San Francisco seems a little darker this week, with the passing of former Chronicle photo editor Bob McLeod this Monday.

This SFist only knew Bob a little bit. Our most vivid memory of him is from a night we spent in the Chronicle building, the night the Pacers and Pistons got into it. We were hanging out in the photo lab (which we're prone to do), watching the fight and subsequent replays of it on TV. Bob called over to the lab from the photo desk, and we went over to his desk look at all the pictures of the brawl as they came in. We talked for a good while, about basketball and Indiana and other stuff. It was nice.

Our s.o., who worked closely with Bob, knew him pretty well. He said that being able to work with Bob made the weekend evening shifts tolerable, as Bob and he would spend the long and frequently uneventful evenings talking. "Even at the Chronicle, where everybody hates everybody, no one ever said s**t about Bob. Everyone loved that guy. I sure did", he said.

Bob began at the San Francisco Examiner as a copyboy in the 1960s, then was basically "handed a camera one day" (as he put it), and became a shooter for the Examiner and later the Chronicle. He shot some of the most significant events in recent San Francisco history, and had a great story about each and every one of them.

We miss Bob already, and still can't believe he's gone. Bob died in his sleep at home, his wife Beth at his side. He was 59.

Bob liked to take pictures in the mens' rooms when on assignment. This Chronicle photo was taken at the 2001 Mill Valley Film Festival.