1959

University of Minnesota and Dinkytown

He enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he immersed himself in the Dinkytown folk scene and began performing as Bob Dylan.

The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, the Minneapolis neighbourhood by the university where he played coffeehouses (photo 2006) · RxS at English Wikipedia · Public domain

Dinkytown was the bohemian neighborhood next to the campus, full of coffeehouses, bookshops and student apartments. There he traded rock and roll for acoustic folk music, learning old ballads and blues from records borrowed from friends and playing for small change at places like the Ten O'Clock Scholar. Reading Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, and hearing his records changed everything: he began to dress, talk and sing in Guthrie's style. He spent little time on his studies and drifted away from the university within about a year. The new name stuck, and so did his ambition. Near the end of 1960 he decided that Minneapolis was too small, and he set out for New York, where the folk revival was at its center and where he hoped to meet Guthrie himself.