Thursday, December 13, 2018

Bubba Mac Shack The Biker Bar



The Bubba Mac Shack

In order to understand the popularity of "Bubba Macs" it's necessary for a little history of the venue and why I went there.

The location had a number of failed operators under different names over a number of years, I don't know all the background because I never went to bars until I started to dress up in later life.

Bubba (real name Herb Birch <deceased>) had owned a National Health Care center (I don't know the details). He sold the business and always had a love for "Blues" music, he also had a alcohol problem which he overcame and wanted to help others suffering from it. 

Being a highly intelligent person he decided to build his business on a "Blues Band" and only hired Alcoholics as long as they stayed "on the wagon" if not they were booted out of the band, what a brilliant idea and it worked.

Of course I was totally unaware of all this when I first went and it definitely had an eclectic array of Characters from "Bikers" Business people and just ordinary people who liked to socialize and I seemed to be the most normal person there. There were a few groups of people who were hard nosed barflys including most of the women, but there was another common draw, there were 3 music areas that went on at one time, The Blues Band, a small 3-5 man dance music group and Karaoke, about 500 to 800 people would fill the place weekends. 

Obviously I drew a lot of attention, all of it positive but occasionally someone might want to get to friendly, two of the bouncers, Dan & Ray always looked out for me, but there were no less than 10-12 on security there and I don't remember anyone causing trouble.

As the people got to know me and figured out I was harmless and that I just liked "dressing up" they took me into their groups and would invite me to social parties and birthdays at their homes, I would come home and cry due to being so well accepted as "Louise".

One of the fun things was that the 2 bounces "Dan and Ray" did was they liked to test my grip, I'm only 5'2 tall (now) and they couldn't out grip me. What they enjoyed doing was when carding people who were Collage age and Football players or in some other sport was to call me over to introduce me to these different guys (usually once a week). They would say "Louise" we have someone we want you to meet and I knew the drill, I would offer my hand and give my "Lou" grip which was totally unexpected by a 6 footer or 6'6" guy and they would start to turn red and their knees would buckle, Dan & Ray would fall back against the wall laughing so hard they would slide down with tears in their eyes. It was funny.  


1 comment:

Pat Scales said...

The Bubba Mac Shack seems like it was a great place to hang while it was open. I think that I would have loved the place. From the write up I saw it seemed like the former 'Roadhouse' in Asbury. that was a great venue that often had music. It is now a Japanese restaurant.
There is great music down the shore. Sunday night we saw an amazing show at the Paramount in Asbury, "A Very Asbury Holiday". 4 hours of music from 45 great local musicians.
Take care and it is good to see a new blog post.