After a childhood spent in Japan, Hawaii, California, West Virginia and Maryland, Robert moved to New York in 1990 to attend Columbia and has called the place home ever since, living in several Heights (Morningside, Brooklyn, Prospect, and Washington), one Village (East), and a Kitchen (Hell's). 

​

Since 1997, he has given tours on buses and boats, on foot and by bike, in SUVs and subway cars. He has worked for the leading student and corporate travel companies and for clients ranging from book clubs and sports teams to a Real Housewife of Orange County and foreign cabinet ministers sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

​

He has written about New York in plays like A Wedding Album and This Blessed Plot and novels like The Sightseers and Suspension, winner of two Lambda Literary Awards. For several years, he blogged about New York in conjunction with 74 video tours of the city (Little Bytes of the Big Apple) and was featured on the Travel Channel as part of its Monumental Mysteries series. Most recently, he developed both the Landscape and History audio tours for Little Island.