Chicken Boy on Broadway 1969-84
Do any of you remember Chicken Boy? The Chicken Boy restaurant at 450 S. Broadway was a landmark when I went to school downtown in the seventies. The restaurant was definitely one of our regular lunch haunts because the food was really good and really cheap!
Chuck is ready for his close-up Mr. DeMille
Our favorite reason to go there though was Chicken Boy, the 22 foot fiberglass sculpture on the roof who looked like the offspring of Paul Bunyan and Foghorn Leghorn. We early on decided he needed a name, so we came up with Chuck. From then on all we had to say was "Chuck's Place?" and we knew where we were having lunch that day.
In the mid-eighties I was back in downtown Los Angesles for a conference and noticed Chuck was gone. It seemed very strange to me to see that block of Broadway without Chuck.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago. I was reading a FIDM Alumni newsletter and saw a picture of Chuck! The accompanying article stated that Chuck had been saved from sure demise in 1984 by a wonderful woman named Amy. The guy who wrote the newsletter article had not been part of of our FIDM class, so he didn't know that Chicken Boy's nickname was Chuck. Anywho, I digress.
The article stated that even though Chuck had not had a permanent home in the previous 23 years, he had still been quite busy. In her many efforts to find Chuck a home Amy had, over the years, created a website for him, allowed him to appear in a music video and allowed him to star in a student produced movie appropriately titled "The Adventures of Chicken Boy", etc. He has Facebook and MySpace pages as well.
Best news of all is that Chuck finally has a home! He now graces the roof of the Future Art Collective on Figueroa in Highland Park.
Chuck's new home 5558 N. Figueroa, Highland Park
Two of my former classmates and I are going to be in LA this coming weekend for a special program at FIDM and we have decided that we are going to take a drive out and say hey to our old friend Chuck. I hear he is sometimes referred to as the Statue of Liberty for Los Angeles. Good 'ol Chuck
~Jon Paul
All photos chickenboy.com