Kink and Madness in Weimar Berlin

I'd like to think that we can all learn lessons from the generations that preceded us.  Sure, we're in what looks to be pretty dire economic straits, but cheer up, friends!  This is far from unprecedented.  Let's take a lesson from the Weimar Republic and start making some kinky lemonade out of all those sour citrusy fruits that are piling up on our collective doorstep.

Sure, the currency was worth virtually nothing and a not-insignificant portion of the population resorted to prostitution and petty crime in order to make ends meet, and there's that whole "looming specter of fascism" thing, but there's a silver lining to all this.  Far-out cabaret performances and face-meltingly excellent fashion combined with a public thirst for kink and acting-out that seems to be pretty much without parallel.  As a would-be despot, these are cultural qualities I'd like to see us start to embrace.

The Teutonic zeal for order was applied to the cult of esoteric sex, resulting in a bizarrely codified underworld-as-pop-culture zeitgeist.  When German efficiency is applied to sex-for-sale, the concept of the Boot Girl is born--these street dominatrices advertised their services through the color of their patent-leather boots.  I can imagine situations in which being ill-versed in that particular hanky code might result in embarrassment, to say nothing of the potential for grievous personal injury.

Let's cut to the chase--if my world is going to hell in a handbasket, I want monocles, fancy footwear, spankings, endless nights of weird parties and tropical pets to compensate for my troubles, and I want them NOW.  Barring that, I'll just hole up in my apartment and re-read Feral House's superb pictorial histories, Mel Gordon's "Voluptuous Panic" and Barbara Ulrich's "Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin" and do my best to ignore the outside world.