- Elon Musk's new "X" sign appeared atop its San Francisco headquarters Friday. It was gone by Monday.
- The sign garnered complaints from city officials and neighbors, who criticized its brightness.
The large sign Elon Musk had installed atop X's San Francisco headquarters has already been removed after irking neighbors and raising concerns with city officials. It was up for just three days.
On Monday, photos of construction workers dismantling the sign reached social media, where users continued to discuss Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X. NBC's Scott Budman said that the X sign had been removed. He also shared a video showing a construction crew working on the building's original Twitter sign.
—scott budman (@scottbudman) July 31, 2023
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It's the latest update in the ongoing saga involving X's San Francisco headquarters. After the sign was installed Friday, photos and videos of it went viral as users of Musk's app discussed the new look. One viral post said that the sign — which had bright and sometimes strobing lights — was aimed directly at the building across the street.
"I would be fucking LIVID. Imagine this fucking X sign right across from your bedroom," the post read.
—kyle (still hates elon) (@itsmefrenchy123) July 29, 2023
Christopher J. Beale, a journalist and audio engineer for KQED, responded to the post by sharing a video of the bright sign from a window in his home. Beale told KTVU in an interview that he lived across the street from X's headquarters.
—Christopher J. Beale (@realchrisjbeale) July 29, 2023
"Around 11 last night they had it at full blast, strobing, and it lit this entire area up like it was daylight," he told the outlet. Even with the blinds down, Beale said, "it was to the point where we couldn't even watch the movie we were trying to watch in the living room and we had to move to the other side of the apartment."
Separately, city officials also voiced concerns about the new sign and Musk's attempts to remove the original Twitter sign.
When construction workers attempted to remove the original sign last week, the San Francisco Police Department intervened and stopped the crew from completing the job. The department said that officers responded to "a possible unpermitted street closure" but later concluded that the "incident was not a police matter" because no crime was committed.
City officials also stepped in when the new "X" sign was installed, according to the Associated Press. The outlet reported that the city of San Francisco opened a complaint and launched an investigation over a potential permit violation.