Friends remember ‘Ground Chuck,’ who made a lasting mark on Sacramento with chalk
Charles Thomas, known around midtown as “Ground Chuck,” went into hospice weeks before this year’s running of the Sacramento festival he helped inspire, Chalk It Up!
Thomas, who died Sunday at 56, wasn’t the type of person to shy away from a public event. For years, he was known for his chalk art around the central city and for being a regular at local concerts. So during Labor Day weekend, his caregivers took him to the festival and provided him a scooter, while his friends created an art square for him, according to his friend Linda Perry.
“He was directing them and then he would go back and forth with his scooter between the stage and square and then he actually performed with a band,” Perry said.
It was a fitting late-in-life sendoff to an eclectic, if well-loved local figure. The tributes have continued in death with a Facebook post by one of if not the most famous bands to come from Sacramento, Deftones, calling Thomas “a Sacramento legend” and drawing more than 4,000 likes as of early Monday evening.
An icon of the scene
Thomas was an ubiquitous presence, first in the early 1980s at shows at the short-lived Club Minimal that was located near Sacramento City College. “He was just always present and always really welcoming to everybody and fun,” said Jennifer Curtsinger, who knew Thomas for more than 40 years.
Curtsinger’s significant other Brian McKenna, a longtime music promoter and owner of Abstract Entertainment, was also fond of Thomas. “He’s an icon of our scene,” McKenna said. “He’s been out there for a long time.”
Thomas’s friend Evan Edgar met him at Old Ironsides, where bands like Cake and Deftones played early in their careers. Another friend, Jesse Mitchell, a local guitarist, estimated that Thomas had known Deftones since the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. People close to the band, including founding drummer Abe Cunningham, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Thomas performed in musical acts himself sometimes, such as in Sacto Storytellers, which held a benefit show for him in 2018.
In general, Thomas was so enthusiastic at concerts that it could be hard to tell whether he was in the audience or performing.
“He’d be out in the front, jumping up and down, jumping off the stage and just super stoked on everything,” Mitchell said.
Finding his place
Thomas found his place in midtown after struggling in other parts of life. Born April 3, 1969, he attended Sacramento High School, but only briefly, as he told former Sacramento Bee columnist Bob Sylva in 1996. “That was a long time ago,” Thomas told Sylva. “I don’t recollect that reality. The only work I did was in graphic arts. I designed these posters for punk concerts.”
Thomas got one other thing from his school days: His nickname of Ground Chuck. Curtsinger provided a screenshot of a Facebook post from someone who went to school with him about how they had skipped school one day and were running around the Safeway on Alhambra Boulevard. Thomas removed the sticker from a package of ground chuck, put it on his chest and declared himself Ground Chuck.
The name stuck with him ever since. Otherwise, Thomas’s schooling career appears to have been unremarkable. As he told Sylva, “I was going to high school one day. And the next day, I was doing this.”
The “this,” Sylva noted, was chalk art. Sylva wrote about how people could stroll midtown and see Thomas’s handiwork outside businesses like Time Tested Books and what is now Old Soul at The Weatherstone on 21st Street. “It mainly goes with the energy of the people I’m dealing with,” Thomas told Sylva. “They let me do whatever I want. But if they have an idea, it becomes a give-and-take thing. And I get a few dollars.”
Edgar said that in Thomas’s time doing chalk art downtown, he wanted to create funds for children, which helped lead to the creation of “Chalk It Up!”
“He didn’t do all the work to make it happen, but he was an inspiration and a concept for ‘Chalk It Up!’” Edgar said. Perry noted that her husband Jerry Perry, another veteran music promoter, helped turn “Chalk It Up!” into an organized event but that Thomas was an enthusiastic presence over the years.
“He was absolutely always there,” Linda Perry said. “He always had a square. He always did extra artwork inside the park, besides just his regular square.”
Mitchell likened his friend Thomas’s art to the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, saying “like there’s a simplicity to it, but it’s complex at the same.”
Mitchell described Thomas’ artwork as childlike but cool, with themes varying from folk art to heavy metal to Viking imagery. It would lead to gifts from Thomas to people like Perry or her family.
“He would just drop by our house and be like, ‘Here, I made this for Eli,’” Perry said. “And it would just be these crazy-looking Vikings and I’d just be like, ‘Yes, I’m sure my 8-year-old will love this.’”
She added, “It was always just a wonderful relationship.”
‘Wealthy in friends and community’
Bill Burg, who has written prolifically about the history of Sacramento’s central city, knew Thomas for more than 30 years. Burg called Thomas someone who was immediately sociable, friendly and compassionate with everyone he met.
“He was not someone who was wealthy in cash, but definitely wealthy in friends and community,” Burg said.
Edgar said Thomas was always out and about, weaving the local music scene together at venues like Zebra Club, the former Press Club and more recently Mattie Groves Brewery, which was near where Thomas lived.
“He was kind of a connector of what’s left of midtown,” Edgar said.
In Thomas’s final months, years of hard living caught up with him, culminating with cirrhosis of the liver, congestive heart failure and multiple organ failure, according to his friends interviewed in this story. People he’d gotten to know over the years came together to help care for him. Thomas was in hospice at his midtown home and also went in and out of the hospital.
Thomas remained hopeful about life, getting coffee with Mitchell at Old Soul Co. at 1716 L St. the Monday before he died. “He was telling me that he was planning on doing an art show,” Mitchell said. “And I was like, ‘Man, I really hope that happens.’”
Those who helped care for Thomas at the end of his life will gather at the open mic night at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at Mattie Groves, according to Edgar. Curtsinger said there has also been talk of an art show being held for Thomas.
Perry was touched by everyone who helped Thomas at the end.
“It’s incredible what can happen so we don’t always have to be alone,” Perry said.
This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 5:37 PM.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Mattie Groves Brewery.
