Joshua Norton, Emperor of the United States | Hacker News Reader

Joshua Norton, Emperor of the United States

priceonomics.com

105 pointsharris1135 comments

I've always been fond of Emperor Norton. He's a figure that fits right into the modern SF tapestry.

He fits in so well that I wonder what historical figures have fallen by the wayside of San Francisco history. The Emperor seems culturally prophetic now, but there must have been other notable figures

Are there Bay Area public figures who were notable in their day, but whose character has not aged as well?

Being a Norton, I long ago heard about this guy.

Though I have no idea why it's on priceonomics. This article contains less info than the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

Related to Edward Norton the actor?

Nope, but I did tell people I was when I was a kid.

Also other fibs: dads owns 'Norton Antivirus', and related to WCW wrestler Scott Norton.

Only in San Francisco ;) Now, talking about some real power, if there was a real emperor in the U.S., it was a New York's public servant - Robert Moses.

I hear that "The Power Broker", a biography of Moses and winner of the Pulitzer in 1974, is a fantastic read :)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Broker-Robert-Moses/dp/03947...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker

Yes, it is. I read it in a public policy seminar my freshman year in school and it's had a huge effect on how I understand politics and power. In some ways, I like it better than the magisterial "Years of Lyndon Johnson".

Highly, highly recommended.

Well, great. A 1300-page book available for under $15 plus international shipping... or as an audiobook, 66 hours long ( but free shipping!) for... $70?

Something has gone deeply wrong in the market here. If only there were some way to convey three and a half pounds of information across the ocean in less than a month and for a reasonable price. :(

Ironically, it seems to be easy to buy an ebook of cliffs notes to this one.

If you're going to sully the Caro read with Cliff's Notes, you may as well just read the Wikipedia page.

Obviously I'm not going to. I'm complaining that while the book itself is ludicrously difficult to buy, getting the cliffs notes is easy.

Where are you trying to get it shipped to? I see paperbacks of the Caro book with free delivery on Amazon US, DE, UK and JP.

Ludicrously difficult? I just ordered it for AUD$32.19 delivered, to Australia, in two or three clicks.

It's a book from 1975, so there's no digital version, and it's probably not worth the time to make an ebook for the sales it gets.

I actually emailed the publisher about this, as the power broker is one of my favorite books (but totally impractical to carry around).

I got a response saying that they would love to do an ebook version of TPB, but Robert Caro won't allow them to do that - he even refuses to submit his writing digitally, instead writing everything by hand, then typing it up with a typewriter, which is then retyped by a typist at the publisher into Word.

I've read plenty of older books in ebook form; they're riddled with obvious OCR errors but perfectly intelligible. Making an ebook from a paper book, as far as I know, involves no more than putting it into a special-purpose shredder that separates and scans the pages, and since those already exist, the cost of doing so is extremely low.

IP issues are something else again.

There's an excellent story about Norton in Neal Gaiman's Sandman: Fables and Reflections

Absolutely. When I first read it, I thought it was awesome that Gaiman had so much imagination. I only learned later that Norton actually existed.

If you want to learn more about Joshua Norton, I make a history podcast, and I talked about him (and Jose Sarria, another San Francisco celebrity) in episode 8:

http://bornyesterdaypodcast.com#episode8

> "Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abdominal word 'Frisco,' which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor."

I suppose he meant abominable?

Shows you how much americans wish they had any kind of royalty in their life. But no-no... you've made your choice!

>> ...the price of rice skyrocketed from 4 to 36 cents per pound (a 900% increase).

That's an 800% increase.

Thanks for catching that; fixed!

Anyone else read Christopher Moore? Emperor Norton's a regular in a bunch of his books, hilarious stuff.

I wonder if San Francisco would still work for things like this.

Probably the closest modern-day equivalent San Francisco has is Frank Chu, well-known protestor of 12 Galaxies fame. San Francisco still cherishes it's eccentrics. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chu

Though a lot of SF culture is disappearing in the current wave of gentrification.

I only know a little about the gentrification going on in SF, mostly from stories I've run across here on HN. Is it bad that a new culture is taking hold in SF, and why? (given that at some point in the past, a new culture had to take over in SF for the now disappearing culture to exist in the first place)

Most of the united states has the same bland culture. San Francisco's was special, comparable to New Orleans in uniqueness I think. Though a lot of the rest of the country sees SF as being too liberal and would gladly see it fall in line with the bland sameness of everywhere else. Especially the flood of libertarian minded young white males.

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” -Tennessee Williams

It's pretty disparaging to dismiss the entire country except for San Francisco and New Orleans by saying "yeah those places are all the same and bland". There are many, many places in the US with their own unique cultures and quirks; the fact that you're unaware of them doesn't mean that they aren't there.

Other cities have similar characters, I'm sure.

Memphis has Prince Mongo [http://www.1045theriver.com/pages/7337724.php?]

I grew up in Memphis. Prince Mongo had a nightclub that was the place to go for high school kids. They apparently never checked for ID's... it was known for serving to high schoolers.

He reminds me a bit of this guy in New Zealand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_New_Zealand

After reading that my conclusion is that every city I've ever been in desperately needs an Emperor as benevolent as Norton.

There is a new Emperor Norton in town: http://norton13.us/

I love that he went a little crazy in public and the city residents just went with it.

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