Dapper Dan
Dear Dr. B, this is the story I told you I'd share.
Thanks for letting others know.
Bob, from Boise Idaho.
Dan is a real story from my own life. As a child, I’d “get
of the hills” of central Idaho by visiting my two grandmothers in Boise. About
a week with each was great, and likely all they could handle.
Grandmother A. There was much about this family, gossiped
about by adults, but never shared with children. I suspect there were histories
of fleeing towns due to petty thefts by family members due to the many sudden
moves.
At 10, I was often naive to many things, but a good
observer. Stories often become complete in my mind after many years where
something triggers finding a mental missing piece of the puzzle of a person’s
life or event. Often, there was gaslighting going on, especially in a time
where children were not communicated with well: they were to be seen and not
heard.
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| Sherlock Holmes: at first glance, it seems Dapper Dan is fixit man for a North End Boise Middle Age Woman, but... |
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| Sherlock Holmes: at first glance, it seems Dapper Dan is fixit man for a North End Boise Middle Age Woman, but... |
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| Sherlock Holmes: at first glance, it seems Dapper Dan is fixit man for a North End Boise Middle Age Woman, but... |
At 10 it was my week With Grandma A, and her youngest son
and my uncle Dan showed up most afternoons about 4. He was supposed to be working in the family
business as a painter, but often found a reason to not work. Something more
important had to be done, and the entire family allowed this to happen because
he was the youngest. I gathered it was their own self-pity: why should the cute
young man have to work like me, like a slave all day long and all of life?
Dan showed up twice with packages of clothes to show his
mom, grandma. And, they were dapper. Now that I know the stores of Boise
better, they weren’t typical clothes for 1963 from the Bon Marche, or the
Bazaar Department Store. They weren’t fashion bowling clothes. They weren’t
golf, fishing, or other interest, nor were they a stack of valuable but common
Levis.
No, these were odd.
They were from Talbot’s Fine Clothes for men. Most towns had
a store like this: it’s a hole in the wall small store catering to men
typically 40-50. There might be some
golf shirt or fine wool sport coat to be found, but the clothes were extra fine
clothes you’d see on a middle upper income person. In fact, this would be the
place where single gay men of that age would buy ALL their clothes, and the
clothiers were also gay. And, some flamboyant items indicated this all: the
display mannequins all had some gay flashing: scarf around the neck or a bright
yellow handkerchief in a shirt or coat breast pocket. None of this was ordinary
fare for Boise, but it served the hidden gay culture of this city.
Dan:
Dan showed up with the shirts, pleated pants, belts, socks,
and pair of shoes and bag of underwear twice in one week, and tried them on for
Grandma. And, they weren’t clothes of his age group, they were that gay 40’s
crowd, but it gave him a fine look.
He tried them on to show. “How can you afford this?” Grandma
asked.
He replied, “It was a gift from a satisfied customer,
implying it was a gift from one of their painting customers. But, Dan wasn’t
involved at all in the sales or contact with painting customers at all.
Simply put: Dan was being outfitted, dressed up, and dolled
up.
Was he a gigolo of sorts? Well, he was very handsome, and it
would make sense that some lonely 40’s woman would eagerly dress her “boy” up
well.
But, the clothes were not from the Bon Marche. They were from the gay men’s store.
Dan wasn’t or isn’t to my knowledge gay, but Boise was
famous for its cultural arrests of the 50’s, described in the book and movie:
The Boys of Boise. In this situation, a group of about 20 men from 16 to 22
would allow gay men to give them a blow job. They weren’t gay, but the older
men were. The boys and those men both were arrested, and I know some of them
personally.
This “sex ring” that occurred is actually common worldwide.
Young gay straight men get paid to receive oral sex. Some, regulars, while
still straight, may have an ongoing relationship with a particular gay man…..and
be the recipient of clothes and watches. Their “cute boy” is outfitted.
Dan also came into the house with bundles of cash off for
that time: 200.00 at a time. Rather than pay off my grandma for some loan, he’d
quickly go spend it on himself. While Dan lived just a bit historically behind
the time of the Boys of Boise, I’m sure he followed that North End Boise
Culture, learned it quickly, and found it to be a resource for high end
clothes, and much cash. He had a known girlfriend at that time, and likely that
gay man also knew about that.
Dan, had gaslighted everybody around!!
Dapper Dan the Gaslight Man
video: Fall of 55, The Boys of Boise
.
video: the Statesman caused hysteria over Boys of Boise, arrests occurred, and eventually a community got it's off-track scapegoating investigators stopped.
Why did this clothing thing draw my attention? First, being a gay man in remote central Idaho, I lived with a copy of Sears and Penney's catalogs by my side. I always liked nice clothes, and often asked for those for birthdays and Christmas.
Very rarely, would my family on visiting relatives in Boise, go into a department store, and I'd look at trending clothes. But, that was limited. The culture of an district of Boise, The Boise North End had a working class population and was dominated by giant in the state of Idaho, Boise High School, and the connection to downtown Boise, several important movie theaters, the capitol building of the State, and the cruise streets and their soda shop hangouts on Capitol Boulevard. It was a place of abundant petty crimes, James Dean wannabees, and men who got into rumbles outside their large Italian and Irish families. Wearing clean jeans, greased back hair, and cigarettes rolled up in a clean white tshirt, the weapon of choice hidden in the car hearkened back to earlier big US cities: a baseball bat.
But, these clothes were from a real specialty niche. There may have been 3 small shops in Boise selling this niche clothing. It included Alexander's Fine Men's Clothes, but this caliber of clothing was not found at the main stream stores. And, while these stores carried and made men's suits, that was in the back of the store, and secondary to this niche clothing.
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| historical photo, Alexander's men's store, Boise, Idaho |
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| historical photo: Penney's Boise Idaho |
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| Ward Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver, casual shirt |
There were other men's styles of clothing at that time, that a young man like Dan might wear:
sports or bowling shirts
white tshirt
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| white tshirt boys Boise, Idaho |
But, this was an older man's style of the late 50's and very early 60's. Here are some examples of those older man's styles, BUT NOT THE ALEXANDER'S Shirt Dan was receiving as gifts. These below might be a gift form a middle age woman that was giving to her younger sexual partner (in Boise, with no pools, this would not be the pool boy, but the yard and fix-it boy).
50's retro men's shirt: dapper but not the gay blending in shirt of Boise
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| 50's retro men's shirt: dapper but not the gay blending in shirt of Boise |
So, What was this niche clothing?
1. From Alexander's
2. silk or linen for a draping look
3. finest stitching: double stitched with a very flat finish: you could see it was quality, and would last (likely many of these shirts remain in closets, found at thrift stores, or for Ebay resale).
But unlike all the rest of the shirts of the same quality and materials at that time: the Alexander shirt and the shirts of Dapper Dan:
Gay "I have fashion but I also blend in" clothing
1. had no color detailing, contrasts, bars, patterns, logos
2. were monotone, subdued colors
They stood out as quality, but did not stand out as high fashion. Why?
These were the shirts middle-age gay men wore to wear a top shirt, but "blend in".
This was then, Gay men wearing gay clothes that fit in to the local society. They could be seen in parities, events, golfing, or a clandestine gay bar, but few would see this as some sort of gay attire:
a police officer would not see this as gay but as a shirt an upstanding Ward Cleaver would wear. But, another gay man or some women with fashion or materials knowledge would notice. This was a gay camouflaging shirt. Perfect. And, very tricky of them.
Why then would this be used to outfit Dan?
If the gay man knew this to be the gay camouflage shirt, and all others had none of that "magical quality", then this could be the only clothing to give. Though they might make Dan look older, what's wrong with that. And, it distinguished these gay men from others.
In the past, there have been historical clothing and other signs that gays would wear to distinguished them from non-straights, allowing them to start a conversation with a stranger, as was needed to meet other gays. Wearing a lavender kerchief might be too flamboyant, though historically many gays took clothing or fashion risks. But, the lavender kerchief in a pocket was seen as a "secret sign" and started the association of lavender in addition to pink as associated with gays. Pink was the color used by Hitler, the pink upside-down triangle, to identify gays, of whom 700,000 were imprisoned and gased in World War 2.
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