August 2023: "The story of Stanroy is a great example of what makes Santa Rosa an unusual community, a city where the sharing economy is allowed to flourish in all sorts of ways in all sorts of neighborhoods in different parts of the city," says Pete. Check out our interview with Steve Shirrell, owner emeritus, to learn why!
Ep1: The Sharing Economy — Peter Neuwirth interviews Steve Shirrell, owner emeritus of Santa Rosa’s Stanroy Music Center
A Note from Actuary and Author Peter Neuwirth, FSA, FCA — I invite you to tune in for Season 2 of my podcast and video show, Money Mountaineering, where for 30 minutes, experts, friends, and colleagues discuss What’s your future worth?
Meet our guest: Steve Shirrell, owner emeritus of Santa Rosa’s Stanroy Music Center
Illustration by Michael Glenwood Gibbs, www.michaelglenwood.com
Today’s topic: The Power of the Shared Economy
Pete and Steve discuss: “The story of Stanroy is a great example of what makes Santa Rosa an unusual community, a city where the sharing economy is allowed to flourish in all sorts of ways in all sorts of neighborhoods in different parts of the city,” says Pete. “From the old west end where I am living now all the way out to Hood Mountain, where my neighbors have been sharing resources to sustain themselves and each other for more than 100 years, we are definitely all in this together!”
Don’t miss their powerful conversation about the meaning, purpose, and future of the shared economy.
About our guest: Steve Shirrell was born in Santa Rosa, California, during the twilight of the 1940s. Since then, he has hitchhiked over 50,000 miles throughout the USofA, co-created a commune in Oregon, traveled twice to the Middle East during wartime and Intifada, and worked post-disaster relief in the Southeast several times since Hurricane Katrina. Past employment has included working in a hospital kitchen, teaching in primary and secondary schools as an instructional aid, building apartments as a construction laborer, living the dream of a performing musician, selling wine, managing a corporate mailing list and a laboratory supply warehouse, and repairing and selling cars.
Forty years ago, he began work as a salesperson and repair technician at Stanroy Music Center, where he’d purchased his first LPs over twenty years earlier. After thirty years on the job, he learned that Stanroy’s owners – Tupper & Reed Music – planned to close Stanroy in August 2013. They partnered with Dustin Heald, a friend and former co-worker, and purchased Stanroy from their former employer. And partnering with his brother, Robert Shirrell, former Mendocino County Bureau Chief for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, bandmate, and long-time cab driver, they purchased a new home for Stanroy that will help assure its continuance far beyond its centennial in 2047. As planned from the beginning of their partnership, Steve handed over the reins to Dustin in 2021 while continuing to function as a repair tech and “owner emeritus.”
Steve’s joys include writing songs, poems, and aphorisms while completing a third book on the nature of human consciousness and its effect upon itself and Earth’s biosphere and happily comprising a Family including (but not limited to) two daughters, their partners, two “grand-adults,” a former wife and her husband, and some cats and dogs and bees. Click here to learn more about Stanroy: stanroy.com.
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