Delusions of Grandeur in San Francisco

With a soiled mirror in his hand, a torn t-shirt on his back, and a cockeyed crown on his head (red velvet, gold trim, taller than wide — impressive) a middle-aged black man walks down the street in the newMission gesticulating imperiously while glancing at the blurred image in his hand-held mirror — a master of his own reality, free to promulgate his terrifying decrees to an audience of one as he, seemingly indifferent, weaves past groups of software engineers and social media moguls — the dukes and duchesses of the modern world seated on the sidewalk with beers, wine, and artisanal cheese, their crowning achievements enshrined in the algorithms by which we live, and live well, in this rich, rich kingdom of things, a realm stubbornly unaffected by the brief passing of a foreign, less fortunate, king.