Down East has published a feature about Bubba’s Sulky Lounge.
The “mayor of Portland Street,” as Bubba has been called, is a retired Marine, former high-school basketball star, and proud owner of 14 race horses (hence the bar’s name — a “sulky” being a two-wheeled, jockey-toting cart used in harness racing). Bubba’s tall and soft-spoken, a lifelong Portlander who doesn’t like talking about his age but is somewhere in the neighborhood of 80. He opened Bubba’s in 1961, rebuilt it after a fire in 1981, and put in the light-up dance floor sometime thereafter (no one quite remembers). He stops in daily, often adding this or that to the decor.