Robde la Teja

School and training

Morris Catholic High School, 2008

Principal's Honors · National Honor Society · Spanish Club Chairman

The trade

Service

2013 to 2019

Nusr-Et Steakhouse, Sommelier (2019) · Naples 45, Bartender (2016) · Center Bar, Bartender (2016) · Parm, Bartender (2015) · Roberta's, Delivery (2015) · JEM Entertainment, Events (2013 to 2015) · Skytown Bar, Trivia (2013 to 2014)

Service taught me that being merely good is never enough. Maintaining the atmosphere matters more than mixology. The work is never as easy as it looks.

Journalism

Music Times, Copy Editor

2015

New York

During my freshman year, half the local newspapers in the United States went bankrupt. Before that I got to interview a lot of cool artists and musicians, review films and nightlife, and write a few editorials about censorship and streaming media that turned out to be prophetic.

Part of: Journalist, critic and editor, 2010 to 2018

My own

MAS+Creative, Founding Principal

2026 to present

A solo naming and verbal identity practice, New York

My own

PGPN Global (Pigpen), Founder and Creative Lead

2021 to present, on hiatus since early 2026

Pigpen (PGPN) may very well be my life's proudest achievement, and my only excuse to have a social life: an all-inclusive lifestyle brand for the, shall we say, more filthy segments of the LGBTQ+ community. The first three runs of apparel and merchandise sold out.

• Led a rebranding initiative to shift from PIGPEN to PGPN Global, broadening brand appeal while retaining core audience loyalty

The trade

Vinous Media, Assistant to the CEO and Sample/Tasting Manager

January 2025 to October 2026

New York, NY

• Built and managed the office sample inventory system and shipment tracking
• Coordinated logistics for a three-day consorzio tasting in Barbaresco (September 2026)
• Scheduled critic Antonio Galloni's tasting trips through Napa, Sonoma, Piedmont, Tuscany, Bordeaux and Champagne, including 72 producer appointments across two fall 2026 Napa trips
• Ran correspondence with producers, brand managers and regional consorzi to set appointments, collect tech sheets and coordinate samples
• Built tasting files for each regional report from Vinous database exports
• Built AI tools for the editorial office, including email automation and a customer service agent

The trade

September Wines & Spirits, General Manager & Buyer

October 2019 to June 2024

Lower East Side, Manhattan

Three years before my first shift at September Wines, I had just gotten my first wine store job in Bed-Stuy when I stumbled across the little boutique on a disappointing shopping trip to the Lower East Side. Most of the products came from smaller importers, and largely the ones I was already working with. I told myself that in three years I would be managing the place. Exactly three years later, in my first week working there, I was promoted to Buyer. Six months after that, in the middle of the pandemic, I was promoted to General Manager.

Over nearly five years I faced more than in any other stretch of my life: a pandemic, a secretive change of ownership, the deaths and health scares of loved ones, multiple unprovoked assaults, and, worst of all, the price of a slice of Lower East Side dollar pizza going to $1.50. I am proud of what I did there because I do not believe anyone else would have lasted as long under those conditions. It is also where I found out, after years of trying to believe it, that I can handle whatever life throws at me.

I left them with a few cases of killer Gevrey-Chambertin I had just bought for $26 a bottle. I hope they fixed the AC.

• Kept the store afloat through the 2020 pandemic shutdown and an ownership transition, retaining all staff
• Shifted the selection toward the natural wines the clientele had been asking for, while retaining classic wine shop staples with tight curation
• Completely revamped the markup structure, increasing average margins to 35–42%
• Greatly reduced the high turnover in a store with a notorious reputation for it by being an advocate for my staff
• Handled all distribution rep contact, retained ordering autonomy, scheduled all in-store tastings
• Enacted pandemic precautions and rigorously enforced them, staying current on shifting compliance measures

The trade

Manhattan Moonshine, Brand Rep and Sales Associate

July 2016 to February 2017

Brooklyn, NY

My move out of the service industry and into retail began with a commission gig selling a premium, award-winning white dog whiskey. The owner had claimed the lucrative territories of Williamsburg and Manhattan, which made me the rep for the rest of the outer boroughs. The product no longer exists, and not for lack of trying to sell it.

The trade

Bed-Vyne Wine & Spirits, Buyer & Sales Associate

August 2016 to May 2018

Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

I got the job while helping a broker friend show apartments in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. After showing a unit on Rogers Avenue, we wandered into a store called Vyne Yard, now owned by the legendary André Mack. The then-owner, Sandy, was impressed enough by my wine knowledge to refer me to her brother Mike and the other owners of Bed-Vyne. In the absence of management, ownership took back the day-to-day and expanded my role to include buying. The first big change I made with that responsibility was overhauling the store's merchandising: using wasted space to double the visible selection on the shelves and widen regional representation. Sales went up.

I commuted ninety minutes by bus each way, daily, for almost two years, and I never complained, because the work was that fulfilling. Bed-Vyne is not just a wine store. It is a community, and I owe it my whole career.

The trade

Grain & Vine, Buyer & Sales Associate

April 2018 to January 2019

Brooklyn, NY

I accepted the position thinking I had applied to be manager, and ended up grateful that all I was expected to control was the wine buying. The store's open concept gave the team a lot of room in merchandising, and displays had to be refreshed daily to hold the aesthetic. Where Bed-Vyne had an indie focus to its spirits, Grain & Vine leaned heavily on the major Bourbon producers. To this day I have never worked at another store that landed an allocation of Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year.

• Consulted on beta testing for a digital sommelier platform

The trade

Free Range Wine & Spirits, Assistant Manager

February 2019 to September 2019

Brooklyn, NY

I first encountered Free Range while I was still selling Manhattan Moonshine, years before I worked there. The owner had firmly but politely rejected my pitch: "It needs to be brown if it's going to sell. Great bottle though." After a disappointingly brief stint as a sommelier at Salt Bae's Nusr-Et Steakhouse, I applied for the Assistant Manager position without realizing which store I was applying to. The role required substantially more vendor communication than my previous ones, including all reorders on staple SKUs. It was also my best education yet in New York's chaotic allocation game: learning which rare products sell themselves if you can just get your hands on them.

Journalism

Eleven Magazine PDX, Film & TV Columnist

2012 to 2014

Portland, OR

During my freshman year, half the local newspapers in the United States went bankrupt. Before that I got to interview a lot of cool artists and musicians, review films and nightlife, and write a few editorials about censorship and streaming media that turned out to be prophetic.

Part of: Journalist, critic and editor, 2010 to 2018

Journalism

Uncocktail.com, Editor in Chief

2015 to 2018

New York

During my freshman year, half the local newspapers in the United States went bankrupt. Before that I got to interview a lot of cool artists and musicians, review films and nightlife, and write a few editorials about censorship and streaming media that turned out to be prophetic.

Part of: Journalist, critic and editor, 2010 to 2018

My own

PulpMacabre.com, Babadook in Chief

2021 to present

In September 2020, inspired by the personal and global horrors surrounding me, I started writing short horror stories as a hobby. They picked up something of a cult following, and by the end of 2021 I launched PulpMacabre.com to share portfolio samples of the work. The end goal is a two-to-three-book publishing contract: the collection Pulp Macabre first, then the novel Blood & Wine, which is still in the works.

My own

NattyWineRag.com, Editor in Chief

2022 to present

Natty Wine Rag came out of my appreciation for wine education and my distaste for pretension in the industry. The goal: intermediate-to-advanced wine knowledge, delivered with more satire and a wider world view than my contemporaries, without ever getting the facts wrong.

Work

Divide by Zero Atlas

book companion

Companion to Divide by Zero: Where the Rules of Science Run Out. Fifteen places where science stops answering, each with what is unknown, which framework makes it unknown, what would settle it, and which facts are contested.

Open Divide by Zero Atlas

Work

The Floor Beneath the Instability

sidebar

A finding from Divide by Zero: 32-bit rounding can freeze a pattern the theory says must form, and making the simulation more careful makes it worse. Stated with its limits.

Open The Floor Beneath the Instability

Work

Más樂 identity

brand system

Identity for Más樂, a music tool, in Spanish, Cantonese and English: eight Latin American lettering options, eight Hong Kong signboard options, a neon walled-city wall, and app icons down to 16 pixels.

Open Más樂 identity

Work

Living Language Loom+

atlas and timeline

Slang moving between cultures, 1920 to 2039, as a braided river of eight generations, a world map the words fly across, and a lexicon of 386 threads with contested items flagged.

Open Living Language Loom+

Work

Atlas of Tongues

atlas

About 217 languages and 74 splits between how a language is spoken and how it is written, each scored on a published 0 to 5 rubric.

Open Atlas of Tongues

Work

Atlas of Alphabets

atlas

About 228 writing systems mapped by where and when they were used, the companion to the Atlas of Tongues.

Open Atlas of Alphabets

Work

The Nube

word cloud

893 words for Earth, world and globe across 442 languages, with etymologies and source notes. Data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA) and Wikidata (CC0).

Open The Nube

Work

The Glyph Selvedge

scored corpus

42 glyphs that left everyday use, scored with a custom model, three bias flags, and a list of the folk etymologies it rejects.

Open The Glyph Selvedge

Work

Code Switcher

prototype

Guesses who is speaking from how a sentence switches between Spanish, English and Chinese, then sketches the voice. Seven stages, each marked as real or hand-authored.

Open Code Switcher

Work

Oo

constructed language

A language for children in which every word is one byte.

Open Oo

Work

Turing Bench

simulator

A browser reaction-diffusion bench with deterministic records, the instrument behind The Floor Beneath the Instability.

Open Turing Bench

Work

Atlas of Energy

research atlas

About 420 sourced records on how the world makes and moves power. Editorial direction and design by Rob; records compiled with Claude and cited line by line.

Open Atlas of Energy

Work

NVIDIAddict

live app

A market digest with sealed forecasts graded afterwards by Brier score, so the app keeps score on itself. Runs on its own backend.

Open NVIDIAddict

School and training

BS Journalism, a Boston school on the Princeton Review's top-ten lists, 2012

Minors: Visual & Media Arts, Business Studies · Dean's List · Recognition & Achievement Award

Journalism

DigBoston, Contributing Writer

2010 to 2011

Boston

During my freshman year, half the local newspapers in the United States went bankrupt. Before that I got to interview a lot of cool artists and musicians, review films and nightlife, and write a few editorials about censorship and streaming media that turned out to be prophetic.

Part of: Journalist, critic and editor, 2010 to 2018

Journalism

Dig Publishing, Editorial Intern

2010

Boston

During my freshman year, half the local newspapers in the United States went bankrupt. Before that I got to interview a lot of cool artists and musicians, review films and nightlife, and write a few editorials about censorship and streaming media that turned out to be prophetic.

Part of: Journalist, critic and editor, 2010 to 2018