It is done. 12 Galaxies, the Mission club named after mentally unfit local color Frank Chu and that sign he carries, came to end this past weekend. Local indie rock outfits StitchCraft and Big Light were the last bands to stomp the floorboards there. And even Mr. Chu himself beamed in for the final show. Read more about it here. (Mission Mission)......

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Photos_Dore_Alley_Fair_San_Francisco_s_Leather_Sex_Fair'; (By Joe Kukura) Yesterday's Up Your Alley Fair is what the Folsom Street Fair used to be before all the tourists pushing baby strollers started showing up. More than 8,000 leather daddies -- and as many as perhaps a dozen biological women -- braved the cold fog wearing little more than a gimp mask and a smile to benefit PAWS, the AIDS Emergency Fund, and others. We tried to limit the......

Well, sort of. Method actor and mentally-challenged San Francisco icon Frank Chu will appear in the upcoming flick Less -- brought to you by Gabriel Diamond, who brought you such household-name classics as Start to Finish (2007) and The Sex Movie (2006) -- as "12 Galaxies Guy." Less is "an independent narrative film about a man who has chosen to live on the streets in San Francisco," which is currently in post production and......

Photo by Steve Rhodes/Flickr Unless he's dying--God forbid--starting today, we declare a three-month moratorium on any Frank Chu-related news items, gossip, and/or images. SFist management sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience, but really, you have no one to blame but yourselves.......

Frank Chu, 48, the Bay Ara;s favoritest pathological resident, has a Wikipedia page, naturally. It goes into much detail about his media whoring, numerous protest signs, and "performance art." It also mentions the following (and, of course, alleged) Chu-helmed hostage crisis: 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 been beating some with his fists. Chu fired......

Photo credit: Sumanth Sukumar Ta-da. Now it's really on, folks.......

Students at Encinal High School walked out of their classrooms today in response to proposed budget cuts. Last night the school board held a tense meeting that went well into the wee hours of the morning, voting to increase class sizes by cutting advanced placement classes, most high school sports, music in the elementary schools, and counselors in the middle schools, reports NBC 11. Students walked out today, marching straight over to the school......

As mother used to tell us, "the smaller the font, the crazier the loon." And how. Frank Chu seems downright lucid compared to this gentleman, who over the years has called us every ungodly name in the book as we passed by him on Market Street. How about you? Also, just who the hell is he, anyway? UPDATE: His name, it seems, is Owen Bias Image credit: flickr's Mai Le......

You have, well, two entire days to fill out and return your application to become a torchbearer for the San Francisco leg of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay. The San Francisco relay -- which is entitled, dear Christ, "A Sustainable Journey" -- is the only North American stop on the Olympic Torch Relay, which will make the sporty flame's U.S. visit that more special to us in the Bay Area. Or not. In......

No, not Frank Chu -- although a Gav versus a crazy would be most fascinating, indeed -- Carmen Chu. Let's back up a bit here: In her first hickory-bold move since taking over for he who shall remain nameless, Chu decided to chip away at the homeless problem in the Sunset. Chu, according to the Examiner, "publicly demanded that several city departments come up with a specific plan to address her west side district’s homeless......

-- Today is Yelp Day. How did you celebrate? Yeah, same here. (With all due respect to Yelp, Newsom will declare anything _____ Day these days, won't he?) [Eater SF] -- Ooooh! Those apartments near the Mint and Mezzanine. We want one. [Curbed SF] -- Homeless vets. [BeyondChron] -- Freight & Salvage wins $1.161 million? Jesus. [SFBG] -- Beth Spotswood totally likes Donnie Wahlberg. [Culture Blog] -- SF's EIR, bicyclists, and you. [Left in......

Sure. We'd love to see Hilary Clinton win just for the darling Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton pattern that's coming along nicely, but we're also curious about this Barack Obama fella. He seems to be some guy running for President of the U S of A, and you can see him this Wednesday night. He's here to talk, make the rounds, look deep into your eyes, and probably make nice with a few unreasonably sensitive gays. Who: Barack......

image credit: apbh2's Flickr account Writing in SFGate yesterday, CW Nevius tells us that the "Rights of Mentally Ill Street People Thwart Efforts to Prevent Harm." Those pesky rights! What happened was that the "Sign Guy" of Justin Herman Plaza was arrested after attacking a police officer, when it was pretty clear that someone (the City? Men in white coats?) should have intervened sooner. Let us be clear that this Sign Guy is not......

Speaking of ILM, their Halloween party boasted one of the best costume ideas we've seen in eons. Behold, Ikeabots! So, for those of you who still think it's nifty to dress up as a sexy devil/cat, pirate, or Frank Chu, take note at these boss creations. This is how a Halloween costume is done. (Auto-start footage of the Ikeabots after the jump. If you're reading this in an RSS feeder, please click-thru. Alas.)......

Photo obviously from whatimseeing.com It seems the guy behind a photo blog called "whatimseeing.com" left us a tip in the contribute section that he treated Frank Chu to an extra baseball ticket he had yesterday. (Please click thru to see all the great photos; we're assuming the writer is blogging anonymously because he censors out his face in the pics). This is possibly the greatest thing ever. We especially like the comment on the......

Looking over everyone's favorite site to get all Cathy over, Zombietime, in order to find shots of last week's not-so savage anti-Savage protest, we came across something disturbing: adolescent protesters. Sure, children are upsetting in and of themselves, but that goes doubly so when ma and pa hand them picket signs, ones that some of them can't even read, whining about their own bizarre political agendas. Bringing kids to protest rallies reeks of on-set......

Look what we found in the SFist Flickr stream! Reader IMPEACH sends along this picture, confirming the reports we've gotten from a couple of other readers -- there's now 85 Galaxies on Frank Chu's sign, not just 12. Why the change? Will they need to impeach Clinton in the new extra galaxies as well? And most importantly -- what'll happen to the once-eponymous bar?......

The entries are coming in fast and furious on the Photoshop Frank Chu's Sign challenge! Here's our top two so far -- send yours in too! And while we have you here, we might as well give you some news updates too. Oh No, Ed Jew!: Turns out the money that the Quicklys paid off to Tapioca Ed was marked bills from the FBI. The whole money swap was probably bugged too. MOOOOOM!: Apparently......

Here's some hints. Photoshopped picture by Tim Daw -- thanks to the reader who forwarded it to us! If you want to Photoshop some messages onto Frank Chu's sign too, we'd love to see 'em! Original picture by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid, and the link in the picture itself goes back to Laughing Squid for letting us use the picture in the first place! -- thanks for letting us know, Scott!......

In the taunting words of non-progressive Pat Murphy: do it, Lumpy! We stopped by the Progressive Convention where basically, on a schedule running about 90 minutes behind, everyone who's anyone in local politics stopped by and, after some exciting build-up in the form of a campaign speech by Ross Mirkarimi..... -- no one ended up deciding to run against Gavin Newsom. As Calitics puts it: Exasperating. Afterwards, a fellow blogger irritatedly reported that he had......

Jim Woods, the man behind Mateveza, had a great time at Beer Fest this past Saturday. He was even able to get a certain Mr. Frank Chu in on the action. Nakrofenikal indeed.......

At the anti-war protest this afternoon, we heard three young girls gleefully chanting "Smush Bush! Smush Bush!" and figured that was as good of a title for a post about today's activities as anything else. Our camera batteries died right as we saw Ross Mirkarimi carrying a "Boycott Hornblowers" sign (the protest was half an anti-war protest and half a union workers protest), but we did manage to catch Frank Chu (seen above), the......

Just a note/warning/reminder/ what have you that tomorrow at twelve will be the "Rally and March to End the War in Iraq." All this in protest of the Surgesclation of which our President, George "I'm a Decider" Bush has set out on. And isn't "I'm a Decider" a Monkees tune? And wasn't it played on the episode where a bunch of gypsys kidnap the gang and make them try to steal the Maltese Vulture?...

Downtown is looking a little shut down today as those wacky Trotskyites broadly-arrayed leftists at A.N.S.W.E.R. are giving their answer to the Bush Surge (hey, that sounds like a video you can find at Good Vibrations) by protesting. All this is going down at Powell & Market where alarmed tourists are sure to thrill at some good old fashioned San Francisco Values. SFist Christopher is caught in the middle of it and sends photos......

-Majority of SF Police Commission call for investigation on why there's a high percentage of blacks arrested. -Judge says Hearst and MediaNews Group Inc deal can't go forward as of yet. ...

--Last Tuesday, a 300-pound woman beat up the DPT officer trying to ticket her car. --There weren't as many shoppers in Hayes Valley as there were in Union Square. --Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have sold their Tiburon house at a loss. --Things they hate at Cal. --Stanlee Gatti's art exhibition. --Ed Jew was wearing a jade pig necklace for good luck during the election ballot-counting. --They might lower cable car fares for kids......

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond didn't like being in jail (congrats on your Society of Professional Journalism award, Tim!). As expected, the Guardian came out against those PG&E grass sofas. Also, the Guardian decides that the enemy of their enemy (the SFPOA, Bevan Dufty) is their friend, so they're now backing Police Chief Heather Fong. However, they also ask: who should replace her? Annalee Newitz is pretty happy. Sonic Reducer on French......

Happy Thanksgiving! --Speaking of Thanksgiving, thanks very much to Pat Murphy of the San Francisco Sentinel, who was nice enough to pass along William Wilson's picture of Gavin and squeeze of the moment Jennifer Siebel. Here's another picture of the couple at Stanlee Gatti's art exhibition. --It looks like after the provisional ballots are counted, incumbent Johnnie Carter may just squeak by John Rizzo (the Green Party candidate) for the SF Community College board,......

Everybody hates Chris -- but everyone loves a charticle! This week's episode: Everybody Hates The Negatives. So much negative information these days! Does Rob Black really hate unions? Does Chris Daly take dirty money? Does Matt Drake shamelessly pander to baby-lovers? (Congratulations on your new nephew, Matt!) It's just so hard to keep it all straight -- who's saying what about whom now? So we here at SFist have generously put together our Chart Of......

Who knows how it happened, but somehow, SF's most iconic eccentric (followed by the twins and Frank Chu) has risen from beyond the grave to call out to his populace for assistance. Like everyone else of consequence these days, Emperor Norton -- the real estate baron who went a bit screwy in the 1850s and declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico -- has a blog, and what's more, he's......