Jun 7, 2016 - David Choe is an interesting guy. Between 2005 and 2007, he painted two murals for the Facebook headquarters. Because he was afraid of losing yet more money to a gambling habit, Choe asked Facebook's Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg to pay him with shares rather than cash. David Choe thoughts on Gambling - Feb. 1513 views on Imgur: The magic of the Internet. Here’s the tease: David Choe was actually offered a handsome sum of $60,000 to paint murals all up and around Facebooks HQ offices. He and everyone else though Facebook was a joke, but being a gambling man — he won his first million in Vegas — Choe took the stocks. Facebook’s $5 billion IPO caused it to skyrocket recently.
David Choe makes me laugh and think, a lot. He is an American visual artist whose parents immigrated from South Korea to Los Angeles. Choe has a mad backstory of abuse and trauma after being discarded by his parents to live in Korea when he was four because they could only afford two and not three children. He had no idea how or why he ended up in Korea with relatives and could barely speak the language. Years later, he was repatriated and got to see his neighborhood and family business burned down during the LA riots. It led him to drop out and then travel around Europe hitchhiking. After a brief stint in jail, he went to art school. Choe has a long list of issues he is not afraid of talking about, like critical depression, antisocial behavior, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, kleptomania, and sexual addiction.
- David Choe makes me laugh and think, a lot. He is an American visual artist whose parents immigrated from South Korea to Los Angeles. Choe has a mad backstory of abuse and trauma after being discarded by his parents to live in Korea when he was four because they could only afford two and not.
- David Choe is a real artist, he started off a graph artist become famous in his own right as an artist, made his first million gambling in Las Vegas, went to Japanese prison for 3 months and in 2005 was asked by then Facbeook president Sean Parker (the kid who started Napster) to paint the walls of Facebook’s office with his art.
I learned about Choe from Anthony Bourdain. They were close friends, and Choe starred in an episode of Parts Unknown about Korea Town in LA. He also had a show on Vice. I learned more about him from chef David Chiang’s podcast and the Joe Rogan podcast. He was on with Joe Rogan for four hours, and this was the second time. I find him remarkably open, entertaining, hilarious, and like his art. He is probably ranked second on the street artist index after Banksy; I’d rank him third after Takashi Murakami on Big Ell’s Street Art Top 10.
David Choe is one of the rare visual artists to become rich and famous during his lifetime, although I am not so sure about the famous part. He was commissioned by Sean Parker to create murals for the Facebook office pre-IPO. They offered him $60,000 or stock options. He used his gambling addiction and the ridiculous premise of Facebook to rationalize taking the stock options. Now he is worth 100s of millions of dollars. The money has paid for a lifestyle of gambling and sex. His Instagram page is a good follow as he does all sorts of things with people I dig like Dan the Automator and David Chiang. Recently he has been posting videos of him critiquing Black Lives Matter graffiti while the protests are going on.
David Choe Gambling System
David Choe is a real artist, he started off a graph artist become famous in his own right as an artist, made his first million gambling in Las Vegas, went to Japanese prison for 3 months and in 2005 was asked by then Facbeook president Sean Parker (the kid who started Napster) to paint the walls of Facebook’s office with his art. Choe was asked if he would take $60,000 or shares in Facebook for his services, he decided to take shares as a risk and didn’t think anything would come of it, in fact and never been on Myspace or Friendster, much less had access to the internet as he had just got out of jail. When a New York Times article broke recently that Choe would stand to make anywhere between $100 and $500 million as a result of Facebook going public, Choe not only became incredibly rich but also famous.
David Choe Gambling Strategy
He decided to share his story with Howard Stern in which if you are any type of entrepreneur or artist should listen to below.
David Choe Gambling Method
Here’s a random video of Mark Zuckerberg and David Choe painting Facebook’s office.