There’s relief across the 12 Galaxies, as San Francisco's ubiquitous sign-toting icon Frank Chu had been hospitalized after a late June fall at a BART station, but he is now mostly recovered. While he was at one point partially paralyzed, you'll be glad to know he’s now very much mobile and back on his beat.

Everyone's seen local SF legend Frank Chu and his zegnatronic “12 Galaxies” signs that he’s reliably toted around the Financial District, or at protests and public events, for more than 25 years now. But you haven’t seen Frank Chu for more than two months.

That’s because, as SFist has learned, Frank Chu was seriously injured in a fall on the stairs at the Powell Street BART station in late June. He had been hospitalized for the last several weeks recovering from a major spinal injury suffered in the accident. But the 64-year-old Chu was released from the hospital this past weekend, and SFist caught up with him Wednesday morning near Union Square, as he has now resumed his sign-carrying duties.


“It was at the end of June, June 28 or 29,” he says of his fall at a BART station. “I was at Powell Street at the top of the staircase. I slipped down the steps and slid three quarters of the way [down].”

That fall left Chu with a severe spinal cord injury, and he would remain hospitalized for more than two months. “I was pretty much paralyzed,” he tells us. “I couldn’t stand up for more than ten or twenty seconds.”


After a lengthy physical therapy regimen, Chu is able to walk again. But it was a long road. “My arms and hands were weak and numb,” he explains. “I still can’t write with my right hand.”

But as we mentioned, he is able to carry his signature signs around San Francisco again, which is what we know and love him for. “I can walk, but not as fast as before,” Chu tells us. “And I can hold the sign again.”


Frank Chu started carrying his 12 Galaxies signs in the late 1990s, on weekdays in the Financial District, and at various Bay Area protests. His original “Impeach Clinton” message would evolve through five more presidential administrations and similarly call for those presidents' impeachments, over a multiple-galaxy exploitation scheme that Chu has been blowing the whistle over claiming he has not been paid for films and TV shows made about him. The number of galaxies described on the sign eventually grew to more than 95 million.


Yet over the years, Chu has grown into a massively beloved local figure. In 2003, a bar named 12 Galaxies at Mission near 22nd Street celebrated Chu with its namesake. (It closed in 2008). Chu would eventually get sponsorship deals on his sign, and his fandom would spread far beyond the Bay Area.


There is no established GoFundMe for Chu’s medical bills or recovery, nor has he asked for one. But if you want to support him, he reminds us that “sometimes people give me small donations.”

So Frank Chu is back on the San Francisco streets, but he is going to disappear again soon for a richly deserved vacation. Chu tells us that in a few days, he’ll be leaving for a three-week trip to Las Vegas.

Related: Frank Chu Talks Movie Career, Shoe Shopping, And His Never-Ending Protest [SFist]

Image: Docketrocket via Wikimedia Commons