Obituaries for Emperor Norton noted that his room at the Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial Street, was about 5 or 6 feet wide and 9 or 10 feet long.
It can be difficult to get a sense of how small, in practical terms, such a tiny space would be — and, for some, still is — to live within. In a room of this size, adding even the sparest amount of furniture potentially increases the claustrophobic impact, (a) by making the space register visually as even smaller than it already is and (b) by exponentially reducing the square footage available for moving one’s body around.
A 2022 photograph taken inside a rentable room of the SRO that replaced the Eureka building in 1910 gets us closer to an understanding of what this must have felt like for the imaginary Emperor and for the very human Joshua Norton.
Read More
The legendary San Francisco attorney Melvin Mouron Belli (1907–1996) was — among many other things — an enthusiast of the Emperor Norton.
No doubt, this — and Melvin Belli’s way with a pen — is why William Drury enlisted Belli to write the Foreword for his 1986 biography of the Emperor.
Throughout his very public life, Belli repeatedly and habitually associated himself with Emperor Norton.
As shown in the scenes documented here...
an Emperor Norton cosplayer who "knighted" Belli at the 1960 Belli-staged dedication of two Gold Rush-era buildings that Belli had restored — one of which he would use for his law office
Belli's own cosplaying of the Emperor for a San Francisco Examiner magazine feature in 1987
Belli's interviews comparing public birthday parties he threw for himself in 1982 and 1987 to imagined birthday celebrations for Emperor Norton in the Emperor's day
...Belli invoked the Emperor in ways that suggested a link between his fight for justice and his flair for the eccentric.
Indeed, Belli's Norton-flavored theatrics helped his audiences to see that — as with Emperor Norton — his own eccentricity was a key to his influence.
Click below for stories, photographs, newspaper clippings, and video.
Read More
Many crunchy-snack lovers who bought and enjoyed the Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks between 1982 and 2012 will have known little of the Emperor Norton story.
But, Norton initiates and non-initiates alike will know even less about who really made the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks possible — specifically: Who was the lead venture-capital investor in the product?
As it happens, the partners in the VC firm that led on the Emperor Norton snacks were fresh from having created and developed one of the best–known consumer products and brands in the United States.
Read on for a glimpse into the origin story of the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks.
Read More