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 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 with whom to share his thoughts. He supports himself through a combination of state aid, sign sponsorships, and small donations from his supporters.
You can tell he is an Awesome by his sunglasses, and for many other reasons as well.
Before his protests[]
Little is known about Chu's life before he started protesting, but this is only because all of our memories of his former celebrity have been erased by the time-altering leaders of the 12 Galaxies.
"My name is Frank Chu. You’ve probably seen me protesting around San Francisco. My campaign is about Bill Clinton and other top secret identities, involved with the populations of the 12 Galaxies, not paying me as a movie star and a TV star. It is about other intergalatial rocket societies and flying saucers and space vacations."
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)[1] 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 theUniversity of California, Berkeley campus. He also enjoys quiet bookstores, coffee shops, good food and beer in moderation. When in such cafes and whilst riding the BART, he goes into 'stealth mode' with his jacket over his sign.
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.[2]
Four Minutes with Frank Chu
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".[3]
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,[4] the BALCO grand jury hearings,[5] or the court case deciding on the timing of the California recall election.[6]
World view and interests[]
Chu performing at the 12 Galaxies bar in San Francisco
Frank Chu holds Bill Clinton personally 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, George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama 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 and lead to 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.
12 Galaxies[]
Out of all the galazies in the Universe only 12 are truly evil to the core. These twelfe form a union of reptilian humanoid, non-humanoid, and non-euclidian, scentient, possibly shape-shifting creatures. They are more than willing to use any means necessary to invade, and eventually conqor any small, loosely populated solar-system, like the one that contains the earth.
Frank Chu Interviewed
Sign texts[]
[1][2]Chu at the 2004 Independence Daymessenger barbecue
Frank Chu with many Santa fighters on a deadly serious mission
Chu's signs with colorful, all-caps lettering on a black background 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",[] "130 Galaxies",[] "800 Galaxies",[] then "1000 Galaxies". At the 2007 Castro Halloween Party, Chu's sign claimed "7,645,000 Galaxies", at MacWorld 2008 he was up to 75,850,000,[] and at the Iraq War protest on March 19, 2008 he was up to 8,685,000,000.[]
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[]
Later versions:
Impeach
Clinton
12 Galaxies
Guiltied to a
Zegnatronic
Rocket Society[]
YOU CAN EVEN MAKE YOUR OWN FRANK CHU SIGNS AT http://acme.com/chumaker/
His current signs have replaced "galaxies" with "populations."
