By Patrick Malone | Malone News Service

Long before downtown Leesburg became the popular destination it is today, Payne’s Biker Bar was a fixture on North King Street. So was Wallace D. “Wally” Payne.

Known to friends and customers as Wally, Payne was the longtime owner and namesake of one of the most memorable establishments in Leesburg history. He died September 5 at his home in Beverly Hills, Florida. He was 90.

For decades, Payne’s occupied 5 and 7 N. King St., directly across from the Loudoun County Courthouse. Motorcycles lined the street outside. Inside, bikers mixed with police officers, lawyers, tradesmen and other professionals in a place that stood apart from the increasingly polished image of historic downtown Leesburg, so much so that years after Wally was gone, and after the bar itself had been renamed Downtown Saloon, people still called it Payne’s. That may be the best measure of the mark he left on Leesburg.

Wallace D. Payne was born August 21, 1936, in Middleburg to Alton Dewees Payne Sr. and Helen Fleming Payne. He grew up on a dairy farm west of Leesburg and later served in the U.S. Air Force.

The North King Street storefront had already been part of downtown Leesburg’s commercial life for more than a century, having housed Dr. Mott’s Drug Store and later Purcell & Littlejohn Drug Store, which operated there until the early 1960s.

By the mid-1960s, the bar that would become synonymous with Payne’s name had taken its place across from the courthouse. A 1990 Washington Post profile reported that Payne’s Old Towne Pub had been open for 24 years, placing its start around 1966. Over time it was also known as Payne’s Biker Cafe and Payne’s Biker Bar, but around Leesburg, it was simply
Payne’s.

And Payne’s was different.

A Washington Post writer visiting in 1990 described it as an outsider on a historic street where many businesses depended on tourists drawn to the town’s more polished image. Motorcycles lined the curb, and inside were biker photographs and scratched wooden booths. The Post also reported in 1990 that the bar advertised itself as Leesburg’s only authorized Harley-Davidson T-shirt distributor.

Wally, however, wanted people to look beyond the leather jackets and motorcycles.

“The image of a biker doing evil is wrong,” he told The Post in 1990, noting that riders came from every walk of life, doctors, police officers, carpenters and bricklayers. Members of the Leesburg Police Department and Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office were among his customers.

Wally’s charitable work also helped change how some in Leesburg viewed him and the bar. In 1990 alone, The Post reported he raised $6,000 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association by leading dozens of motorcyclists on charity rides, roughly $15,000 today. The MDA honored him at a Washington-area reception, and The Post reported that he had quietly raised thousands more in prior years for charities and firefighters.

Even Frank Raflo, the former Leesburg mayor and newspaper editor who had not always been sympathetic toward the biker bar, publicly acknowledged what Payne’s had become.

“Payne’s is an important part of the community in Leesburg,” Raflo told The Post in 1990.

By 1996, Payne’s T-shirts had become souvenirs in their own right. The Washington Post included a Payne’s Biker Bar shirt in a holiday feature about unusual gifts. The shirts sold for $17.50, about $37 today.

By then, the bar’s courthouse-themed motto, “Better off here than across the street,” had become one of its most recognizable features, displayed in neon in the window and printed on its T-shirts.

In September 1997, riders associated with Payne’s took part in a charity motorcycle ride benefiting a Loudoun County teenager battling cancer. It was part of a longer tradition later referenced in a Virginia Court of Appeals opinion citing motorcycle enthusiasts in “a number of ‘charity rides’ sponsored by Payne’s Biker Bar in Leesburg, Virginia.”

In March 1998, a fire blamed on an overheated deep-fat fryer caused an estimated $80,000 in damage, about $164,000 today. No one was injured, and firefighters from Leesburg, Hamilton, Lucketts and Loudoun closed King Street for about two hours.
The Post called Payne’s “a landmark in Leesburg’s historic district,” and the bar reopened within days.

In 2000, Payne’s closed after more than three decades on North King Street. It later reopened as Downtown Saloon.

According to his obituary, Wally moved from Leesburg to Citrus County, Florida, around 2002, where he became sole owner of Pine Ridge Community Golf & Country Club in Beverly Hills.

He remained active there as a member of American Legion Post 0293, a life member of Loyal Order of Moose lodges 1582 and 3000, a member of VFW Post 9760 and an usher at Gulf to Lake Church.

Back in Leesburg, the Payne’s name endured.

A 2007 Washington Post story about the historic U.S. 15 corridor still identified Payne’s Biker Bar as the former name of Downtown Saloon.

Two years later, The Post went even further, referring to the establishment as “Downtown Saloon, a.k.a. Payne’s Biker Bar.”

Payne was preceded in death by his parents; his brother, Larry Payne, and Larry’s wife, Margarita; and his brother, Alton “Buddy” Payne Jr.

He is survived by his wife, Marie Julian-Payne; daughters Mariann Serrianne D’Esposito and her husband, Edward, and Ann Serrianne Serrats and her husband, Ron; brother Ronnie Payne; sister-in-law Lucy Edwards; brother-in-law Mike Curry; and grandchildren Kyle Flynn, Emily Flynn and Dominic Scenna.

The family received friends Friday, September 11, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Gulf to Lake Church in Crystal River, Florida. His funeral began at 11:30 a.m., followed by a luncheon at the church and burial at Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Beverly Hills. Brown Funeral Home in Lecanto, Florida, handled the arrangements.

Wally Payne lived long enough to see the Leesburg he knew change dramatically. Businesses came and went, downtown evolved and Payne’s became Downtown Saloon, but people kept calling the place Payne’s.

For generations who knew Leesburg, Payne’s was difficult to forget.

So was Wally Payne.