Updated 3 years ago
In the 90s and 2000s like many people I went out almost every night, with preference toward open bars, no cover, art openings, underground celebs, catered industry shit, private lofts, special events, guest lists where promoters actually called you up!!!! and all that. Rarely if ever left Manhattan – for me, Brooklyn was decidedly unglamorous back then.
And DJs and music were just a bonus, and not the primary attraction or the superstars they are today (not counting Junior obviously, but he is on his own planet), for me anyway…. it was all about the vibe and meeting people, getting their number, hanging out, sharing party info, SDR&R, etc. And when you do all that over enough countless late nights some faces kept popping up everywhere. You often met each other very slowly through gradual osmosis.
But you pretty much instantly knew Jean Claude and Walter Monheit.
Jean Claude was always out at the clubs with a pirate hat in the 1990s well into the 2000s (maybe before and after too.) Awesome dude. I bet his house (houseboat!?) had a pirate hat shrine. He’s still poppin around in Portugal.
Another hat person from the Studio 54 days thru the late 90s was the elderly Austrian alleged lifeguard and nudist vegetarian Walter Monheit, who always had a hat and balanced candles on it. He was a personality at Spy Magazine. A staple of uptown and midtown, Walter was more uptown than Jean Claude. We exchanged numbers, hung out a lot, and he once told me that if I wanted to live to a ripe old age I should refrain from drugs or alcohol, be a vegetarian, and be a nudist.
If anyone were ever to make an NYC Nightlife Encyclopedia, these two would be near the top for me, along with the rogue’s gallery of usual suspects. They were part of what made New York special.
More on Walter
Village Voice
Vanity Fair
Black Book
