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SAN FRANCISCO -- Sure we're different. The great Rudyard Kipling, he of the road to Mandalay, he who declared "a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke, stopped by the city in the 19th Century and said all San Franciscans were mad.

And that was before the creation of the Exotic Erotic Ball on Halloween.

Mad. Crazy. Always and ever. There was Joshua Abraham Norton who hung around just after the Gold Rush and declared himself "Emperor of these United States.'' Had a goatee and long hair. These days might have been mistaken for a relief pitcher on the San Francisco...