Bye-bye Buddha: As its owner, Joey Wang, said she would, Baby Buddha vacated its former space at Washington and Bethune Sts. at the end of last month. Gottlieb Real Estate never really adequately explained why they were kicking out the long-running eatery, only saying that a new, unnamed restaurant would be coming in. Meanwhile, Westbeth residents are taking the Chinese restaurant’s loss hard. “Now we have no affordable restaurant,” lamented Westbether Toni Dalton. “And D’Agostino is a fortune. And the Bus Stop has awful food. This is no place anymore for the middle class or artists, and on top of it — they’re closing our hospital. It’s all an outrage. All of it.”
‘In Memory of Mom’:
We’ve been trying to find out more about the woman who ran the liquor store at Avenue B and Houston St. who recently passed away in her 80s. The store’s Houston St. wall has been Chico’s longtime canvas for his memorial murals, honoring everyone from Selena and Celia Cruz to Pope John Paul. “I called her ‘Mom,’” Chico told us. “She left a note saying I could continue painting the wall.” The woman’s nephew is honoring her wish, and Chico will be coming up from Tampa every six months to do a new mural at the spot. As was done with his aunt, the nephew will get a percentage of Chico’s commissions. According to the graffiti artist, the nephew is currently trying to locate the paperwork for the old tenement, the upper floors of which have sat empty for some 20 years. “Maybe there’s some money in the building, a secret hideaway — could be, I didn’t say there is,” Chico quipped. As for “Mom,” he said, “She used to give everybody credit. She was a hard-working woman. She would lock the gates. She was open till midnight.” Chico will be doing a memorial mural of her on the store’s roll-down gate, with the words “In Memory of Mom.” … Also, the group depicted in Chico’s new mural on the Houston St. wall isn’t called Loisaida, as we said last week, but Loisaidas, with an “S.” Composed of two local talents, Aquiles Nunez, 26, and Isaiah Parker, 24, the “urban bachata” group’s second major single is set to “drop on the radio on Feb. 13,” we’re told.
‘Funnier than Jon Stewart’:
Villager readers who have enjoyed Daniel Meltzer’s columns can check out his “A Cable From Gibraltar,” his “hilarious new stage comedy about love, sex, fine dining, world travel and endless warfare,” playing for one month only at Medicine Show Theater, 549 W. 52nd St. “Jon Stewart is around the corner, but ‘Cable’ is funnier, and NO COMMERCIALS!” Meltzer says. The show runs through Sun., Feb. 28. For reservations, call 212-262-4216 or SMARTTIX at 212-868-4444 or go to www.smarttix.com .
R.I.P. Kill-Joy:
Billy Leroy of Billy’s Antiques and Props on E. Houston St. sadly reported that his beloved Rottweiler, Kill-Joy, died last week. She was 10. One of Kill-Joy’s finest moments, captured in a photo in The Villager, was when she walked all over a Michael Vick jersey laid on the ground at the antiques tent after Vick’s role in a brutal dogfighting ring was exposed.
Correction:
Our article in last week’s issue on transit cuts being proposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gave the wrong address for the first of a series of M.T.A. hearings on the cuts: The hearing will be March 4 at Fashion Institute of Technology, Seventh Ave. and 27th St., at 6 p.m.
