From the documentary film " Freaks Glam Gods and Rockstars "
by: Ryan Janek Wolowski
ryanisland@aol.com
www.myspace.com/fggar
The New York Times
October 5, 2007
A Fond and Boisterous Memorial Is Held for a Symbol of Gay Night Life
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
For years, Dean Johnson was a rollicking fixture in rock 'n' roll clubs, gay bars, drag queen circles and poetry readings. He was 6-foot-6, with a gleaming shaved head, and he often wore outsize sunglasses to match his outsize frame and personality.
Two weeks after his puzzling death in Washington, hundreds of people gathered at Rapture Café & Books on Avenue A on Wednesday night to remember a man who was rarely forgotten by anyone who met him.
"Dean was a landmark like a tall tower or a tourist attraction," one of the eulogizers, Dale Corvino, told the crowd.
It was a fond, boisterous memorial. The crowd spilled onto the sidewalk, and some lingered past midnight. They spoke about their love for Mr. Johnson, 46, and about his bewildering death.
Friends said that he went to Washington on Sept. 19 after an exchange of e-mail messages with an acquaintance there, but never returned.
On Sept. 20, officers responding to a call went to a building in the 2400 block of 16th Street Northwest and found Mr. Johnson unconscious, the police said. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Four days earlier, officers had gone to the same address and found another man, Jordan Cronkin, 26, and he, too, was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, said Inspector Rodney Parks of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Inspector Parks said that the police were waiting for toxicology reports and for Mr. Johnson's cause of death to be determined. The delay was attributed to the fact that Mr. Johnson had remained unidentified for at least several days. He said that an investigation into both deaths was proceeding.
Mr. Corvino said he had become concerned near the end of September, when he had not heard from Mr. Johnson, and figured out the password to Mr. Johnson's e-mail account. Among the messages, he said, he found one dated Sept. 16 from a man in Washington, saying that Mr. Cronkin had died in the sender's apartment.
In an e-mail message sent to Mr. Johnson at 1:19 a.m. on Sept. 17, the man in Washington wrote that he was disturbed by memories of Mr. Cronkin calling out and crying.
"I see him on the couch, his body supple but me certain with the first touch he was dead and for some reason not being surprised and tonight I am afraid that he will be mad at me as a spirit."
A message sent the next day told Mr. Johnson that the man had bought him a round-trip Amtrak ticket between New York and Washington. The return ticket was never used. A day after he arrived in Washington Mr. Johnson died.
In the 1980s and '90s Mr. Johnson, a former film student, made himself a symbol of gay night life, from Chelsea to the East Village, fronting bands and organizing parties. He was featured in two films depicting those worlds, "Mondo New York" and "Freaks, Glam Gods and Rock Stars." But his appeal transcended stereotypes, his friends said.
"I never felt as comfortable as a straight guy in a world where I wasn't supposed to be than with Dean," Jordy Trachtenberg, a music acquisitions executive, said at the memorial. "When I met Dean, I realized what being free is all about. He never judged anybody, and he never cared about being judged."
"Jean Genie," a song by David Bowie about a gender-bending figure searching for love, blared from speakers inside the cafe on Wednesday, and photographs of Mr. Johnson were tacked to a wall next to posters promoting parties that he had organized.
Mr. Johnson was known for performing with bands like the Velvet Mafia. He also organized long-running parties at CBGB and the World, another defunct club on the Lower East Side.
"It was one of the last hurrahs of reckless abandonment and fun before the scene turned into models and bottles," said D.J. Tennessee, who played records at those parties. "It mixed the silly and the sublime."
Mr. Johnson also had a serious side that was manifest in his poetry and his involvement in local politics, friends said. Some of his parties, which featured a blend of people including transsexuals and heterosexuals, were benefits for squatters who took over abandoned Lower East Side buildings and made them into homes.
And even as he took part in drag queen revues like Wigstock, friends said, he did so in his own way. Rather than adopting feminine mannerisms, Mr. Johnson simply stretched his broad shoulders into a tight black dress and donned sunglasses.
"He wasn't copying others; he invented his own persona," said Clayton Patterson, a photographer and filmmaker on the Lower East Side. "He was a prototype."
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Dean Johnson and The Weenies "Bourgeois Boys"by misterrichardson2,379 views
This is music!!!
ToxoBerlin 3 months ago
wtf is this??
HIGHJINXFILMZ 2 years ago