Our Clown

There is a stretch of highway US 101 a few miles north of San Francisco International Airport that includes a view of South San Francisco on your left and Candlestick Park and the beautiful San Francisco Bay on your right. For someone new to the San Francisco area, that is the first time you can have a look at our magnificent bay.

To this day, each time I come home from travels and take that drive up 101, that first sight of the bay after being far from home is a vivid and lovely reminder of how blessed we are to live here. Two decades ago, this stretch of highway was once littered with trash. Yet that was changed when a benefactor paid for the cleanup of that stretch of freeway, a reminder of how wonderful it is to be here — which remains mostly pristine to this day.

The benefactor was Robin Williams.

Robin Williams wove himself into the fabric of our lives. He lived in the North Bay, in the exclusive town of Tiburon in Marin County. But he was San Francisco all the way. You could see him having dim sum in the Richmond District, or introducing the SF Giants — he was a big Giants fan — at the start of the National League playoffs, ending it with a flying chest-bump with Lou Seal — the SF Giants’ mascot: an overgrown version of our SF bay brown seals, named cleverly to appeal to our town’s gender-fluid demographic.

Homegrown, he was ours, not Hollywood’s. Not New York’s. Ours. He was a fixture, not a bug, which, looking back — even with our home-grown pride — we took for granted a little. He was part of the scene that was, and is, us.

There is a certain arrogance about San Franciscans that anticipates and expects the kind of creative genius that he exemplified. Ours was the soil that birthed this child: the North Beach beat poets, Haight-Ashbury of the 1960s, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Castro District, and even ‘dot com’ one and two. San Francisco’s rich and loamy soil still nurtures a sense of adventure on every level possible. Ours is an area that is a bridge to everywhere in your mind, heart, soul. And yes, even your sexually creative urges.

Today, while driving into town for work, I was listening to our local sports radio station like I always do. There were sound tributes for Robin Williams that played snippets of his work throughout the years, starting with Mork. Listening, I was struck by how every aspect of our lives was ripe fodder for Williams’ fantastical riffs on living life on Earth. The man could go from one foreign dialect to the next as well as dialects from other planets, and finish with a dead-on take of William F. Buckley for good measure — all in one smooth take. Looking back, it was to be expected that his first big break came as a space alien in a major network TV sitcom. He was born for the part.

I don’t know why it took his death to realize what a gift the immensely talented Robin Williams was. I guess we don’t normally feel the shock and grief for the loss of clowns like we do for kings. But today in the San Francisco Bay Area — a place he loved and chose to call home, and a place he made beautiful by his existence — we’re reeling a bit as to this hole in the world his loss has created. Our clown is and always will be irreplaceable.

Tonight, Eric’s podcast will focus on Robin Williams’ chart. There, as well in Elizabeth’s piece above, we encourage your thoughts and comments on the chart’s astrological aspects and the nature of his death. Here, in this thread, I encourage you to come up with your best recollections of Williams’ work. I think he would want us to remember him that way.

13 thoughts on “Our Clown”

  1. From the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research: “Mood disorders such as anxiety and depression are clinical symptoms of people suffering from Parkinson’s, similar to tremors, loss of movement, and trouble speaking. Experts agree that just over half of Parkinson’s patients suffer from clinical depression at some point in their disease, most notably when they are initially diagnosed. Evidence suggests the disease may cause chemical changes in the brain that often result in depression.”

    Added to all he already carried, this seems cruel and unusual, I think …

  2. Fe, thanks so much for sharing your memories and those of your community’s with us.

    Thank you also Judith for some logic behind this tragic loss.
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  3. Robin’s widow just released a statement about his continued sobriety, including news that he had recently been diagnosed with the early stages of Parkinson’s. When I first heard the news of his death, it included these words, which I haven’t heard since and so, wonder to whom they were attributed — Williams or the newscaster: he’d had enough. I do understand those sentiments. And death is not the enemy.

  4. Lovely, Fe, and thanks for these resonant thoughts. That arrogance you speak of — what my mother called my ‘inner Berkeley snob’ — has been justified so often, it’s hard to ignore, and with Robin it simply soared one right out of Candlestick (RIP) and into the stratosphere. Indeed, I’m taking this loss quite personally. Can’t even speak of it without tearing up.

    My favorite movies — Fisher King notwithstanding — never got attention: Toys, What Dreams May Come. And he was an authentic Peter Pan in Hook. It should be noted that each had a dark side, as did Robin himself, his personal empathy and compassion shining out of each performance.

    For those who found that his quick-witted and overtly manic ‘flow’ hid the essential person — whose humanity and heart are the KEY to what has moved so many of us at his passing — here’s a really terrific link to an long interview with him on his home turf, revealing the inner man in unfamiliar ways, with barely a stream-of-consciousness riff in the mix.

    http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/remembering_robin_williams

  5. The golf writer in our local Palm Springs paper, The Desert Sun, suggested we look at a bit Robin did on golf, noting that he would show up for the Bob Hope classic, but didn’t really like golf. Apparently the golf pros love to watch this: youtube.com Robin Williams on golf.

  6. Thanks, Fe.
    My closest encounter with Robin Williams was several years ago when a director or editor (I don’t remember who but with whom he had worked extensively) was honored at an award banquet/show. He made the presentation by pantomiming the entire “reel” of the recipient. It was a poignant expose not only of the director/editor’s work, but of Robin Williams’ talent and remarkable outpouring of LOVE — which I believe all of his work was.
    There are some memories to keep and treasure for always — this is one.

  7. DeBellamy:

    The best pee-in-your-pants Robin Williams experience for me was as the genie in Disney’s Alladdin. The animators just let Williams rip and then made the animation suit his character flow.

    Though I believe Doubtfire was also genius. Especially the potcovers in a vain attempt to extinguish the flaming fake titties.

  8. Thanks Fe for sharing this touching post. It’s hard to believe he’s gone at the young age of 63. As I reflect on Robin, I think I laughed the hardest when he came out of the bathroom of the restaurant, still dressed as a woman for his interview in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. Remember that? Too much! He will be missed.

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