By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
If you walk into Ruski’s Restaurant and Pub on Danforth Street in Portland at 8 a.m. any given morning, there’s bound to be a crowd of third shift security guards, plowmen, nurses and doctors eating and drinking as many do after a long day.
The 100-year-old bar has been serving food and beverage from 7 a.m. to 1 in the morning for the past four years under the watchful eye of Josh Whaley, who recently moved to Scarborough with his wife Monica and their one-and-a-half-year-old son Gus.
Although Whaley was raised in Amesbury, Mass., where he learned how to surf on the nearby beaches, he has been coming to Maine all his life. He and his family summered on Peaks Island until Whaley was 18, when he decided to stay on the island year round.
“It was tough out there,” Whaley said. “You’re always living by the boat schedule.”
Whaley stayed on Peaks for two years, while he ran the kitchen at Jones’ Landing. Although Whaley moved off the island, his parents, who are exploring the country, “staying where it’s warm” in their retirement, always return to Peaks in the summer.
Once Whaley left Peaks he didn’t go far, moving to Portland’s East End and eventually closer to the widely popular bar, Rosie’s. He quickly learned a lot about the city while he worked for his own roofing and painting company and went to school at the University of Southern Maine.
At one point, Whaley said, he found himself living on an old wooden schooner tied to Chandler’s Wharf in Portland’s Old Port.
“The winters were just too much,” he said, and moved ashore after six months aboard the schooner.
Whaley eventually found himself living directly above the bar he would come to own. After 10 years working “on and off” for his landlords, Steve and Rosie Harris, who ran both Ruski’s and Rosie’s, Whaley accepted an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“They asked me if I wanted to run it, and I said, ‘hell yeah,’” Whaley said.
Before moving to Scarborough, Whaley and his family weren’t ever very far from Ruski’s, and are still getting used to the adjustment.
“It’s a pain to have to come in at three in the morning just to fix the fryer,” Whaley said, but also admitted there are a lot of benefits to living in a more rural setting like Scarborough.
“The streets in Scarborough are always really clean and plowed after a storm,” Whaley said. “The trash pickup is great too.”
Whaley said he and his family ice skate and play hockey on ponds behind their Scarborough residence, and are often impressed by conservationist efforts to protect the local environment.
“The people in town seem really involved and concerned,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t get that living in the city.”
In the summer Whaley continues to surf with his friends at Scarborough beaches, which he said sometimes has limitations due to $75 surfing fee imposed by the town.
“It could be cheaper,” Whaley said.
Whaley and his family also annually travel to Mexico, where his sister lives, to spend time with family and surf in the warm water.
With a bachelors’ degree in business, and Ruski’s strong local presence, Whaley said, it has been a “good time” in the bar for the past four years.
“I knew what I was getting into,” Whaley said. “It’s a lot of hard work.”
According to a history printed on the menu, the building Ruski’s occupies was built in the 1860s, when Danforth Street was one of the “most exclusive areas of the city.” Ruski’s was a residence until a wealthy Irishman converted the home to a beer parlor around 1900. Since then, Ruski’s survived prohibition as “Spillar’s Bakery & Lunch” restaurant and speakeasy, and has changed owners and names until the Harris’ purchased the tavern and kept Ruski’s running for 20 years. The Harris’ still operate Rosie’s.
When he purchased the tavern in 2005, Whaley said he also inherited many of the bartenders and cooks as well.
And while some employees and customers have been been familiar faces at Ruski’s for 40 years or more, Whaley says the hardest part about managing the bar isn’t dealing with rowdy customers, but keeping steady help.
“It’s the nature of the business,” he said. “It’s still tough when somebody doesn’t show up and I’ve got to come in to keep the place running.”
Despite the high turnover in the restauant industry, Whaley, with the help of his wife has kept the drinks flowing and kitchen hopping.
“She’s a large part of this place too,” Whaley said.
Whaley said his day varies from serving dozens of tired third shift workers beer and breakfast in the early mornings, to preparing for their annual St. Patrick’s Day events and menus that keep Ruski’s “jam packed every year.”

 “We have to start planning for St. Patrick’s Day a few days in advance,” Whaley said. “And we always have a special menu.”
Other pubs do serve early morning beer for nighttime workers, Whaley said, but Ruski’s is the only bar in the city which offers breakfast and a full bar for more than 18 hours a day.
Last year he found time to remodel the interior.
“It’s been a staple for Portland for a long time,” Whaley said, who plans on keeping Ruski’s up and running for years to come.