The sign, which made the rounds on r/sanfrancisco before the day was out, wasn't political. It wasn't religious. It wasn't advertising anything with a logo or a QR code. The post that surfaced it offered a photo and a caption — "Oh, dear" — and then 586 upvotes' worth of speculation from people who had either driven past, walked past, or were processing the image from their apartments somewhere else in the city. "I'm unclear what he's trying to achieve," wrote one commenter who claimed to have seen him in person. Others cycled through interpretations: performance art, a dare, a very specific romantic strategy.

What the corner actually looks like on a Wednesday: the smell of coffee from the café on the east side of the block, the usual scrum of double-parked delivery vehicles, the sandwich board outside Yellow Submarine a few storefronts down advertising cash-only and no substitutions. The N rattles past on a schedule that feels more like a suggestion. People walk dogs. People eat dumplings from paper containers while standing next to their bikes.

The man with the sign fit into none of these routines and all of them at once — sidewalk advocacy is not unusual in this city, sidewalk strangeness is not unusual in this neighborhood, and yet the particulars here were legible enough to photograph and opaque enough to generate a comment thread.

By Thursday, he was gone. The corner looked like the corner.