Baird Jones, an event-party guy, a Webster Hall art curator and a former freelance gossip columnist who worked for the N.Y. Daily NewsRush & 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.