Thomas Rain Crowe

I worked with Robin for three years at the Trident Restaurant in Sausalito (on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge). We worked the same three-day shift as busboys in the Trident–that hired only young people who were serious and active in the arts. I was publishing Beatitude magazine and living in San Francisco in those years (the old original Beat generation magazine which was started in the late 50s) and taking the ferry to work every day.

Robin was a hoot and the restaurant was in stitches whenever he was working his shift. Nothing and no one was safe from his sketches and antics. I remember him pulling down Katie’s elastic top one afternoon. This was typical occurance when Robin was on his shift. Robin was doing stand up comedy at small venues in the city, then, some of which were venues where I was doing poetry readings on different nights. I knew him as a pensive, intellegent and very well-read person, who despite his constant antics in public, was a rather quiet and somehow sad person behind the mask of his social personae. He always seemed “troubled” to me.

Guess I was right–given his substance abuse problems and now his suicide. He had qualities of genius, even then, and everyone recognized that potential. He more than lived up to that potential, clearly. Too bad he couldn’t enjoy that on into old age. Big loss, this news. It will rock the world a bit.

Thomas Rain Crowe
Poet/publisher of New Native Press

I probably could have written a short novel on my years at the Trident. What a place. I think Robin’s sudden and dramatic death has stopped everyone’s clock. Rationally you can say, “yes, he was carrying a heavy load and this could have been the outcome.” But emotionally it’s hard to digest. We lost a good man. He gave it all he had and just ran out of steam. But his legacy–like Joplin, Hendricks, Lenny Bruce, etc lives on.

Thomas