Owen Rowley writes: If I remember correctly, it was Rob who started the tradition of meeting on the Library steps after the SF Gay freedom parade. I'm sure he was the one who posted the question asking if folks would like to meet.
You remember correctly.
Owen: I recall wondering what the various characters of net.motss (the old style newsgroup name) would be like, and I also recall my delight in meeting Rob. I couldn't tell you who else was there, but I can still see him clearly in my mind.
Rob was the first net.person I ever met. It must have been ages ago (84, or as late as 85) that we made arrangements to get together when I was there on business; I recall meeting him outside the Cafe San Marcos with Rod Williams, Brad Rubenstein and Keith Sklower waiting upstairs. We had a great time. I entrusted him with my treasured rare book collection which I had brought with me to San Francisco. What was that? Why the Song of the Loon trilogy: cowboy soft-porn and camp, totally out of print and unavailable except through connoisseurs of the series. Knowing Rob and his interests, you can tell how eager he was to borrow the books. (And for all of you bibliomaniacs, let me tell you that he actually returned them, too!)
Owen: It seems to me that many of the early social functions, that were pivotal in extending the motss culture from an ascii-based association to real live relationships between real live human beings, had Rob's hand on them. In those pre-motss_con days, Rob's bar-B-ques were the premiere events at which motss participants could overcome the limitations of this keyhole through which we all view each other.
So many of my early introductions to the net.motss crowd were by and through Rob. Not only one-on-one or one-on-few: he was my social pivot point for my visits to SF during much of the 80's, but as Owen says, through his phenomenal barbeques, where I met everyone who was everyone from net.motss and soc.motss. These were magical events (realize that meeting face-to-face wasn't so common then as it is today; not a technical limitation, but a matter of changed conventions). And when you realize that he managed to get all of us out to Concord on each of these occasions...
I recall breakfast at Rob's one morning with Jess, and fresh eggs from the chickens he kept in the barn (what were their names? Eleanor? Gertrude? Help me here.) I remember chatting about all manner of things over that breakfast before I was to leave for home. I remember looking in the bathroom and being astonished at the tub and tile and the glass of the shower doors; you could have performed surgery on any of these surfaces (gad, you could have done so in the kitchen or living room, too; maybe even the barn.) We could never have been lovers. :-)
It had been a few years since I'd seen Rob in person, and I hoped to see him on the library steps the day of the Pride march once again this year, but the crowd was so great, we didn't manage to cross paths. Which was fine at the time; we knew we could try again sometime later. It was only blind coincidence that I was in the Bay Area last week, together with a gracious note from Jess informing me of Rob's condition, that I managed to visit him one last time in the hospital.
It's difficult to imagine soc.motss without Rob jumping into a
discussion with his characteristic Talmudic precision. No, it
doesn't feel real just yet.
