June 08, 2026
Molly McVety/PhillyVoice
Joe Lockwood and Morgan Walbridge retrofitted the garage of their Fishtown rowhome into Nostalgia Fishtown, a thrift store, music venue and event space.
On an inconspicuous side road off Front Street, Morgan Walbridge and Joe Lockwood can be found running Nostalgia Fishtown — an event space, T-shirt shop, rehearsal studio and music venue — from the comfort of their rowhome garage.
Inspired by the underground gig culture at their alma mater, University of the Arts, the couple sought to create a place where working musicians like themselves could jam and learn from one another. After years of house hunting, dozens of underground concerts and a bust from the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections, they launched their performance space last month in what Lockwood, 28, called a "total dream come true."
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While the first concert isn't until June 28, doors at the 14 Jefferson St. property are already open so passersby can check out the space, buy a T-shirt or talk with its owners. Once the music calendar begins, there are five shows booked a week, every week through November.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of support and excitement we’ve gotten,” said Walbridge, 27. “It’s definitely been a little overwhelming, but also really reaffirming.”
True to its name, guests are greeted with a wave of sentimental throwbacks when they walk through the double doors at Nostalgia Fishtown. The walls are covered with collages made with hundreds of records from all ages and genres, a box TV from the early 2000s hangs from the ceiling and plays old cartoons and two racks of vintage T-shirts are on display with price tags made using cards from the game “Cards against Humanity.”
The more you look around, the more you’ll find. There's a mini bust of Benjamin Franklin, a skeleton sporting Nostalgia merchandise and a copy of the UArts charter.
Past the vintage couches and decorative rugs lies the hallmark of Nostalgia, a stage fit with a guitar, keyboard, drum set and pre-assembled sound system. It sits slightly elevated, thanks to the natural upward gradient of the building, and can accommodate anything from a jazz sextet to a yoga session.
Nostalgia Fishtown, located at 14 Jefferson St., is a performance space and music venue located in the garage of a neighborhood couple's rowhome.
The burgeoning small business has already gained the support from some of the area’s local musicians — including a surprise appearance and social media shoutout from Philly native rapper Tierra Whack — and UArts alums, who were the inspiration for the venture.
Walbridge, originally from Rochester, New York, and Lockwood, from Princeton, New Jersey, met at UArts in 2016 while working on in their respective crafts — Walbridge on the vibraphone and Lockwood on the trumpet. They started up a close friendship attending house shows and basement gigs. The underground concerts that mostly spread through word-of-mouth and ran off donations were the foundation of their creative pursuits.
“It was probably my biggest inspiration,” Lockwood said. “You’d walk into some living room and would see some crazy band… I knew I wanted to do that.”
They began dating later that year and eventually shared the dream of owning their own space for fellow musicians. Their graduation overlapped with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which only reinvigorated Lockwood’s desire to pursue the project.
“During [quarantine], I remember waking up, checking the news about COVID, and going on Zillow looking for a commercial space,” Lockwood said. “Being a working musician, I was seeing the end of a lot of projects and venues that I loved when I was in school. It was a combination of my parents rooting me on and telling me to go for it and also wanting to get redemption on the COVID timeline.”
The couple spent nearly two years searching for a home and venue space before finally coming across the Jefferson Street rowhome. While the garage was nothing special at the time they purchased it, they said, it had a prior commercial zoning approval from a previous auto body operation, which meant their dream could become a reality.
After painting the walls, leveling the floors and fixing the ceiling, they began hosting some of their own or their friends’ bands for free mini shows, relying on donations to keep the operation running. Weeks later, UArts abruptly shut down. Walbridge was working at the university at the time as an administrative assistant and recalls registering students for classes just hours before the "traumatizing" news reached her.
“[The closure] was beyond shocking,” she said. “It all just kind of blew up in seven days. But it was nice to be able to see everyone here. We had a bunch of gatherings. … It just reinforced the mission.”
Despite their best efforts to keep their hustle relatively under wraps, word about the shows began to spread. Lines began to form outside of their house for a chance to catch a glimpse of niche, mostly Philly-based, industry musicians like John Legend’s guitarist Ben O’Neill, jazz musician John Swana, saxophonist for the Jonas Brothers Yesseh Furaha-Ali and funk artist Black Buttafly.
A crowd listening to the band Poster Girl at Nostalgia Fishtown music venue before the city shut down their operation in January 2025.
“We had a hard time saying no to people that want to do stuff here, and it got to the point where we would have 17 nights in a row of bands from Texas, Connecticut, South America,” Lockwood said. “I knew something was up. I knew that the journey was going to end.”
The two remain steadfast that they always capped the shows' attendance at around 70 people and were making sure sets were done by 10:30 p.m. to not disturb their neighbors, but after around six months, a representative from L&I showed up at one of their shows — a particularly tame one, Lockwood and Walbridge said — and informed them that they needed a special exception from the city in order to continue their operation.
“I have to say it was the best thing that ever happened to us,” Lockwood said. “Because we would have been stuck in this limbo passion project that was taking up 100% of our time and we wouldn’t have ever been able to capitalize on really sinking our teeth into this and making it open to the public.”
They spent the next two years getting everything up to code, and perhaps more importantly, bringing their own style to the space. They began to lean into the “Nostalgia” name more by displaying tchotchkes from their childhoods and installing secondhand couches and artwork. Lockwood began to drive to estate and thrift sales to purchase T-shirts en masse that could be used for inventory and hooked up a live feed of the stage to the box TV so the “short kings and queens” can still get a view.
“It’s meant to be a little bit more of an intimate listening experience,” Lockwood said. “But that doesn't mean that it’s just sitting and quiet. Our favorite shows were the ones where everyone’s standing around the band and really getting into it.”
Nostalgia Fishtown, located at 14 Jefferson St.
An event calendar will be posted on the Nostalgia Fishtown social media pages in the coming weeks, but the owners have a loose plan to focus on smaller, more mellow performances on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays and let Friday and Saturday shows get a little noisier.
Tickets will cost around $15 and will be sold at the door and on their website with a cap of 50 attendees per show. All shows are BYOB, but the couple said they are in talks with surrounding businesses to collaborate on some specials or discounts.
During the day, anyone can rent the space for $30 per hour or pop by to explore the stage or T-shirt collection. For Lockwood, it's beginning to feel like a culmination of the hard work and dedication he and Walbridge put into what was once considered a pipe dream.
“It was four or five years of waking up every day with this dream of mine, not being anywhere in sight," he said. "… I felt like I had a complete ego death trying so long on this thing. Now it’s the best feeling ever, finally seeing a positive feedback loop. I spring out of bed every morning, super excited for what I have planned today. ... It really is a total dream come true for me. I'm pinching myself every day.”
