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About Clarita "Chi Chi" Fazzari for President 2008

Candidate, United States President, 2008.

dcpoliticalreport.com/pres08.htm

Created by

ChiChiFazzari

Latest Activity

Nov 15, 2007

Date Joined

Nov 15, 2007

About this user

Office Seeking: President (Announced, General)
Party: Independent

Campaign Office:
Tel (323) 654-7443
P.O. Box 1704
Studio City, CA 91604

Her name is Chi Chi. She was a showgirl. But that was 30 years ago, when they used to have a show. When Clarita Fazzari danced the mambo, her silky brown undulating body made men's faces burn and reminded women to watch their men. Some say she shook so vigorously in a fringed bikini top and sarong, she looked like a waterfall. They called her Chi Chi, the Cuban Fireball. On summer evenings, Hollywood stars, yachtsmen and their dates lined up to see her perform. Fazzari, who is of Scotch Irish, Cherokee, Chinese and Afro-Cuban descent, had no formal dance training, instead learning the mambo in the parks of Cuba that came alive on Sundays with men banging drums and bottles and mambo dancers swirling seductively.

``You didn't need a partner,'' she said. ``You just got out there and danced. Like Americans go jogging, Cubans danced.''

Her father, a Marine Corps master sergeant, loved the night life. He was stationed in San Francisco and often took his daughter out with him. One night, he gave her permission to compete in a dancing contest. She won and was soon booked in clubs up and down the West Coast and, later, Havana. She married an Army enlisted man she met while entertaining at a military base. And in 1955, she moved to Catalina so she could work at the Chi Chi Club. Her husband stayed in San Francisco, where he ran a chain of furniture stores.

With her bare legs, tanned belly and high heels, her act was considered risque.

``This was Elvis Presley's time, when they wouldn't show him from the waist down,'' she said. ``I was bad because I shook. But it drew them in because they wanted to see what I was doing.''

The centerpiece of the Chi Chi Club's bamboo and burlap decor was a painting of a topless Tahitian woman in a sarong, with her hands on her hips and a hibiscus tucked behind one ear. One night a customer came in, took one look at Clarita Fazzari and asked if she was the woman in the painting.

Roy Taylor, a former longtime mayor of Avalon and owner of the club, told the customer ``yes.''

``I came home and I was hysterical crying,'' she said. ``To be known with no top on was a disgrace.''

But the name stuck. Soon many of the customers called her Chi Chi, and in time she became proud of her stage name.

While his mother entertained, Valentino Fazzari would sleep in the dressing room. As a young boy, he'd sneak downstairs and hide under the booths.

``Being on the side of the stage before she went on, I was just mesmerized by her beauty,'' he recalled.

The down years

Clarita Fazzari brims with stories from the old days.

An underage William Wrigley Jr., heir to his father's chewing-gum fortune that included ownership of Catalina Island, sneaking into the club.

Her ``close friend'' Marlon Brando sending a helicopter to pick her up and take her to the mainland.

John Wayne sauntering down Crescent Avenue, doling out coins to the kids who chased after him.

Mayor Taylor choosing her as the first Miss Catalina. She became a one-woman welcoming committee who'd prance around in a bikini, holding hands with her two sons and her pet gibbon ape.

``I loved Catalina,'' Clarita Fazzari said. ``I thought it was my island. I didn't think it belonged to the Wrigleys. I got that island fever.''

But by 1968, when the Fazzaris bought the club from Mayor Taylor, times were already beginning to change. Competition from Los Angeles strip clubs was making it hard to keep the Chi Chi Club afloat.

The following year, the Chi Chi Club burned.

In their pajamas, Clarita Fazzari and her sons ran to watch the flames consume the bamboo siding. They rebuilt, this time forgoing bamboo for safer stucco.

In a last attempt at reviving it, she converted the Chi Chi Club to a topless bar.

``It caused an uproar,'' she remembered. ``The people in the town didn't want it, but the place was packed. We put a sign outside: `If it should offend you, don't come in.'''

In the end, she sold the club and left the island in a futile attempt to try to save her failing marriage.

``It was not the same,'' she said. ``The magic was gone. The spell was gone that was over me.''

But, in some ways, Clarita Fazzari never has left the island or her club. The fire may have destroyed the painting of the topless Tahitian woman from which Fazzari derived her nickname, but before she left Catalina, Fazzari posed for a photograph to re-create the image.

Still Chi Chi

Her visage still adorns Chi Chi Club T-shirts today, worn by club bartenders and tourists alike.

Even at her age, Fazzari's quest for the limelight has not dimmed. She ran for president in 1988 as a write-in candidate and spent six months as a volunteer in the Israeli army in 1989.

Country

United States

Occupation

Independent Candidate

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