Chicken John

Chicken John
Chicken John participating in a zombie mob after a San Francisco mayoral debate. Frank Chu can be seen in the background.
Born	Giovanni Giuseppe Rinaldi (1968-03-20) March 20, 1968 (age 49) Nutley, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Showman
Years active	1984–present

"Chicken" John Rinaldi is a musician, showman, activist, and author living in San Francisco, California. He is involved with the San Francisco arts community as well as the Burning Man community. In what he referred to as "an experiment", he ran for Mayor in the 2007 San Francisco mayoral election, during which he wore fake mustaches, debated a puppet, and arranged costumed flash mobs to occur at campaign events, in an effort to be as flippant a candidate as possible.

In 1994 Rinaldi conceived, organized, and became the ringmaster of Circus Redickuless, a nationally touring "punk rock circus". The circus was the subject of a 1997 documentary of the same name by Phillip Glau. This film later won Best Documentary at the 1998 New York Underground Film Festival.

In the summer of 2006, Rinaldi was recruited by noted street artist Swoon to build the propulsion system for a raft made of salvaged scrap that was to travel down the Mississippi River for Swoon's project Miss Rockaway Armada.

Rinaldi was the engineer and builder for the central communal floating platform for the Seasteading Institute's 2009 Ephemerisle event.

As an elaborate joke, Rinaldi ran as one of several colorfully-nicknamed candidates in the 2007 San Francisco mayoral election, ostensibly challenging incumbent Gavin Newsom. Rinaldi referred to himself an "experimental candidate". He made an effort to be as flippant a candidate as possible, wearing seven different fake mustaches over the course of the campaign, publicly debating a puppet, and organizing a zombie flash mob to occur outside one of the Mayoral debates. He finished with 2,508 votes, or 1.75 percent of the official vote tally, coming in 6th place.