Tomorrow is the 198th birthday of Norton I, Emperor of North America and Protector of Mexico, and he’s another reason why San Francisco, after all the cities I’ve seen, remains my favorite.

If I remember the story right, Joshua Norton spent thousands in an attempt to corner the rice market in the city, then populated by thousands of immigrant Chinese laborers, and had just about pulled it off when an unexpected shipment sailed into the bay and destroyed his scheme.

He disappeared.

He reappeared.

But he reappeared, in full-dress uniform, with epaulets, saber and an imperial ostrich plume and announced his new identity to the City of San Francisco, his imperial capital.
And San Francisco gracefully accepted the honor. For twenty years, it also fed the emperor and his court, a pack of his beloved mongrels who followed him everywhere on his rounds, including to some of the city’s posh restaurants.

Printers ran off imperial edicts–including one that directed a bridge to be built connecting San Francisco to Oakland– Emperor Norton Script (usually in fifty-cent denominations) and, occasionally, a summons to a duel if some local politico had offended Norton.

When Norton collapsed and died on Grant Ave. in 1880, the city went into mourning. The Chronicle headline–spelled correctly, by the way– read “Le roi est mort.”

He was a pauper–he had at most five or six dollars and a few shares in a defunct gold mine that were found along with a cache of letters addressed to Alexander II and Queen Victoria.

Norton would have been buried in a poor man’s pine coffin, but the Pacific Club paid for a beautiful coffin made of rosewood. On the day of his funeral, the crowd that made up the funeral procession behind Norton’s hearse was two miles long.