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By the time he was a junior at Poly, Robinson had finagled his way into being the errand boy/apprentice of Fillmore Slim, a long, tall pimp who was one of the most outrageous figures in the Fillmore. Slim nicknamed his young understudy the "Schoolboy Pimp" because of his nerdy determination to study and master The Game.
"I could walk into a room and be Fillmore Slim," said Robinson. "I watched the way he walked, the way he talked. ... I could tell you what he was thinking, and what he was gonna do."
Over time Robinson's nickname morphed into "Star Pupil" and then "Jimi Starr." (Robinson spelled it with an extra R "to be different.") Burleson chose "Reno Fouché" as his nom de mack.
What the boys couldn't learn on the streets, they picked up in school.
"I smoked good weed and got a lot of pussy," remembered Robinson. Burleson estimated that Poly produced 75 percent of the people from his generation who went into The Game in San Francisco. "You had 16-year-old kids driving Cadillacs to school," he said.
In 1968, Robinson dropped out of high school. That same year, 20 Poly teachers signed a letter to the San Francisco Board of Education complaining that the school was a shambles. The student body, the teachers wrote, was running amok; drug abuse, absenteeism, violence, pimping, and prostitution were endemic. They suggested the school be shut down. The girls' gym teacher was quoted in the Chronicle as saying, "This is a terribly sad place. It is terribly sad for kids to have to grow up and be prostitutes or pimps or take drugs at the age of 14 or 15." Another instructor told the Chron, "Some of these girls who are prostitutes do their thing because they simply want enough money to buy lunch."
Students responded by marching on City Hall with signs that read "Do I Look Like a Pimp? No!" and "I'm Not a Lunch Money Ho!" Neither Burleson nor Robinson participated.
Robinson finished school in the Army, assigned to a noncombat relief unit on Okinawa during the Vietnam War. When he returned to San Francisco, he took a few sociology classes at a community college, where he met his wife, Rosalind. He quit his studies, however, to resume his adolescent quest to become a famous pimp.
Burleson also dropped out of college, where he'd been majoring in chemistry in order to "learn how to make my own drugs." Three of the brothers' cousins had also become pimps.
As Jimi Starr, Robinson lived a nomadic lifestyle. He traveled and lived with a stable of several prostitutes in the Bay Area, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Canada, and points between. While his women worked, he'd amuse himself by snorting cocaine and downing cocktails with fellow pimps, drug dealers, and other criminal types. He also attended prizefights and art exhibits, and went shopping.
Robinson often traveled with Burleson and his stable, though the brothers sometimes present different versions of their time together. One of Burleson's favorite memories, for instance, is from the mid-1970s. He and Robinson were doing well in Hollywood, staying at the Hyatt Regency, and had recently bought new Cadillacs. According to Burleson, Robinson suggested they rent a limo and go to a costume shop and get hooded cloaks. They then drove down L.A.'s main "ho stroll" -- Hollywood Boulevard. When they spotted a hooker, the hooded brothers threw open the limo doors and yelled, "Quick -- get in! We're with Earth, Wind & Fire!"
Back at the Hyatt, said Burleson, Robinson pulled off his hood and declared, "Ladies, it's Starr time. And I'm Jimi Starr."
Robinson said that never happened.
"I never needed a hood on my head to get anything done," he snapped.
Burleson stood by his story.
Robinson did pride himself on being able to make a whore out of any woman, by tapping into her natural desire to do perverse things.
"Deep down inside every woman, there's a part that wonders what it would be like," he said. "And I've never met a woman who only does it once. It's like those Lay's potato chips -- 'Betcha can't eat just one!'"
He bragged that he could get women to do whatever he wanted -- not just sell sex. "I wouldn't say it was brainwashing," he said. "I became a master manipulator."
A former member of his stable, Jackie Anderson, said Robinson "has a gift for language, and you get kinda caught up." Anderson, now 39 and a Santa Rosa hairdresser, said Robinson befriended her when she was a teenager in San Francisco. "He would take me to the movies, and we'd talk about life," she said. She later became his baby sitter, living with his family and stable in Las Vegas. Before long, however, Robinson turned her out.
"He takes those weaknesses -- the need to be loved and cared for -- and I don't want to say exploits them ...." Anderson refused to finish her thought, stating that she didn't want to jeopardize her long friendship with Robinson. (Their families still get together for barbecues and birthday parties.)
"We lived a simple lifestyle," Anderson said of her years working for Robinson. "There were chores, we came home and had our naps, went to the cleaners, went shopping. I wore jeans during the day. I remember there was one young woman who got off into drugs, and there was a big argument. That was the code of ethics: no needles, no getting drunk. Stay focused."
After a scary experience with a john, Robinson allowed her to stop working.
"He's basically a decent person," she said. "I knew there was going to be a transformation [in him] before it happened."
Robinson admitted that he "may have led people into a lifestyle that was unsavory. And in doing so, I may have altered the course of their life. I don't feel good about it, but I'm not sad about it. The door was always open. I never made anybody stay with me against their will."
