TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON
RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY
Travel writer and urban explorer Stuart Schuffman, a.k.a. Broke-Ass Stuart — a longtime friend of The Emperor's Bridge Campaign — is up with a new post giving props to our holiday drinks party at The House of Shields this Sunday afternoon.
Read MoreThe San Francisco-focused magazine 7x7 featured us yesterday with a generous and well-placed dozen lines of original copy on its Web site.
Read MoreThe widely read San Francisco-focused Web site The Bold Italic is spotlighting our upcoming holiday drinks party in its curated events listings for this week. The site lists The First Annual Tannenbaum Toast as one of 40 things to do in San Francisco this week — and one of 24 to do in the city this coming weekend.
Read MoreOur friend, Julian Lozos, flags a recent at San Francisco-focused online magazine The Bold Italic, in which writer Sara Brody cites our movement, specifically, as one healthy indicator that — despite the doomsday predictions of some who are wringing their hands the hardest over San Francisco's latest gentrification wave — San Francisco is not on the verge of losing its soul.
Read MoreSome of the earliest photographs of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were taken in 1936 by James Kenneth Piggott, a commercial photographer who made his living, in part, as a printer and publisher of postcards. More on Piggott — including an intriguing biographical overlap with Emperor Norton — plus three of his 1936 bridge photographs, after the jump.
Read MoreThrough the magic of television, Emperor Norton paid a memorable visit to the Ponderosa ranch on 27 February 1966. That's the date that the episode "The Emperor Norton" originally aired on the popular television series, Bonanza. Watch the full episode here.
Read MoreThe Emperor's Bridge Campaign invites you to join us for a holiday drinks party on Sunday 8 December at The House of Shields. Read on, for details.
Read MoreOur friend, Katie Haverkamp, did her nails. Click for the fabulous reveal!
Read MoreIn his new review of Emperor Norton's Boozeland for 7x7, Stuart Schuffman a.k.a. Broke-Ass Stuart explains why Emperor Norton matters now more than ever.
Read MoreOur friend, Joseph Amster, discovered this fabulous little Monty Python-esue video that tells the story of what happened when an overzealous local policeman, Armand Barbier, tried to throw Emperor Norton in jail.
Read MoreWritten in 1944 by Lu Watters, "Emperor Norton's Hunch" became a signature song for Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band. In this video, a recording of the song by the band is the musical setting for a quick look at answers to the two questions raised by the song's title: Who was Emperor Norton? and What was his hunch?
Read MoreIn the opening episode of Alistair Cooke's classic 1973 13-episode television documentary series, America: A Personal History of the United States, Cooke visits San Francisco, where he offers a brief 3-minute reflection on Emperor Norton starting at 8:25.
The episode, titled “First Impact,” originally aired on 12 November 1972, and much of the information now is dated and incorrect. But, Cooke is a charming storyteller, and this may be one of the earliest “documentary” segments on the Emperor to appear on film
Video on the flip.
Read MoreThe fact that there seems to be a continuing stream of folk who feel compelled to write — and who write lovingly and well — about Emperor Norton is a testament to the Emperor's ongoing power to fascinate and to inspire.
Read MorePlease follow >>> @EmperorsBridge. And spread the word!
Read MoreThe first episode of Up to Speed, Timothy "Speed" Levitch's brilliantly offbeat 2012 travel series on Hulu, is about San Francisco. The episode includes a fabulous segment on Emperor Norton that concludes with Levitch calling for the whole Bay Bridge to be named for him.
Read MoreFrom the collection of the California Historical Society comes this wonderful silent film from 1933. The film, by Charles G. Kirk, features views of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge under construction, as well as some great scenes of downtown San Francisco and Fisherman's Wharf.
Read MoreA San Francisco Chronicle article about different ways that advocacy groups are using the Change.org platform features Emperor's Bridge Campaign founder John Lumea's reflections on how the 2013 Change.org petition to name the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for Emperor Norton became a powerful movement-building tool and a springboard for the launch of the Campaign.
Read MoreOn Tuesday evening at 7 p.m., the San Francisco Obscura Society — "the real world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura" — holds its latest monthly salon evening at DNA Lounge. Emperor Norton is on the agenda.
Read MoreOur friend, Michael Mattis, flags this mini-documentary, made in 2004 by Nick Crummey, Nina Hirten, Anna Kocherovsky and Zach Shiner.
Read MoreOur friend, Kristian Akseth, passes along an item from the new book, Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society, by Kevin Evans, Carrie Galbraith and John Law.
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