Time for a toast to Emperor Norton
Francisco City Hall will be lit in gold Sunday night, and so will Coit Tower, but not in honor of Super Bowl Sunday. The golden light will mark a more auspicious date in the annals of San Francisco. Sunday is the 200th birthday of his imperial majesty, Norton I, emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico.
As all loyal San Franciscans know, Emperor Norton is the premier character in a city that admires picturesque oddballs.
He was a pioneer entrepreneur named Joshua A. Norton who came to California during the Gold Rush, made a fortune in real estate and investments, and lost it all in a business deal gone sour. He disappeared for a while and reappeared in the fall of 1859 to announce that “at the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens” he was now Norton I, emperor of the United States.
He reigned for more than 20 years, honored by the citizens, welcomed at the theater, in churches, at public lectures, and at the free lunch counters of the best saloons in town. When his gaudy imperial uniform grew shabby, the city of San Francisco bought him a new one. All police officers were required to salute him when they met him on the street. He was a quiet man for an emperor and lived alone in a single room on Commercial Street.
When he dropped dead in front of St. Mary’s Cathedral on California Street, on a rainy January day in 1880, he was given a grand civic funeral and 10,000 people followed his cortege to the cemeSan tery.
But Emperor Norton never really died. He became part of the legend of San Francisco and its tolerance for different people. Now there is an Emperor Norton Inn, on Post Street, an Emperor Norton’s Boozeland at Turk and Larkin streets, and a San Francisco distiller is producing a brand of absinthe named after the emperor.
Not only that, but San Francisco is currently graced by two citizens who dress as Norton I.
One is Joseph Amster, who conducts tours of the city dressed in imperial finery — a top hat with feathers, a uniform coat with brass buttons and golden epaulettes. The other emperor is Rick Saber, a former airline pilot, who is the official Emperor Norton of E Clampus Vitus, a historical society of sorts that likes to celebrate the past with big talk and strong drink. Both showed up in uniform at an event at the emperor’s grave in Colma the other day and took turns making imperial pronouncements.
Amster began his career as a chef and a journalist in Southern California, moved to San Francisco and reinvented himself as a tour guide. “It’s a very San Francisco thing to do,” he said. “Norton reinvented himself twice.” He defers to Saber, his senior in the emperor business, who is a somewhat more subdued version of his imperial majesty.
Such graciousness is part of the myth. Norton himself, though apparently unbalanced, was a man of vision and tolerance, rare for his times. He ordered the construction of a bridge between San Francisco and Oakland years before it became a reality. He also defended San Francisco’s Chinese community from attacks by Denis Kearney, a racist street orator. The emperor also appointed the Pacific Appeal, an African American weekly paper in San Francisco, as his official newspaper. Other papers, he thought, made fun of his proclamations and printed false ones, an early example of fake news.
Norton I was one of a number of street characters in the 1860s and ’70s. They included George Washington II, a miser called the Money King, Oofty Goofty, who allowed men to hit him with a baseball bat for a small fee, and a personage who called himself the Great Unknown. But Norton is the only one still remembered.
“He was a beloved character,” said John Lumea, who has emerged as the emperor’s modern spokesman. “He was a genuinely kind person, well read and well spoken. He knew his place in the city, and he knew his limits. The others faded away, but his story has lasted.”
Lumea is organizing the birthday commemoration. There will be a celebration at the Comstock Saloon on Columbus Avenue from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, with a toast to the emperor at noon. Amster will be at Norton’s Boozeland from 4 to 6 p.m. or so.
The San Francisco Public Library will hold an exhibition of Norton’s proclamations and other writings, called “The Literary Norton,” at the main branch starting Wednesday.
Lumea, however, is not satisfied with celebrating Norton’s 200th birthday. He wants to rename part or all of the Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton. After all, the bridge was his idea.