Dan Perino, a 61-year old native New Yorker puts his heart not on his sleeve but on his flyers–– all 40,000 of them. He has posted similar flyers a decade ago, thousands of “wanted” posters for a girlfriend, and Perino is just as serious now to find his soulmate. However, this time around, Perino isn’t sharing his stories with just anyone. After a media company’s extreme portrayal of him, Perino is selective with who records his search for a partner.

(0:00)

VO, GABRIELLE:

Although New York City isn't the city of love, the many rom-coms filmed here are enough to make the average single person curious about whether their "other half" is a meet-cute away. 

[SFX TAPE: VOICEMAIL]

Yeah, hi, this is Dan. If you think that you’re perfect…Um. Leave a message.

VO, GABRIELLE:

If you're Dan Perino, you declare your intentions and wants on over 40,000 flyers across the city. "Looking for the perfect woman,” he says. And in case you forget his information, you can rip a piece of the flyer to bring his contact info with you wherever you go.

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

10 years ago, I did this flyer called a very similar thing called looking for a girlfriend. And it was very successful. 

(1:00)

I got about half a million, about half a million replies. 

VO, GABRIELLE:

It wasn’t a joke then and it isn’t a joke now. At 61 years old, the New York City native is on the lookout for a partner again via analog posts. Though now, Dan’s put a twist on it, throwing in the idea of “perfection” in literal bolded letters. It’s meant to grab attention, to be fun, and make people ask questions, he says.

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

…Like if you're walking down the street and looking for the perfect woman, it's going to start a conversation. So what I'm doing is basically… it’s entertainment. A social experiment— which I've been doing for the last 10 years— a study on human behavior. And it's mostly performance art.

VO, GABRIELLE:

Maybe it’s no surprise that making art is Dan’s day job in New York, he owns a design business that he’s ran for 45 years.

(2:00)

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

Nobody else does what I do. I'll go in and get colors and design a storefront or somebody that wants, a business person that's just coming here for a year to do business. I'll design their apartment, pick the furniture, pick the colors, pick everything, even the clothes. 

Sometimes when I did a female businesswoman, I picked her clothes out like for the weekend and this and that, because they don't have, my customers don't have time for all that. 

VO, GABRIELLE:

What was a surprise was the fact that he was an NYU law school student pursuing real estate at one point. He shared this with me over the phone before our recorded chat, but he spoke more about it “on the record” too.

INTERVIEWING, GABRIELLE:

So when did you go to NYU Law?

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

It was back in it was back in the 90s. 

(3:00)

Because I lived like right next to NYU. So I figured I'd do something here. I did like guidebooks, a bunch of guidebooks on real estate, on how it was run, like… How to find an apartment without going through a real estate broker and paying a huge fee. I saved a lot of people financially.

But I don't know. I worked in real estate for a long time and I didn't really like it too much.

I'm an artist, and I like to like fly by my own tune. I like to think out of the box. I don't like to conform to that kind of stuff. So this is what I do.

VO, GABRIELLE:

I don’t know what I was expecting from someone whose contact I got from a flyer. I can definitely say I was expecting Dan to be creepier than how he was. 

(4:00)

He got on the Zoom wearing a wide-rimmed hat, with a big beard not in his flyer picture, and blue aviator glasses that he later took off.

He was quite sweet, asking me about my passion for journalism, whether or not I like NYU, and he was open… Comfortable.

If you go on down a Dan-Perino news rabbit hole, you’ll find tons of articles from 10 years ago done by big outlets like the New York Times, CBS, MTV, ABC— all those big acronyms. 

<<ARCHIVAL TAPE>>

VIDEO INTERVIEW, DAN:

So far I put up about 5,800 flyers, 

VO, GABRIELLE:

That was him, a decade ago in a video by StoryTrender. But the Village Sun and New York Post are the only outlets that have covered him this year.

Turns out, access to Dan’s company has been limited a great amount to big media outlets after he said they pigeonholed him into a specific narrative. 

(5:00)

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

I know a lot of people, a lot of people, the media, they just want this like lonely guy in search of a girlfriend and that's not what it is… It's that would be great, it's not, it's a lot more to it than that. 

INTERVIEWING, GABRIELLE:

Yeah, I thought the Village Sons coverage was pretty, the recent one was really good. I was like, “wow, this is, it feels the most candid.”

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

Yeah you should get in touch with him. Claude Claude Solnit. Claude, he's a really good guy… 

But like Vice. I don't know if you're familiar with Vice. 

INTERVIEWING, GABRIELLE:

Yeah.

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

That one they really enticed me to say some stuff and it was all performance art.

None of that was true when I did that interview and they really it's too controversial that one. But it's way too bad.

(6:00)

VO, GABRIELLE:

The article he’s referring to is a piece from 2014 tagged under VICE’s “Sex” category. It’s the most rated-R article of him out there. When I asked about how he felt about being misrepresented, Dan shared that the media company tried to reach out to him again.

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

I didn't tell me there were vice this time. This was a month ago, maybe. And I don't know if I can mention her name, but I will her, and it's a crazy name. Her name is crackhead Barney, and she's a big internet performance artist, and I think she's very funny. 

And there were a lot of people. There were like 10 video people, there pas and all kinds of people, and there were cameras and everything, and I didn't know it was right. So I'm there looking at this, like, crazy woman running around stage with the cameras. I'm like, Are you kidding me? And so I kind of like, I kind of like, I want to go to the store. 

Is there a store around here? And I just like---

INTERVIEWING, GABRIELLE:

Leave?

(7:00)

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

-- I bounce! And I tied my GoPro on, I videotaped me trying to escape. And I keep looking back on the on the thing. And then I found out later they did text me to apologize.

VO, GABRIELLE:

Overall, Dan said that his search for the “perfect woman” has been mostly interesting and a little promising. When I asked what a “perfect woman” meant to him he replied:

INTERVIEWEE, DAN:

Huh, that's complicated. I don't really know either. 

VO, GABRIELLE:

So, there’s no explicit moral to be taken from Dan’s story. If you’re looking for someone perfect in the year of our lord 2024, maybe putting yourself out there is the first step. Be bold, extremely so if Dan’s way is your style. You’ll never know who or what will come of it, and that unpredictability is part of the fun.

Sources:

• Articles:

  • Village Sun 2024

  • Vice 2014

• 2014 Youtube Interview

Music: City in the Sky (alternate Wurlitzer take) by Elijah Fox