Passing of Baird Jones

email this story
read comments (6)
post a comment

Baird Jones, an event-party guy, a Webster Hall art curator and a former freelance gossip columnist who worked for the N.Y. Daily News' Rush & Molloy in the mid '90s, was found dead last night. I knew and liked him a lot (I especially loved that N.Y. Yankees hat he always wore), and I'm very sorry for his close friends and family right now.

I last talked with Baird in December '07 at a party he invited me to that was somewhere in the west 20s. I don't get how a guy in his early 50s (a N.Y. Daily News story says he was 53) dies of natural causes, but we'll let that go for now. Breaks my heart. Really, really sorry.

Carr spars with Anderson<< previous | next >>Spielberg bailing on "Chicago 10"?

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on February 22, 2008 at 12:28 PM

comment #1

raygo says ...

Almost daily an item on Page Six would begin with "Webstar Hall Curator Baird Jones..." I'm going to miss that.

Posted by raygo at February 22, 2008 1:20 PM

comment #2

corey3rd says ...

he'd send me invites to his movie nights. Do hope some one keeps up the series.

Posted by corey3rd at February 22, 2008 1:41 PM

comment #3

Edward Havens says ...

I don't know how I ended up on Baird's email list for his film screenings, as I don't ever remember ever meeting him during my time in New York City. I would read them and thinking how great it would be to go to one of these the next time I went back before deleting the email. However, I still have one from a couple weeks ago, when he and the incomparable Phoebe Legere were hosting a screening of "Shoot the Pianist" at Taj. His screenings always sounded like a good time, and it would a shame if they did not continue.

Posted by Edward Havens at February 22, 2008 2:21 PM

comment #4

lionsfan says ...

I knew him, saw him often for a period in the early 80's after I wrote about him. He had a social schedule that would tax Paris Hilton and Chloe Sevigny together back then, and the constitution for it (which, as far as I could tell, owed nothing to drugs) and the ghastly pallor of a confirmed nightrunner. Came from money (father Landon used to write for various publications in the Time-Life stable, they lived on the UES, he went to the right schools), did little "positive" with his life and joked about it. A nice guy who came to occupy a really weird niche in life, a wimp who admitted it and got others to like him for it. Should have been the lead character in a Whit Stillman movie. He'll be missed because he was so pleasant to everyone in "real" life.

But what, for someone circa 50 or so, are "natural causes?" What's broken down in the system at such a relatively early point? And he really did spend way too much time with fluffheads and people deadly intent on never contributing anything remotely useful to society. But it was senseless to ever try to talk to him about that, and he always knew the latest gossip. Gone too soon, like so many others, but probably liked a lot better personally than those same others, too.

Posted by lionsfan at February 22, 2008 3:42 PM

comment #5