Chris Colin just got in touch to tell us about a piece of his just published at SF Gate:
Randy Robinson was an intelligent, wonderfully demented man I came to know when I rented him my office space in the Mission. Randy’s oddness toed the line of inappropriateness, and soon many of the other folks in the shared office wanted him gone. The strange, sad events that followed struck me as a micro version of the friction that’s flared up in the Mission and million other communities in recent years — the productive and uptight versus the marginal and odd. Both sides were sympathetic here, as is often the case in Mission disputes, but the end result was unambiguously heartbreaking.
Link.
ohmigod, Chris Colin’s brother Nick was in the Passionistas.
not sure i agree with the sweeping generalizations & faction citing, but it’s a sweet piece, and kudos to the author for taking care of the old dude, if it’s a true story.
that guy really does represent a bit of SF that’s truly disappearing, if it’s not already gone…relatively harmless, friendly, interesting oddballs like redman et all.
i just don’t see ‘em around anymore. maybe i’m not looking in the right spots.
This is one of the most moving articles I’ve ever read! Thanks for the link.
[...] poignant story about living in the Mission. It’s just as gripping (and heartbreaking) as his last tale of Randy the wanderer, but this time focuses on some complicated gentrification issues: We were thoroughly [...]