Over half a century ago, Jack Lane, Steve Wright, Norman Akel and Jim Farrior turned a former storage room on Lumina Pavilion’s second floor into the Upper Deck, a carefree establishment where revelers partied uninhibited in the shadow of the legendary dancehall. The Lumina News presents “Tales from the Upper Deck,” a series where we look back at Wrightsville Beach’s history through the stories of one of its unique establishments.
Chapter 4: Decoration and location
While the patrons and staff were largely responsible for creating the Upper Deck’s golden era, the establishment’s unusual décor and unique location also contributed.
Manager Jack Lane said he decorated the bar’s interior to have a “marine motif of sorts” using items repurposed from decommissioned World War II Liberty ships. The bar was illuminated with lights from a ship’s engine room and the bar stools and chairs were also repurposed ship furniture.
“That kind of bar stool today probably runs you about $250 to $300,” Lane said.
Patron Jim Farrior fondly recalled sitting on the Upper Deck’s couch in front of the fireplace during the winter with friends.
Lane adorned the fireplace with a 300-pound ship’s cannon called a Lyle gun, which was used to shoot a rescue line to shore or to a victim in distress. Lane said his inebriated patrons tried to steal the cannon on multiple occasions.
“This is a brass cannon,” Lane said, “and you’d see them struggling to get it almost to the steps, and one of them still has a beer in his hand!”
A Liberty ship brass bell hung over the fireplace, but Lane kept the clapper behind the bar, only pulling it out at the end of the night to alert patrons to buy their last rounds.
“When we hit last call, they knew about it in Carolina Beach,” he said.
The Upper Deck was also known for its racks of frosted mugs, which the bartenders doled out to every patron who ordered a beverage. The underside of each mug had a one-inch recess, and Lane admitted he pranked a few of his male patrons by flipping over their mugs while their attention was focused on girls they were sweet talking.
“So while he’s talking to her, he’s pouring a 12-ounce beer into a 1-ounce mug, and it’s going all over him,” Lane said, chuckling.
In addition to 25-cent draft beer, the bar also did a steady business in pre-made pizzas, which the staff threw into an oven in front of the bar for 10 minutes and then topped with hot peppers, cheese and pepperonis. One night, there was such a high demand for the pizzas Lane and his bartenders were stuck in a constant cycle of loading frozen pizzas in, waiting for the ding of the timer, pulling them out with a wooden paddle and slinging them across the bar to hungry patrons.
One time, Lane whipped out a pizza with so much force it flew past the patron and skidded onto the floor. But the man was engrossed in a conversation with his friend, so Lane ran and snatched the pizza off the ground.
“I flipped that sucker over, flicked off the cigarettes and when he turned around I was cutting that pizza!” Lane said.
Lane was also known to throw a few extra handfuls of hot peppers on pizzas served to unpopular customers. There was one man in particular the staff agreed was an “arrogant soul” and when he ordered a pizza Lane said, “You couldn’t see the pepperoni for the peppers.”
While the Upper Deck was ideal for shagging to jukebox music, when Lane hired a popular band they often moved the concert into the spacious Lumina Pavilion ballroom. The Upper Deck’s proximity to the Lumina’s ballroom was also beneficial to Lane and the bartenders, who maintained a close relationship with Lumina Pavilion owner Lance Smith.
Smith even hired the Upper Deck staff to remodel the Lumina Pavilion’s bar. He was thrilled the bartenders worked so hard for three weeks at the rate of only $1 an hour. Then, he counted the beer in his storage cabinet.
“Lance went through the ceiling,” former bartender Steve Wright recalled. “He said, ‘Here I am, thinking I’m getting a good deal, and you guys went and drank 50 cases of beer!’”
The ballroom — which doubled as a skating rink during the 1960s — was also a place for the Upper Deck staff to unwind after their shifts, because state laws didn’t allow bartenders to drink at the same place they served.
The staff would get off work, put their roller skates on and race around in what Wright described as a roller derby — with beer.
“We would skate around, go behind the bar and pull a draft beer, skate around, pull a draft beer,” he said.
Appearances would indicate the bartenders obeyed the rules and never helped themselves to cans of beer at the Upper Deck after getting off work. But behind the bar there was a staff-only rack with Sun Drop bottles, which Lane admitted were actually filled with draft beer.
“So when you got off work, you just asked for a Sun Drop,” he said, grinning.
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