Dan the Dude

Dan Mulcahy (fl. c. 1905–15), known by the pseudonyms 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 confidant of 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

Maurer added that based on his correspondence and interviews with turn-of-the-century con men, Dan the Dude "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."

In addition to his activities at the Stag Cafe, Dan was also involved in illegal gambling, and was later implicated in the 1912 murder trial of Charles Becker.

The Stag Cafe was purchased from Dan the Dude by Chick Tricker, a one-time leader of the Eastman Gang, who renamed it the Cafe Maryland. It later became the location of a gangland shooting referred to by Herbert Asbury as the "Ida the Goose" affair.

A fictional character named Dan the Dude, played by Arthur Stone in the 1928 silent film Me, Gangster, may have been loosely based on him, but prints of this film have been lost.