Got pictures of what's in my head.

Dear Burlesque Noir,

Read this book.

It's about the Everleigh Club, the high class brothel in Chicago in the 1900's. The owners, Ada and Minna Everleigh, were sisters whose shifting identities had them as traveling actors, Edgar Allan Poe's relatives, Kentucky debutantes fleeing violent husbands and daughters of a once-wealthy Virginia lawyer crushed by the Civil War. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their whores with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries.

It's a fantastic read. Really lush detail. But really, the best part is that the professor of the string orchestra that played frequently at the club was a black man named Vanderpool Vanderpool. In the words of my father, "Someone jumped the fence."