NYC Nightlife Icon Dean Johnson Is Dead

Queer or not, New York nightlifers know Dean Johnson, the bald and compelling six-foot-six rock 'n roll drag queen. The man who founded Rock & Roll Fag Party at the late CBGB’s rock club and fronted bands Dean & The Weenies and Velvet Mafia, died last week.

The New York Post reports Johnson, 45, of Brooklyn, New York, was found in an elegant Washington D.C. apartment of a wealthy unidentified Saudi man. Mysteriously or not, another man was also found dead in the same apartment several weeks before Johnson’s death. No link has been made, but police are investigating.

Fearing he was murdered, a friend of Johnson’s learned through searching Dean’s e-mails that he traveled to D.C. regularly. Of the Saudi apartment owner in question, photographer John Penley said, “Nobody knows his identity, but it’s all very suspicious.” Johnson carried no ID when his body was recovered and remained in the morgue several days before his body was finally identified.

Dean, long a fixture of the New York night scene, promoted some of the city’s most bizarre and exciting parties. He made being queer fierce for a generation of gay and gay-friendly partygoers. A nightlife that is drowning in the swamp of sameness has lost a figure who made nighttime the right time. Rock on, Dean.

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