Eric Nord

Eric "Big Daddy" Nord (1919–1989) was a Beat Generation coffeehouse and nightclub owner, poet, actor, and hipster.

"[2] Corpulent, standing 6 feet 7 inches tall, Nord was the face of the Beat generation to San Francisco and Los Angeles newspaper readers in the late 1950s and the founder of the hungry i nightclub.

While in Los Angeles, he frequented Agape Lodge of Ordo Templi Orientis, where he studied Aleister Crowley's new religious movement, Thelema, in association with JPL rocket engineer Jack Parsons.

In the early 1950s, Nord sometimes worked at the Co-Existence Bagel Shop (the self-described "Gateway to Beatnik Land"), a popular hangout in North Beach.

(in Bagel Shop Jazz, the poet Bob Kaufman called its patrons "...shadow people...mulberry-eyed girls in black stockings, smelling vaguely of mint jelly…turtle neck angel guys...").

Later that summer, on August 8, in an article titled "Schoolgirl Lost in Beatnik Land", San Francisco Chronicle readers learned that two high school girls in Eric "Big Daddy" Nord's production of Archy and Mehitabel had disappeared after the previous night's performance.

The Gas House was used as the setting for a cult horror film called The Hypnotic Eye (1960) that featured Nord as a bongo-playing beatnik.

[citation needed] Tom Wolfe describes the Merry Pranksters and Ken Kesey, from La Honda, at The Barn, in the last chapter of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.