Eric "Big Daddy" Nord

Eric "Big Daddy" Nord (1919–1989) was a Beat Generation coffeehouse and nightclub owner, poet, actor, and hipster. Newspaper columnist Herb Caen called him the "King of the Beatniks." 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.

Early life and education Nord was born Harry Helmuth Pastor in Krefeld, Germany to Dorothea, an American, and Carl Theodore Pastor, a German. As a child, he often accompanied his father on business trips to the United States. His parents divorced in 1920, and when he was 19, he left Germany in 1938.

He studied acting in Los Angeles and took the stage name of Eric Nord. 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. He was initiated into the Order at Agape Lodge on December 5, 1942. Lodge records indicate that his brother, Carl Rudolf Pastor, was initiated a week later on December 12, 1942.

He moved to Hawaii in the 1960s, but returned after a short stay. “I was involved in a multimillion-dollar health spa but I got a virus," he explained. He also became involved with a vegetarian group that sought to establish a colony in Guatemala but the effort was cut short by a revolution, friends said. also opened The Barn (1965—1968), an art gallery and coffee house, with a large area for concerts , on the site of the Frapwell Dairy Barn (1914—1948), in Scotts Valley. Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead performed at The Barn. 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.

In the early 1970s, he operated a "cultural center" in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood. In 1972, he appeared as the character 'God' in a San Francisco underground photo-comic titled SuperJesus now rated an underground comix classic. He moved to Los Gatos in 1975.

He died in San Jose, California in 1989.

Poetry As He Sees It (Lost Gatos: Free Press, 1968)

Films The Flower Thief (1959) The Hypnotic Eye (1960) Once Upon a Knight (1961) Hungry Eye (1971) Steel Arena (1973)