Remembering Rob

Still missing you, my man…

Think about you all the time.

Yesterday, crabbing season opened, and I hear the loud hiss of your crab cooker.

Last weekend, I was at DP and envisioned a steaming pile of crawfish and corn on a picnic table, overflowing to the ground below.

I’ll never forget you, buddy.

one year ago….

Today marks one year since you left … its bizarre to try to figure out how to “celebrate” such a day… i know that my brother, Robbie, would want us all to go out and have a drink, share laughes etc…so i hope that is what all of us are doing.

I love you and miss you terribly…

Rob’s Weekend

Please join us at the Elks Lodge for cocktails and a toast to our friend and brother, Rob Stewart, on Friday June 19th from 9PM-11:05PM  to celebrate his life and kick-off “Rob’s weekend”. If you like, dinner is served from 6-9PM on a first-come basis.  Anyone that knew and loved Rob is more than welcome to come, the lodge is open to the public on Friday.
San Francisco Elk’s Lodge #3
450 Post Street (b/w Powell & Mason), 3rd floor
Friday June 19th 2009 @ 9PM

Robbie and me

My name is Bob Rubin. I am known to few of you because Robbie had so many friends and associates. What most of you don’t know is Rob was named after me. That is something that has always been a source of tremendous pride to me. When Rob was born his grandmother Jeanne and I had the great pleasure of being his baby sitters. I got to hold him and his grandmother got to change his diapers. In the last twenty years or so I got to watch his maturity and success in his business. Mainly though it was always a pleasure to see how much he loved every facet of life and in addition to his travels with the woman he loved so much, he cherished his many friendships. The more I got to know Colleen, a woman of internal and external beauty, the more I realized how special a person Rob had to be to be loved by someone so wonderful. The last fantastic steak dinner Rob, Colleen, Jeanne and I had during their last visit to Las Vegas prompted us all to agree that this was something we had to repeat many times in the future. It is with great sadness that it will only be a fond memory for me. For me, as for all of you, I celebrate Rob’s life and thank him for all the pleasant memories he has left for me to enjoy the rest of my life.

rob and noah

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this is a video of rob and noah, my son..robs nephew..last fathers day. i love it because i can listen to robs laugh..over and over again..today is the “one month anniversary” of robs death..which as my mom said earlier today..it feels like yesterday and forever ago at the same time.

“death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal”

until we meet again in heaven…i love you big brother..forever in my heart

The Luckiest Woman on Earth

This may sound strange but I can’t help but believe that I am the luckiest woman on Earth because I was chosen to be Robbie’s mom. So there is a God and He knew what He was doing when He gave me the greatest gift ever. I truly wish my time with him had not been cut so short but I will always be greatful for the times we shared.

Robbie helped me see the “big picture” and never made me feel less than even when I constantly screwed up my computer when I downloaded all the crap right after he told me not to. He was always my “go to man” when situations felt out of control and he would right size them for me.

I so appreciate this site that allows me to visit him and hear from his friends and family members. Thank you to you all for allowing me the opportunity to see my son through your loving eyes.

I thank you.

With all my love for “infinity and a day”

Beth Stewart Douglas

Thanking you all for showing me, through your tales, of my nephew Robbie…I love you Robbie

Thank you, each and every one of you, for enlightening me to some of the adventures of Rob Douglas, through your tales of “Gengis Rob”, “Rob Custeau”, “Captain Rob”, “Dick In the Box”………As you all know he wasn’t one to boast of his own bravado, enturpernuialship, creativity, love of his family, his love for Colleen and gust for life but as I read on, he left forever ingrained in your souls what being Rob Douglas was. His footprint on this earth was as meaningful to you all as Niel Armstrongs was to mere earthlings, only no person could ever say any part of it was faked. There was nothing fake about Robbie. It can’t really be said “what you see is what you get” because there were so many levels of Robbie, one could not possibly see, all there was to see. I love my nephew and as his sister Bonnie wrote to me ” he has gone early, in order to be there, to show us all the way.” That’s Robbie.

I love you Robbie….and Bethie (Robbies mom but don’t call her Bethie unless you always knew her that way…I love you sis), Bonnie and Jayme (Robbies sisters), Ian (Robbies brother), Noah (Robbies nephew), Aiden (Robbies son) and Colleen (the love of his life)….I love and miss you all.

Uncle Bill

ps I can be reached at tanmanvegas@yahoo.com

Rob: Genghis Kahn, Network Guru, Bad Ass, and Friend

In Dot Com days of Web 1.0, I started a design agency downtown. Never having run one before, I needed help tracking projects, time, money, clients, etc…

On the recommendation of an ad agency friend, I was considering buying a program that I would soon come to loathe, called “Traffic Office Manager” (which we very soon after called “Tragic Office Mangler”). The software author asked me to call the lovely Christine over at Diesel Design, and query her about why she liked the program, why I should buy it, and how it improved her agencies productivity.

While on the phone with Christine, I mentioned that I was in dire need of an IT guy. She immediately started gushing not about the program, but about a computer genius by the name of Rob Stewart. I called Rob right away.

All business, voice as flat as the Kansas prairie, and brutally efficient, we made an appointment for the next night to take a look at my network. He was as basic as a board: no hype, no sell, just the facts, ma’am. In the SF tech community, you never know who’s going to show up: a Burning Man Netizen with dreads or an Uber Geek from some tech academy in Bangalore. Rob was a different animal entirely.

The next evening, my two designers and myself were working away and in walks Rob and Steve.

Let me give you a visual:

ROB: Long-johns under combat fatigue shorts, a band sweatshirt, chain wallet, and Doc Martins.

STEVE: Same get up but with a woolly hat.

BOTH: Artful dodgers, replete with bike helmets and messenger bags.

They looked like they were on their way to Zeitgeist, rather than meeting a new client, but they had me at hello. I thought Steve was Rob’s tech assistant, and that they were the dot-com version of a hipster Geek Squad. Turns out they were on their way to a bar, and I was a requisite stop along the way to another night of debauchery. You see, Rob was all about multi-tasking.

After introducing my team, and myself, I told Rob that we’d need him to install “Traffic Office Manager” and help train us on the program. Without skipping a beat, he replied,

“That program is the biggest piece of SHIT I’ve ever used!”

I remember that this was probably the first thing he ever said to me, and being impressed with the vehemence and passionate hatred he had for something that did not perform to his expectations and was of sub-par functionality and efficiency.

Fast forward 9 plus years: I realize that this deep passion/need for unearthing the solution to a problem, being a heat-seeking missile for the truth, and a filter for all that is inauthentic, shoddily constructed or concepted, is the center of what Rob stood for. You do not want to build a fire or fold a map incorrectly in front of this man, or you will weather a blistering diatribe of retribution. But like boot camp, he made you stronger and better for the experience. He gives a shit enough to give you shit (from a place of love), if that makes sense. I remember one day, I fixed some bugs on my computer, and migrated a database, taking myself utterly by surprise. I was so excited that I called Rob like a preschooler, touting my first finger painting. Without a trace of irony or derision, he said, “I’m really proud of you, Carolyn.” And I knew he was.

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to be as informed as Rob, and even if you are; you will undoubtedly lose the argument. Like a velociraptor licking his chops over the prospect of a baby calf for lunch, he will dominate. But in this dominance, you felt cared for and protected, you knew at the end of the day that things would work: your computer, your relationship, your business, your life, because Rob’s always got your back.

For a bad ass that got in as many scuffles at the 500 as he did, he had a deep respect and knowledge of the practice of law and philosophy, and was truly one of the most intelligent and open minded (albeit bombastic) people I have ever met. You want a mental work out, go 3 rounds with Rob on any subject. And no subject was taboo: from tribal testicle piercing to the correct way to make Osso Bucco. I always told him he’d kick everyone’s ass on Jeopardy. I also thought he should write his ‘young mans tales’ in the grand tradition of Kerouac or Bukowski, as he would rival any of them. I even offered to help edit. He said he wanted to write some day. Now those would be some stories…..Maybe this website is the beginning of all that - like Huck Finn, he gets us to do the all work for him!

Back to our office: I think we were playing a song that Rob liked - the Headcoats, the Milkshakes or something of that ilk. I asked Rob and Steve if they wanted a beer. The rest is history.

So Rob became the go-to guy for a group of art school luddites whom he accused of “breaking computers with our minds.” We called him every week for everything.

A guy in my office had a little crush on Rob and would ask me if he could call him to come over and fix his computer. I’d say, “sure, but your computer had better be broken.”

Rob understood people, and every time Rob would blast into our office, motorcycle helmet in hand, grab a beer from the fridge, and head into the tech issue du jour, he would always make a point of flirting with this guy just to brighten his day.

“I really like your shirt” or “did you change your hair?” he would comment, in an ever so slightly effeminate voice that delighted and unhinged the smitten one. It takes a really squared away straight and empathetic male to flirt with a guy on the other team just to brighten up their day. But this is quintessential Rob, a guy man enough to say he needs to get home in time for “Project Runway.”

As Colleen said at the Memorial Service, he’d find the people at the edges of the room and bring them to the center, including them in the synergistic spark that is Rob. This is where the heat is, this is where it all happens.

Over the years, after hundreds of beers, Xmas parties, weekends away, after work cocktails, seeing bands, hobnobbing with his truly vast and eclectic group of friends, my initial concept of Rob the man, never changed, but transformed into an amplified Rob, even larger than life, like Genghis Kahn: a centrifugal force, like the sun, that draws all of us planets into his orbit. If Rob was having a party, you were going. If Rob decided a restaurant was great, then it was. A completely under the radar Russian film about the atrocities of war in an obscure theatre? You were there.

Tastemaker, libertine, and bon vivant, he existed every day as an arbiter of what is correct, good, worth doing, seeing, eating, reading or experiencing in life. Because only someone of Rob’s caliber could have lived two lives (of such consummate concentration and intensity) in half the time. Remember in Blade Runner when Tyrell said, “the light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long, Roy, and yours has burned so brightly.” I think this sums up Rob, and why he headed over to a better barbeque.

He’s the Viking out there conquering new lands, so we can join him (after he says the coast is clear), in the mother of all bacchanals.

And he’s still out there telling us what to do (if we listen).

What I Know About Rob Stewart

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I was looking through Jessica Brown’s Flicker page of pix of Rob and his people, and I was amazed to realize that I’ve known Rob for years and years — but I barely knew him.

All those outrageous Halloween costumes he and Steve used to come up with. I remember the robot outfits. Totally classic. I remember the Disco Brothers. Hilarious! There was another costume that wasn’t in the photo album, though — Steve and Rob dressed like Peeps one year … those soft yellow marshmallow fake-hatchling sugar bombs you get around Easter.

Somehow they found these Easter-candy outfits. And here are these two brawling, drinkin’, tough-ass mofos walking around dressed in these neon-yellow outfits with fake feathers and everything — and you knew that as absurdly cute as those getups were, they were ready to immediately drop any clown who said the wrong thing.

You have to understand that I was kind of an outsider. I was/am a comic-books-and-sci-fi geek and a community-radio nerd, whereas most of the 916 Haight guys were more about motorcycles, stock-car racing and vacationing in Cambodia’s demilitarized zone — the kind of guys who’d BEAT UP the comic-book nerd back in high school.

But underneath all this thunder and chaos, there was so much joy, happiness, glorying in it all. They’d throw any sense of propriety or machismo out the window and just live so hard and fullym unreservedly, unabashed about totally unafraid. It influenced me and showed me about living in San Francisco.

I am unable to separate Rob from that 916 Haight milieu and community — Steve, Russ, Adam, Jessica Brown (who lived next door at one point!), Marc, Karl. They fit together seamlessly, a tribe of shouting, life-loving, lusty, drinking, brawling, hilarious, *intelligent* clowns/scholars/shamans/roustabouts.

My connection to that house was Adam Myers, another bike messenger, another hellraiser, one of my best pals ever, and the definition of a high-school-burnout comix and sci-fi guy. I had been a bike messenger too, like Adam and some of the other folks there.

But I didn’t live it like they did. They were my connection to a wild and beating heart of San Francisco that even all my late-night DJing at KUSF only brought me in proximity to.

They made San Francisco a real experience for me. Not something you read about. Not a local punk record you play at 2am to unseen listeners. Something you wade into, dive into, swim around in, fight with, glory over, experience and embody wholly.

I don’t think they know — I’m sure Rob didn’t know — how much of an influence he and Steve in particular had on me. We never had heaps to say. But they were freakin’ hiliarious, they made me laugh. I totally admired and admire their bravado. And all that San Francisco living they showed me, I took up to the radio station and played back to the all people listening.

Yeah, some fuss was caused, also.

Once I took my pal Roger to some party on Lower Haight — Roger was this ubernerd type, went to MIT and all that. One of the coolest guys and totally a brother to me, but definitely a bit of an undies-in-a-bunch type.

So I guess that really stood out to Steve and Rob, because at some point in the course of the evening, there’s a bit of squawking or commotion or some such, I don’t recall what, and I find out later that they were talking to Roger and, well, *someone* had poured a beer on Roger’s head …

I suppose that was kind of drag for Roger, but it was also hilarious and God knows he probably worked for it!

They showed me by *doing* how well a life can be lived. They took risk and excitement and adventure out of the realm of the theoretical and *just fucking did it*.

It was because of those guys that I started actually going to local punk and metal shows, not just playing the records.

I remember seeing Rob & Steve at Starclearners, the illegal garage-venue on Sycamore at Mission St., to catch Hickey. One of the greatest bands ever. And at the former Tip-Top Inn in Mission at 25th, to catch Old Granddad at an Alcoholocaust Presents show.

Colleen, who touched Rob somehow like no one else, brought about something remarkable in him, some calming of the spirit that got that crazy wild stallion to stop bucking and leaping quite so much. Everyone noticed it. Rob was already a strong guy in the body and the mind and the spirit, with an extremely demanding personal and social morality and a total disrespect for falseness and stupidity. But Colleen opened up new reaches to his already big, big soul. Something deep happened for the both of them.

I was trying to think about what to write about Rob, and was thinking about how I missed the last three or so of his crawdad cookouts in Golden Gate Park.

I remember the first time I got an invite from him to that, and I was so stoked that he would even send it. Such a cool shoutout. I was *always* stoked to get ‘em, that he’d want to say yo to Adam’s comic-book nerd pal.

I missed nearly every other one beyond the first. Every year I’d get ‘em and it was always the same, “Damn, Rob Stewart, I gotta check this out.” And I’d think about how cool it would be to just roll up on my bike and open a beer.

This year I blew it off in the worst way, I was right there in Dolores Park at ANOTHER bbq. I’m pretty sure I saw the big kettle for “the boil” … I don’t even want to talk about what kept my ass parked with beer in hand and not taking the walk over to say howdy.

I think about Rob Stewart and I think about a man embedded in a tight weave of family and friends, a man who lived and lives in their hearts, who was inspired by them and inspired them. I think about not getting up and walking over and saying howdy and I feel like a pathetic and sorry loser. Rob, I’m so sorry I didn’t get my ass over to say “howd’ya do, and thanks for the invites.” I’m so very sorry.

Earlier this week I had been talking about Rob to my wife, and was thinking about him in general, and a bunch of tunes came on my iTunes in rapid shuffle-play succession. I was stoked to hear these tunes, because they are among my favorites, and I suddenly realized that each one was about Rob, or anyway might have made him laugh, rock out, or close his eyes and raise a glass.

They were songs by Hickey and the Pogues. They just came up of their own volution on the computer, but they were about Rob, and maybe he’s looking down and laughing at this moment. I have pasted in the titles and lyrics below, along with links to the audio or YouTube files.

You are all amazing people, and I am so goddamn sorry.

– Josh Wilson, San Francisco, Oct. 4, 2008

——————————————————–
SONGS ABOUT ROB THAT CAME UP ALL ON THEIR OWN ON MY iTUNES

Hickey — The Naked Cult
Hickey — New Anthem for Amerika’s Disenfranchised
The Pogues — A Pair of Brown Eyes
The Pogues — I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day
The Pogues — Gentleman Soldier

[This is a rambunctious tune that speaks for itself. The Gentleman Soldier may not be entirely virtuous but I think somewhere Rob is laughing at the tune's breezy, cavalier disrespect for all things sacred.]

Late night going away party for Leahy Oct 2001

I’m in your Photo

Hey

No Seriously it was this big

Joker

Mr Bings A Few Years Back