San Luis Obispo — Remembering Rob

San Luis Obispo was home base. Rob lived here before Barcelona — worked at Xing, hosted Wednesday Night Dinners at the Pacific Rim apartment, and built things that blinked, poured drinks, or broadcast on frequencies nobody had licensed. Most of the stories on this site start here.

Before

Blond. Clean-cut. No piercings, no coloured hair, no skirts. Rob at Cal Poly and SLO Ocean Currents, years before everything changed.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student ID card, oriented upside down. Young man with natural blond hair looks up at the camera. A Poly Rec Sports sticker is affixed to the card. Student number redacted. — Cal Poly SLO. Natural blond, looking up at the camera like he already had plans.

Reverse side of a PADI certification card showing a young man with short blond hair in a small ID photo. Printed details: Robert A. Kaye, birthdate 26 Aug 70, certification date 04 Aug 96, instructor Reynolds, SLO Ocean Currents, San Luis Obispo. Student number redacted. — Robert A. Kaye, certified August 4, 1996. Blond hair, no piercings, no skirts yet. Twenty-five and already training to save people in the water.

Gold PADI Rescue Diver certification card, front side. Printed text reads Rescue Diver with the dive shop name SLO Ocean Currents, address on South Higuera Street, San Luis Obispo, and phone number. — SLO Ocean Currents, 3121 South Higuera. Where Rob became a rescue diver.

The Moon

The Moon was a venue, a scene, a state of mind. Wednesday nights from 1997. Pirate FM on 91.7. Naked ceiling splats in German flag paint. A Y2K rave where Rob tried to pre-pay the police for noise violations.

Well how much for lets say 3 or 4 more noise violations? Can we just pay for these in full in advance now? — Rob to the police, Y2K NYE rave. Geoff’s full story

The Moon was where Rob met Geoff, Greg, Kenny, Dave — the crew that would follow him to Burning Man, to Xing, and through decades of friendship. Geoff arrived one Wednesday in 1997 and Rob yelled “JaWohl! Another Tall guy! Mach Schnell!” The paint from that night was visible on the ceiling for years.

Pacific Rim

Rob’s apartment was the kind of place where Wednesday meant dinner, Thursday meant Farmer’s Market, and the couch always had someone crashing on it. Erin met him here in 2009. Most people did.

Living room with exposed wood beams, leather couches in blue and red, red Chinese lanterns, a bar area with bottles, and warm eclectic decor. — Pacific Rim — Rob’s apartment in San Luis Obispo. Leather couches, red lanterns, a bar in the corner. He hosted Wednesday Night Dinners here.

Rob in an orange t-shirt and heart-patterned shorts hugging Erin in a black top and glasses, both grinning, in his SLO apartment hallway. A red stuffed hippo sits on the bed visible through the doorway behind them. — The morning she left for Georgia. His couch, his apartment, his hug that could fold you in half. And there on the bed behind them — Rumpskins, watching.

Rob with a blue-purple mohawk in a dark button-down shirt, standing at a restaurant table reading from a paper and gesturing mid-sentence. Erin with bright blue hair, red top, and glasses sits beside him, looking up. — Blue mohawk, dark shirt, reading from a paper with one hand already arguing the point.

Whiteboard with ‘PENALTY HITS’ written in red marker, listing four names — Todd, Chelle, Rob, Pierre — with tally marks next to Rob and Pierre. A shopping list is partially visible on the right. — Todd, Chelle, Rob, Pierre. Whatever the game was, Rob and Pierre were losing.

Erin met Rob here in 2009, invited by a friend. He became like a big brother to her — 15 years older, generous with his couch and his time. She helped run the Bartendro Kickstarter, held the canopy at his wedding in Italy, and when he died, Kirsten called Erin to spread the word to SLO friends.

Xing

Xing Technology started in Los Osos and moved to Broad Street. Rob was a developer. Someone graffiti-tagged a 40-foot white wall with “Xing” art. Nobody confessed. The art was still there when people left.

He declared sonic warfare on them, and in the end, they did move out and he was, again, victorious through superior engineering. — Geoff, on Rob’s solution to complaining neighbours. Full story

When the office moved to Broad Street, a couch-crasher from the Moon graffiti-tagged an entire 40-foot white wall on the second floor with “Xing” art. Everything professionally taped, no damage. Corporate emails threatened fines. “This tall German guy in Engineering kept blabbing on loudly about it ALL DAY LONG.” No one confessed. The art was still there when Geoff left. Read the full story →

Speedy

Orange Honda Fit, California plate RUAOK, Burner sticker on the back. Ian says Rob could belch “RUAOK” intelligibly over about ten seconds.

Orange Honda Fit parked in a dusty field with oil pumpjacks visible in the background against a Central California landscape. — Speedy and the oil pumps. Central California, dust and pumpjacks, an orange car that matched everything he owned.

Orange Honda Fit covered in thick playa dust at a car wash, headlights barely visible through the grime. — Speedy after Burning Man, in its natural state. The headlights are in there somewhere.

Orange Honda Fit from behind in a parking lot. California license plate reads ‘RUAOK.’ Window sticker says ‘Burner.’ — Speedy. Rob’s orange Honda Fit, with a “Burner” sticker, California plate reading RUAOK — his email signature for years.

Bartendro

A robotic bartender, a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, and BarBot competitions where the team shirt read “A German, an Egyptian, and a Jew walk into a BarBot.”

Who him? Oh, that’s just my crazy-haired, tye-dyed, cross-dressed, mismatched, multi-lingual, open-source, half-German psychedelic tech savant buddy saving the day in a bad mood. — Ian Winn. The Indelible Robert Kaye