We’re bidding farewell this week to Tom “Goose” Kaiser. Kaiser spent half a century running two Bawlamer landmarks, and brought laughter, a glad heart and bustling new life to the east side’s Boston Street waterfront back when any kind of business venture there was strictly a gamble.
It was exactly Goose’s kind of gamble.
Today, the east side waterfront area is alive with young people, snazzy homes, restaurants, bars and shopping areas. But when Goose opened the Bay Café back in 1989, that long harbor stretch of Canton was practically a ghost town all the way from Clinton Street to Fells Point.
As a Baltimore lifer, Goose saw the enormous potential there. He’d been running the Wishing Well Lounge bar and restaurant, just off Perring Parkway in Northeast Baltimore County, for about 30 years.
From out there, he could look toward the city and see his hometown ready to blossom. And then he helped make it happen.
But for Goose, who died early Monday morning, Aug. 12, at age 87, life extended well beyond the two restaurant-bars he created and ran. For several decades, he was the guy chartering 14 buses for the Orioles’ Opening Day games and Colts games.
Even after the Colts left for Indianapolis, whenever the club visited Philadelphia to play the Eagles, it was Goose chartering a few busloads of people up there just to boo Robert Irsay, and to remind all those watching the game that Baltimore was still hungry for a return of pro football.
“Just want to let people know we’re still here,” he said as one of his buses left for Philly. “We want the NFL big shots to know we still want a new team. And we want Irsay to know that we remember him.”
And it was Goose who chartered buses all the way to Cooperstown, New York, for the Baseball Hall of Fame inductions of Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Frank Robinson, Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, Luis Aparicio and Chuck Thompson.
I first laid eyes on Goose back in 1983 on one of his chartered bus trips to Cooperstown. Brooks Robinson was going into the hall, and Goose had a couple of busloads making the trip. We left from the Wishing Well. It was not quite 6 in the morning. Goose hadn’t been to sleep all night.
As our bus pulled onto Interstate 83 toward Pennsylvania, Goose stood next to our driver and faced everybody like some aging cheerleader, his hair down to his eyes, his belly extended over his belt line. Most of us had been up for an hour or two, and many were now drifting back to sleep. Goose had a cigar in one hand and a Bloody Mary in the other. Dawn was just arriving.
“Gimme an O,” he hollered.
Lord, I thought, the constitution on this man.
Goose had the Bay Café for nearly a quarter-century, during which time Boston Street took his hint and came to life all around him. The Bay Cafe, which closed in 2013, had a manmade beach setting, palm trees, a Jamaican-style band, maybe the best shrimp salad sandwich in town, and a back porch located straight across the water from Fort McHenry.
And like the Wishing Well before it, if you walked into the place in the middle of the night or the middle of an afternoon, you might find a spontaneous jam session involving Al “Madman” Baitch, Tommy Vann, Jake Needleman and who knows how many other longtime fixtures on the Baltimore music scene.
And there were such Baltimore regulars (and their ladies) as college basketball coach Jim Casey, politicians such as Tommy Bromwell, John Arnick and Nathaniel Oakes, sportswriter Jim Henneman, the Bullets’ Bob Ferry, the Colts’ Jimmy Orr and Bobby Boyd, Dr. Levi Watkins, Judge John Prevas, Professor Toni Keane, and such street legends as Joe Beeps, Johnny Dee and Phil Burke.
They were all part of the lost tribe of Bawlamer, whose unofficial chief was Goose Kaiser, who brought his glad heart and endless good cheer, and breathed brand new life into the city’s east side.
Goose was the good time had by all.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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