have often traveled over Lake Neusiedl on it. In his workshop he affixed a blade in front and spikes behind. Also, the bright yellow “Buddy Bike” is perfectly suitable for everyone who has always demanded equal rights for tandem riders! You, Michael Embacher, dear collector, are naturally not sitting there raptly staring at someone’s back!