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What's In a Name? The Meaning Behind Victor Bar's Is Kind of NSFW

By Patty Wetli | February 24, 2016 7:41am | Updated on February 24, 2016 12:39pm

NORTH CENTER — Though it's billed as a Parisian-style cocktail bar, the French influence at the Victor, opening next week in North Center, is subtle if not downright sly.

Don't expect to hear Edith Piaf's "La Vie en rose" on repeat 24/7, the waiters won't be sporting berets, and the decor is more Ralph Lauren than Moulin Rouge.

But the name? It's something of a Francophone's inside dirty joke.

Victor Noir's statue has been rubbed shiny, in certain places. [Flickr/istolethetv]

Victor Noir, memorialized on the back of the cocktail bar's menu, was a 19th Century political journalist during the regime of Napoleon III.

Noir's editor got into a bit of hot water with Prince Pierre Bonaparte (great-nephew of the original Napoleon), a duel was challenged and somehow Noir wound up dead instead of the editor. More than 100,000 Frenchmen turned out for Noir's funeral in a show of protest against the emperor and nine months later, democracy reigned.

And that's just the preamble to what's really interesting about Noir.

Enjoy Patty trying to describe what happens at the tomb of Victor Noir.

John Fehr, the Victor Bar's owner along with his brothers Karl and Graeme, stumbled across Noir's grave in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where a bronze effigy marks the now-martyr's burial site.

The tomb caught his eye. The tomb catches everyone's eye. It's the cemetery's most popular grave after Jim Morrison's.

Though the sculpture depicts Noir at the moment of his death, lying on his back after being struck down by Bonaparte's bullet, the rendering is nevertheless lifelike, not to mention anatomically correct. More to the point, Noir's "manhood" is, shall we say, assertive.

It's been made even more evident over the years thanks to continuous rubbing by women who consider Noir a symbol of fertility.

Victor Noir is more famous in death than life — his tomb has become a symbol of fertility. [Flickr/Francisco Gonzalez]

"After a century of daily amazon joyrides ... Victor Noir's lips and groin are shiny and nickel-clean, while the rest of his body presents the greenish tone of oxidized bronze," is how the website Atlas Obscura tactfully describes the tomb.

Visitors are encouraged to leave flowers in Noir's hat or hand as a thank you for his "time."

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