Firstlook: Posh

by A.D. Amorosi

For nearly 14 years, Brasil’s has maintained its position as Old City’s singular location in which to sample the fruits of Brazilian cuisine and culture -- feijoada and mariscada baiana downstairs, caipirinhas and Brazilian dance lessons upstairs. Now, owner Waseem Kalla wants to spice things up by keeping his second floor only as Brasil’s, leaving floor one to become the muted-psychedelic dance lounge, Posh. The dim swirls of purple and cobalt light wafting in from behind hand-sponged blue opera doors are the first hint that this floor is very different from the red-and-orange floral tropicalia of Brasil’s. Posh is a trippy tour through the iconography of the ’60s and ’70s, Hef’s Playboy Mansion rec room relocated to the Vegas strip by designers swallowing mescaline. Everywhere, scintillatingly weird light blips catch your eye, from the blown-glass Christmas balls to the water fountain towers lit from below surrounding the dancefloor.

The first thing you see when you enter Posh is its Gentlemen's Bar. Made of a mass of glass block, it's topped with midnight-blue tile and is a great place to perfect your barroom lean (elbow on bar, chin on finger). Walk along the charcoal, slate-tiled floors, you face square, flat light boxes infused with changing images of kitsch heroes --Sonny, Cher, Bond -- and a long, low L-shaped brown canvas couch and matching ottomans. Step to the dancefloor and you're surrounded (above) by rounded metallic sconces and (below) by a wall-filling image of an evening cityscape that Kalla hopes will inspire patrons to think of a time when nightlife oozed glitter and glamour. If it doesn't, the 30-foot-long bar, lit from below in powder blue, serving thick, double-pronged martini glasses filled with drinks like the "Pink Panther" and the "Dean Martini" will. Or you can concentrate on the changing colors of the hanging spaceship lights overhead. Or the plasma screens showing In Like Flint. Or on trying to get out the door you came in after one too many "Dancing Queens." Toto, we're not in Ipanema anymore.

Posh, 112 Chestnut St., 215-413-1701.

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