Club Nostradamus

by A.D. Amorosi

The year is 1982. You are living in Manhattan's East Village.You keep getting frisked at the door of the Pyramid by a tall, black, gay man wearing a live ferret as a shawl. Joe Strummer is hanging around the Reggae Lounge while Joe Jackson cruises for women at Arthur's Continental. You've just seen Liquid Sky. Stranger Than Paradise is filming around the corner at the same time Brother From Another Planet's filming along St. Mark's. Everyone thinks they're vampires, aliens or graffiti artists.

This is the haunted Boho vibe alive today at Club Nostradamus, located in Fairmount's Cuvee Notredame, Philly's only Belgian restaupub. Walk past ropes of garlic, sponge-painted walls and an old upright piano and head downstairs toward the curtains. As soon as you hear an upright bass, a blues-guitar lick or a woman in a leopard-skin coat asking in a thick German-Somalian accent "I am a lesbiaaan. Would you ballroom daaance with meee?" you've hit Nostradamus.

Booker and operator Robin Parry has made Nostradamus a low-ceilinged, low-lit salon, filled with dozens of loco artists' paintings, old paper lamps and older photographs crowding the brick walls along with lutes, flutes, bongos and mandolins. Long banquettes covered in grandmotherly fabrics line these walls so that patrons can nosh on Belgian shrimp dishes and big ales. The bar, dotted with African and French totems and wirey wine racks, seems to flicker from below, as if hell could swallow up bartender Tre Rios whilst she spins her tumbler. The tiniest of stages hosts groups like Metagroove, Pat, Tapping the Vein, Sweetie and soon Need New Body. Sundays are Haitian music night; Latin salsa bands, too. Parry's promoting some sort of goddess night soon that's sure to bring in Sylvia Plath fans. The best night is when the wired, Moog-y jazz of house band Justice On A Budget oozes from the stage, often while silent films like Nosferatu screen. Did I mention I love this place?

Then there's that German-Somalian lesbian...

Club Nostradamus, located in Cuvee Notredame, 17th and Green sts., 215-266-0618.