Travelling Hopefully - Emperor Norton

I met an emperor!  Well, not really I met a man dressed as an emperor.  Well, not really I met a man dressed as a man who thought he was an emperor.  I've given Norton I, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico a shout out before on this blog.  He was a failed businessman who went bankrupt due to an injudicious rice speculation and who appears to have gone completely out of his mind as a result.  One day in the 1860s he walked into the offices of a San Francisco newspaper and handed over a proclamation announcing his accession to the non existent throne and summarily dismissing the president and both houses of Congress.  The newspaper published the proclamation the next day and Emperor Norton had arrived.  Anywhere else he would probably have been locked up or completely ignored but not here.  He became an instant favourite with the people of San Francisco.  He dined in restaurants free of charge, had box seats for every opening night and paid his bills with "imperial treasury bonds" which were accepted as legal tender.  Incidentally if you ever come across one of these bonds keep hold of it.  Wells Fargo Bank has one on display in its company museum, it's valued at US$7,000.

I was going on a historical walking tour around San Francisco with an Emperor Norton impersonator as my guide.  The instructions were simple, go to Union Square and find Emperor Norton.  You wouldn't think it would be too difficult to find someone dressed as a madman dressed as an emperor would you?  Actually I found it difficult to locate Union Square.  The whole area around it is being dig up for a rail line and Union Square is surrounded by fences, boarding and what looks like hessian.  Inside all of this Union Square is still functioning but I walked past it twice before I realised it wasn't a construction site.

Eventually I found both Union Square and the emperor and along with a group of like minded individuals trotted off on a walking tour of the city.  Our guide, decked out in shabby, semi military finery worthy of the emperor himself guided us through the financial district, Barbary Coast and Chinatown with a fund of historical information about San Francisco in general and Emperor Norton in particular all related in the first person.  We went to the small park which was the site of the boarding house he lived in and the spot where, on his way to a meeting, he suffered a stroke and died.

Norton's funeral is still the largest to have happened in San Francisco.  Some two hundred thousand people turned out to pay their respects as his coffin was escorted to its final resting place.  I left my version of Emperor Norton alive and well and went to collect my luggage from my hosts.  A word about my hosts: Adrian & Kevin were amazing.  Anyone wanting to use Airbnb in San Francisco should check them out.

But now I was leaving San Francisco, ahead of me was a trolley ride, a brief walk, a bus ride and a train journey which collectively would deliver me to Portland, the next city in the US to be blessed with my presence.