T-Shirt

The 17 Reasons sign wasn’t meant to make sense. Born from a feud between the Redlicks and the Newmans to distract from a furniture store name change, it sat atop 17th & Mission like a rooftop enigma. People asked what the seventeen reasons were. There weren’t any. Punk kids, poets, artists, and queer crews all claimed it as their own. For decades, it loomed over the Mission, part riddle, part dare, part promise—until the late ’90s, when San Francisco voters passed an ordinance banning new billboards. The sign was taken down, replaced, and replaced again with beer ads aimed at Latiné consumers.