Reunion European Mustache Club Antwerp with compare who accompanied the first Mustache of the Year in 1979: “A snore is for eternity” (Antwerp)
In 1979 Willy Dupon, who founded the Mustache Club Antwerp a year earlier in his café De Snor on the Brouwersvliet, had the first Mustache of the Year election. “Back then we were all still young, beautiful and dynamic,” laughs the now 84-year-old.
The then city carillonneur Jo Haazen came out as the winner and played in the Cathedral of Our Lady the Snorrelic by John Lündstrom. “During the following elements, Jo Haazen was flanked by two police officers with beautiful mustaches. And I have, as it were, picked it up again after 43 years. They don’t have two steeds Moustachealthough they are a bit grayer now. White, so to speak.”
No bodyguards
During our visit to Den Engel, Jef Van Houtven has not yet arrived, but his colleague Gilbert De Souter (77) from Hoboken is already having a coffee on the terrace. Until his retirement in 2004, he was active in various departments of the Antwerp police, investigations, the Schipperskwartier and the murder brigade. “I was still working in 1979 In the district. One day our commissioner told me that the Mustache Club had two whisks had asked to accompany the pageant during their Mustache of the Year election. They also have a snore of course. I had a chance it was a nice day. Willy tell us bodyguards, but we should really just walk along and direct the traffic.”
Didn’t all offices have a hairy upper facade in those days? “No, that was the generation before me. Almost all of them snored. I don’t know about it now, but I suspect there aren’t many. In my time they were at least 30 years old, nowadays they are all young men.”
Gilbert did not join the Mustache Club. “Especially because those guys drank more than I could afford with my wages.”
But he is a fiery mustache bearer. “One day I decided to leave them and she stayed. It’s part of my body. Today she is groomed by my wife. She knits them up and occasionally puts a pomade in them. She sometimes calls it a ‘militarized mustache’, in the style of German or English officers from the quiet years. She has only gotten more beautiful over the years.”
ESA chairman Willy Dupon also has ties with the Antwerp police. “My grandfather ran traffic on the pipe in his 30s and my granddaughter is currently involved in the corps buying weapons and the like.”
argue
The first Mustache of the Year Jo Haazen was not present at the reunion on Saturday. Willy: ”He was recently discredited because he has a little too close ties with Russia and sided with them after the invasion of Ukraine. He now lives and works in Saint Petersburg and will stay there for a while.”
Present on the terrace of Den Engel: members of ESA, snoring sympathizer Ludo Van Campenhout and Bob Cools (88). The former mayor of Antwerp was himself Mustache of the Year in 1983. “Then there was also police escort during the parade, which was very nice. The other times I had cops around me as mayor was during a demonstration that could get out of hand.”
trenches
It is possible that Bob Cools owes his preference for snoring to his father: “He fought as a soldier in the First World War. In the trenches you had to shave yourself quickly. That was also mandatory. This often happened with a blunt knife and since the upper lip is the most delicate, he also stopped snoring, also to save time. Because that was allowed in the army.”
He continues: “There was a time when all men wished to wear a mustache. It was really fashionable then. But later came to young people like your photographer (Walter Saenen is 63, ed.) the beard on the rise. Logical, because then you don’t have to shave yourself anymore, you need a mustache for a long time.”
The former mayor himself also opted for a beard during corona: “That was a problem because Willy had decided that men with beards are not welcome in the club. Then I said I’d better resign as a member. He turned around and now beard wearers are also welcome in our club. I may shave the beard, but my mustache is for eternity.”