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This week, I learned that my pal Eugene S. Robinson suffered a serious stroke in Malaga, Spain, where he’s been living since 2025. According to the GoFundMe page set up by his wife, photographer Kasia Robinson, Eugene has temporarily lost his ability to speak, write, or read.
Judging by the pictures Kasia shared of him flipping the bird, Eugene hasn’t lost his sense of humor.
Eugene flipped me that same bird when I photographed him for an interview last June. At the time, he was leaving the Bay Area, his home since he was a Stanford undergrad, and emigrating to Spain with Kasia and their young daughter. Over a smashburger (no onions), he talked about his decades in the Bay Area and what he’d miss most. (Turns out it was Fig Newtons: Go figure.)
Due respect to the Dos Equis Guy, but Eugene is probably the most interesting man in the world. He’s a rockstar (formerly of OXBOW, currently Buñuel), an award-winning journalist, a memoirist, a martial artist, a father of four, and a personal acquaintance of each member of San Francisco’s true nightmare blunt rotation: Anton LaVey, Charles Manson, Jello Biafra, and Steve Jobs.
Eugene is a big, muscled guy covered in scary-ass tattoos, but he’s also tender, especially when he talks and writes about his daughters. His sense of humor is cutting, but rarely cruel. Every conversation with him feels like you’re being brought into some secret confidence. The stuff he told me when I put away my recorder was so good I could never publish it.
After learning of his stroke, I relistened to our June 2025 interview, mostly so I could hear Eugene laughing. His is a powerful, generous laugh that feels like a hug and a punch.
Everything about Eugene — especially his writing — feels like a hug and a punch.
We first met when I assigned him a piece for Alta Journal, a San Francisco-based magazine I worked for. We collaborated on three stories together and I fully intend to work on more with him in the future.
The editor-writer relationship is a complicated one. There have been memoirs about it; documentaries, too. At its best, it’s like having a sparring partner. The editor and the writer circle each other; they look for vulnerabilities; they clash. When you spar, your intention is never to harm your partner. You both want to get sharper together.
Eugene is a formidable sparring partner, and not just because he has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He fights hard, not dirty. He kept me on my toes.
I can still remember when he held firm on a racial slur embedded in the title of a 1978 Patti Smith song he cited in an essay about how his teenage punk years in Brooklyn shaped his adult life in Palo Alto. The impact of that word — un-elided and placed into the clean layout of a glossy magazine read by high-minded progressives — was part of Eugene’s point. Cleaning it up would be letting Smith (and rock n roll) off the hook for casual, unthinking racism. Eugene insisted that it had to stay.
I was less sure about it, willing to defer to the house style and render it as a far less impactful ‘n-word.’
Eugene was quietly, but firmly, insistent that the word be printed in all its ugliness. And so, after some back and forth and a few sweaty phone calls, it did.
The piece was stronger and more impactful for it. Of course, Eugene was right.
That’s Eugene S. Robinson: strong, impactful, and usually right.
Eugene, if you’re able read this, get well soon. Email me when you can: I’m ready to spar when you are.
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Dispatches from the fog
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DIG IT: City Roots columnist Thomas Abbott is teaching a course on Fall Vegetable Gardening in September. (CCSF Extension)
FRIENDS WITH MONEY: How the Mayor’s generous donors are reshaping the city. (San Francisco Chronicle)
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