Post #653829 by mike and marie on Sat, Sep 29, 2012 8:59 PM

It's necessary for a quick diversion before going further. There were actually two Wreck Bars, both within an hour or so of each other. The first was Bob Gill's at the Yankee Clipper in Ft Lauderdale:

Possibly hoping to copy the success of that one, a slightly different (but similar) Wreck Bar was one of the featured rooms at the Castways in Miami Beach:

(Notice the same chains in the ceiling, but instead of a "wreck" hole there's an addition of fishnet.)

Both of them are great (or in the case of the WB at the Castaways, was great as it was ultimately wrecked and bulldozed in the 80s), but are a little different. The Yankee Clipper Wreck Bar (YC WB) has larger windows to the pool directly behind the bar and is set up for the mermaid shows that continue to this day (hi Marina!); at the Castaways, the portholes were smaller but the actual bar seemed just a tad bigger and had a nice feel as well. We wanted to capture elements of both in our Wreck Bar.

We matched the color of the overhead "water" in the Ft Lauderdale Wreck Bar and painted all the window wells as well as the ceiling area where we'd reproduce the hole:

[ Edited by: mike and marie 2012-09-30 12:38 ]