For 20 years, people stuck their used gum on a wall at the Pike Place Market.
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The wall started as a simple depository for unwanted gum from theater-goers at the nearby Market Theater.
Pike Place official Emily Crawford said the cleaning is meant to restore the “character and the history of the Market”, according to a National Public Radio post.
Revoltingly, a few parts of the multi-coloured wall of gunk have been stretched and pinched into messages, hearts and other designs.
“I have to admit, after 20 years, I’m feeling a little icky, sticky and in desperate need of a good scrubbing to make me sparkle again”, said the Gum Wall.
Called the “gum wall”, it’s a landmark where locals and visitors alike have squished and stuck more than 1 million pieces of old chewing gum on an alleyway wall. ‘The market is famous for the gum wall. Workers are steam-cleaning the walls, which host approximately 150 pieces of gum per brick. “But it also draws rats”, an onlooker says.
“We expect the gum wall will live on”. The cleaning contractors, Cascadian Building Maintenance, are collecting and weighing the removed gum as they go and will have a final total at the end of the week.
Another user Tweeted: “The gum wall in Seattle was washed away and it deeply saddens me”.
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It is cleaned periodically to protect the “historic walls” of Post Alley, Crawford said. This enormous chewing gum-encrusted wall in the USA has been subject to an extensive clean up operation – and the pictures are not pretty.
