Dapper Dan's Boutique, located on 125th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues, opened in 1982, and at times was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When Dan returned to New York in 1974, he decided to be a clothier, and first sold shoplifted items out of his car. In 1968–74, he toured Africa as part of the Columbia University and the Urban League academic program. During this time he went through a life-style change and became a vegetarian. In the 1960s, Dan worked for a Harlem newspaper called Forty Acres and a Mule, as he initially wanted to become a writer. He soon went back to school and entered into an academic program sponsored by the Urban League and Columbia University. Malcom X said, "If you want to understand the flower, study the seed." This prompted Dan to indulge in studying at the Countee Cullen Library. ![]() ĭapper Dan became tired of the street life after listening to a Malcom X speech. ![]() By age 13, he was a skilled gambler his success as a gambler helped him finance his first store. He recalls horses and buggies still on the streets in his early childhood, in the post- World War II days of Manhattan. All nine of them lived in a three bedoom apartment. His father, Robert, was a civil servant and his mother, Lily, a homemaker. He grew up on 129th and Lexington Avenue with three brothers and three sisters. ![]() Dan was born in Harlem, New York, in 1944, and he was born at home with his grandmother as a midwife.
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