Sevens

Besides appearing in the movie "Se7en" (Don't look in that box!), the magic number seven has come up over and over, in myriad cultures.

For instance, here's a nice ska instrumental called "Lucky 7."

Steven Spielberg once launched a television series, also called "Lucky Seven," which vanished from our home screens soon afterward. 

Then there's the lemon-lime soda 7-Up. A musical commercial for it was popular in the early 80's:

The ad's catchy jingle made this "Repo Man" scene memorable.

At one time, we bought Seven-Up from corner markets, as chain stores like Red & White took the place of locally-owned Mom and Pop storefronts. 

Then came modern convenience stores. In the Midwest, it began with Seven-Eleven. These close-to-home marts stayed open till -- gasp -- eleven o'clock at night -- and they opened at seven a.m. so you didn't have to stand blearily waiting for your Mr. Coffee to make your magic brew so you could drag yourself to work. But you did have to drive to the convenience store as the Wolfman. 

Just like the Mom and Pop stores or even small chains like Red & White once did, Seven-Eleven franchise stores sometimes go out of business. But unlike the older stores, Seven-Elevens don't always become craft stores or a place to buy burner phones. They often turn into set pieces for post-apocalyptic fiction. This one's in Columbus, Ohio. 

Not clear where this one is. 

Back in the day, we might have walked to the corner store, but we drove land yachts to Seven Eleven. This modern pulp novel 

became a film featuring a famous car chase involving land yachts:

A behind-the-scenes promo, heavily featuring the car chase, was released in 1973.

There are of course many, many more seven-related cultural touchpoints and over times we'll get to more of them in future posts.