Frank Chu

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Frank Chu

Frank Chu giving a television interview with his trademark picket sign (April 2006).
Born March 24, 1960 (1960-03-24) (age 49)

Frank Chu (born 24 March 1960) is one of San Francisco's best-known eccentrics. His street protests against US Presidents, corporations, and a distinctive concept he calls the “12 Galaxies” have been held in San Francisco and nearby locales since at least 1995.

Chu lives in Oakland, California and commutes daily to San Francisco where he can find the largest audience of passers-by and television news crews to share his thoughts with. He supports himself through a combination of state aid, sign sponsorships, and small donations from his supporters.

Contents

[edit] Before his protests

Little is known about Chu's life before he started protesting.

In early 1985, Chu, then 24 years old, took 11 members of his family hostage in his home in Oakland and was reported to have beaten one or more with his fists. Chu fired a .38 pistol at a police officer who came to investigate, but missed. Police cordoned off a ten-block area for three hours. Chu eventually released his hostages and surrendered to the police.[1]

[edit] Performance/protest technique

Frank Chu protests daily, or nearly daily, typically walking throughout the daytime hours in downtown San Francisco (particularly along Market Street and Montgomery Street[2]) holding one of his signs, and occasionally supplementing this with spoken remarks on similar themes. He is also known to protest elsewhere, for instance in downtown Oakland and at the University of California, Berkeley campus.

Chu will deviate from his usual rounds in the pursuit of a larger audience, and he is frequently seen at street fairs and protests. Although he claims to be a Republican himself, he seems equally at home at protest demonstrations representing all shades of political opinion. Occasionally, people who oppose a protest group will single out Chu as an example of the protest group's incoherent message not realizing that he is not protesting on the same terms as the other protesters in the group.[3]

Although the form of Chu's actions is that of a picket-sign-carrying protester, it is misunderstood if interpreted merely as a protest or picket. He sometimes refers to "a live performance of my protest" rather than simply "my protest."[4]

Chu also likes to appear in the news media, and will try to position himself in view of television news cameras and to offer himself to be interviewed. He pays close attention to the local news media scene and keeps tabs on where he has received good coverage. He will depart from his usual parade ground to attend media-magnet events, for instance the Scott Peterson trial[5] or the BALCO grand jury hearings[6] or the court case deciding on the timing of the California recall election.[7]

[edit] World view and interests

Chu performing at the 12 Galaxies bar in San Francisco

Frank Chu holds Bill Clinton responsible for directing the CIA to withhold payment to him for being the star of something called "The Richest Family" during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. His protests frequently called for the impeachment of Clinton even after Clinton was no longer in office. Bill Clinton and various other US presidents are frequently accused by Chu of cooperating with the 12 Galaxies to commit crimes and treasons. Chu is strongly interested in television reporters and newscasters, who will bring him the publicity he requires to inform the world of the injustices committed against him. He hopes that this wave of publicity will cause a public outcry, which will result in the impeachment of various US presidents and the awarding of "$20 billions" in compensation for the damages he and his family have suffered.

The now closed 12 Galaxies bar in San Francisco was named in honor of Chu's cause. Chu has occasionally performed spoken-word on-stage at the 12 Galaxies — his performances have a similar theme to his signs, with riffs off of the twelve galaxies theme and the seemingly abstract use of syllable combinations for poetic effect; to this he adds the use of a percussive "ah" syllable at irregular intervals between words, superficially similar to the "uh" speech disfluency or discourse marker seen in ordinary conversation but with a more constant tone and duration and a less-conversationally-natural placement.

[edit] Health

[edit] Mental health

One news report from 1985 quoted a police lieutenant as saying that Chu had a history of mental problems and had been prescribed medication.[1]

A reporter noted:

“ For at least a decade this guy has been doing this thing that he does, this thing that no one really understands. Now he has a club named after him, and, as 12 Galaxies' [Adam] Bergerson points out, he can drink and eat for free in a number of places around town. From the looks of it, he's also got plenty of genuine friends.[8] ”

[edit] Sign sponsorships

Chu has been sponsored by the likes of Laughing Squid[9], Barbary Coast Consulting, Harputs adidas, Learn iT!, Quiznos Sub, Rasputin Music, Chris Daly's 2006 San Francisco Supervisor campaign[10], and Phil Angelides's 2006 California gubernatorial campaign[11] — typically through ad-space purchased on the back of his signs.[12] As of May, 2005, his going rate was $100 (U.S.) per week.[13].

[edit] Sign texts

 This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (March 2009)
Chu at the 2004 Independence Day messenger barbecue

Chu's black signs with fluorescent, all-caps lettering are instantly recognizable even by those who know nothing else about him. His signs change from day to day, and tend to go through syntactically-similar phases, with the phrase "12 Galaxies" being his trademark and a constant presence in the signs. In June 2007, Chu broke from this tradition and started replacing this with "85 Galaxies"[14], "130 Galaxies"[15], "800 Galaxies"[16], then "1000 Galaxies"[17]. At the 2007 Castro Halloween Party, Chu's sign claimed "7,645,000 Galaxies", at MacWorld 2008 he was up to 75,850,000[18], and at the Iraq War protest on March 19, 2008 he was up to 8,685,000,000[19].

The earliest of the photos of Chu's signs show his "classic" phase, in which the signs typically read "IMPEACH [figure] 12 Galaxies Guiltied to a [modifier] Rocket Society", where [figure] was typically a living-or-dead former U.S. president, and [modifier] was something along the lines of "Zegnatronic", "Omegalogical", etc. The very earliest examples are handwritten, for instance:

Impeach
Clinton
12 Galaxies
Guiltied to a
Dectrological
Rocket Society[20]

Later versions:

Impeach
Clinton
12 Galaxies
Guiltied to a
Zegnatronic
Rocket Society[21]

[edit] Awards

Frank Chu has received the following awards:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b "Police Subdue Man Menacing His Family" San Francisco Chronicle 29 January 1985, p. 6
  2. ^ Vigil, D. "A Frank Chu F.A.Q." San Francisco Chronicle 6 February 2005, p. 17[1]
  3. ^ "Four Minutes with Frank Chu: San Francisco, 15 March 2003" brain terminal 21 March 2003 [2]
  4. ^ "Behind Closed Doors in Washington" Starve.Org undated[3]
  5. ^ Hay, Tim "T-shirts cause buzz outside Redwood City courthouse" Oakland Tribune 5 October 2004. p. 1
  6. ^ Padecky, Bob "Bonds Part of Grand Jury Freak Show" The Press Democrat Santa Rosa, Calif.: 5 December 2003. p. C1
  7. ^ Hubler, Shawn "The Recall Campaign: Outside a Sedate Courtroom, Scripted Chaos on the Street; In what has become a routine spectacle, candidates, advocates and oddballs compete for the media's attention in San Francisco" Los Angeles Times 23 September 2003. p. A20
  8. ^ Kamps, Garrett "Frank Chu: the man, the myth, the ‘Experience.'" San Francisco Weekly 17 November 2004[4]
  9. ^ Laughing Squid Sponsors Frank’s Chu Sign[5]
  10. ^ [6]
  11. ^ "Governor Votes, Angelides Gets Last-Minute Endorsement" Political Muscle (Los Angeles Times blog) 7 November 2006 [7]
  12. ^ "Zegnatronic protester rockets toward profits" San Francisco Business Times August 24, 2001[8]; see also Reed, Dan "S.F.'s perpetual protester subs for capitalist" San Jose Mercury News 26 September 2001
  13. ^ Amor "Chu-bot report" 11 May 2005[9]
  14. ^ [10]
  15. ^ [11]
  16. ^ [12]
  17. ^ [13]
  18. ^ [14]
  19. ^ [15]
  20. ^ [16], another early handwritten version
  21. ^ [17]
  22. ^ http://www.bestofthebay.com/2000/ed_urban.html
  23. ^ San Francisco - Best Of - Best Pathological Citizen - Frank Chu (2007)

[edit] External links

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[edit] Video footage

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