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Fetish Festival
Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit reckons that holding a leather and fetish festival in his city will help make it Europe's "creative capital."
Modelled on San Francisco's annual sadomasochism festival, the Folsom Europe Festival hopes to attract thousands of, erm, enthusiasts to the German capital. Mayor Wowereit said "We are proud that people of varied origins and predilections feel at home in our city and celebrate together. The first weekend in September will be marked by pure joie de vivre ... The international leather and fetish scene is meeting for the second time in Berlin ... Welcome to Berlin."
Conservative groups are, obligingly, furious: Any city seeking status as a creative centre is helped when conservatives depict it as a latter-day Sodom.
Should London (Europe's real creative capital) worry about losing its status? Not really. One of Europe's most cherished stereotypes of the German people is that they manage to combine an appetite for sexual deviancy with a grim seriousness in the pursuit of such pleasures. Few things can be less enticing than the prospect of middle-aged PVC-wrapped Germans, pasty Poles and pudgy Brits in chains and leathers parading their fetishes under the approving eye of Berlin's town council.
The thing is, Berlin is already cool. The music of Nick Cave and David Bowie, the films of Wim Wenders, the nightlife and its arts scene have made it that rarity, a German city that is an international destination for hip youngsters.
If the Mayor wants to remodel his city into a Eurotrash-inspired gimpfest, that's fine by him. It's more likely to make his city a laughing stock rather than a creative capital, though.
