The sign that hung on a side exterior wall of the Green Onion Restaurant in San Pedro certainly had seen better days — but at least its whereabouts were known.
That’s not the case at the moment.
The iconic sign originally adorned the popular restaurant’s first location on Gaffey Street for more than 30 years ago, and then followed the Green Onion when the restaurant moved to Sixth and Beacon streets. And it was set to move again: With the beloved eatery recently closing in advance of a new development set to begin construction early in 2026, the sign had been promised to a local museum to display in the future.
But mysteriously, the sign went missing on the Green Onion’s last day of business on Sunday Nov. 30.
Space where the sign once stood on the Green Onion Restaurant in San Pedro (Photo Courtesy of San Pedro Heritage Museum)
Its disappearance came up for discussion on Wednesday, Dec. 3, at the monthly San Pedro Property Owners Business Improvement District meeting. The suspicion is that it could have been stolen.
If that’s the case, PBID members said, they just want the sign to be returned, no questions asked, to their office at 390 W. Seventh St., in San Pedro.
But no one knows for sure what happened to it.
“I am just amazed,” Eileen Boblak, the general manager of the restaurant for many years, said in a Wednesday phone interview. “I just can’t imagine it could be stolen.”
But with the PBID trying to reconstruct what could have happened to it, there has been some speculation that movers or other crews helping to clean out the building may have taken it down — and even, perhaps, tossed it.
“Now everybody is remembering something different,” Boblak said. “My sister thought she saw it leaning against the building (on Sunday).”
New, more contemporary lighted signs have long gone up to identify the restaurant, relegating the older one to a less prominent outer wall of the Green Onion along Beacon Street.
But at some point, it was simply gone. When Joshua Stecker, president of the San Pedro Heritage Museum, showed up at 9 a.m. Monday to make plans to remove and take the sign that had been given to the museum, it was nowhere to be found. He and restaurant personnel searched for it in the darkened building — the electricity had been turned off — but never found it.
Stecker said he suspects there’s an innocent explanation.
“That sign was not in good condition and it could have been trashed,” he said on Wednesday, noting that the moving deadline left the place looking ransacked as it was being cleared out amid much chaos. As anyone who has moved knows, things quickly turn into an upheaval. Stecker said he thinks that likely explains how the sign vanished.
Other than nostalgia, Stecker said, the sign had no real value.
“It wasn’t copper; it was just rusted metal but it meant something to a lot of people,” Stecker said. “But we did get a (Green Onion) barstool, menus and one of their inside awnings (donated) in hopes of one day being able to display those.”
The museum dedicated to highlighting San Pedro culture has a growing collection of port town memorabilia in storage, including some items from the old Ports O’ Call Village. But it is a nonprofit, volunteer group and so far, a place hasn’t been found — that is affordable — in which to display it all, Stecker said.
No security cameras captured the precise view of the sign over the hours it vanished and no police report had been filed as of Wednesday.
If the sign was stolen, it would presumably be for its hometown sentimental value — but there’s no evidence that’s what happened to it.
Sign that original hung on the Green Onion Restaurant’s first location at 1722 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro. It came with the restaurant when it moved to 145 W. Sixth St., San Pedro (Photo Courtesy of San Pedro Heritage Museum)
The restaurant’s closure on Sunday was prompted by the Trammell Crow Company — under its residential subsidiary High Street Residential — planning to develop an eight-story midrise at 625 S. Beacon St,. with ground-floor commercial space. It will encompass a full city block near the town’s historic City Hall.
Green Onion declined an offer to move into a ground-floor space at the new development, deciding instead to close but with the possibility that some longtime employees may try to re-establish it elsewhere in San Pedro.
As for the missing sign, the mystery remains.
“I’m really hoping somebody will just drop the sign off at the PBID,” said Alex Valente, principal at Trammell Crow, who was at Wednesday’s meeting. “I feel like if somebody (has it and) knew it was going to be part of this museum, they’d give it back.”