Dan the Dude
Male, Person
Who is Dan the Dude?
Dan Mulcahy, known by the psudonyms of Louis Harris and Dan the Dude, was a New York criminal and the longtime owner of the Stag Cafe at 28 West 28th Street, in the vice district of Satan's Circus. The cafe was a popular hangout for many of the criminals in New York's underworld. Dan was most noted as a fixer and confidante of New York's numerous con men, many of whom came from out of town and used his establishment as their unofficial base. "In olden times [around 1910-1915] in Dan the Dude's place," it was said, "you could see a hundred con men there at once, and not one of them would be a native New Yorker."
According to David Maurer, a professor of linguistics who wrote a history of the American confidence man, the chief function of a "hangout" of this sort was to
Dan the Dude, Maurer added on the basis of his extensive correspondence and interviews with turn-of-the-century con men, "was an unusually helpful fixer. He kept a large ledger in which a record of all touches was kept, as well as a list of promising prospects for all sorts of thievery and con rackets. Professionals in good standing were given information from this book whenever they needed it. So far as I have been able to determine, this was the only document of its kind ever kept by a fixer in a hangout."
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"Dan the Dude." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/dan_the_dude>.
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