A wall covered in chewing gum which became a tourist attraction in the United States has been cleaned up after it began attracting rats.
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Once the gum is gone, people will be welcomed to start over in creation of a new tradition of grotesqueness.
A must-see for Seattle visitors, Pike Place Market opened more than a century ago on August 17, 1907.
The process of cleaning the wall, which will last a number of days, began on Tuesday.
“In 2009 the wall was named one of the top five germiest tourist attractions in the world”.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end – and so must the unsavoury history of this wall.
The gum wall was started in the 1990s by audience members standing in line for a nearby improv show who stuck their gum on to the wall. They chose steam over pressure-washing to conserve the historic market’s brick walls.
There haven’t been any regulations put in place – no bubble gum wall bans, if you will – passed in Seattle though, so the bubble gum wall may make a triumphant return in the next 20 years. Since then, the “gum wall” has expanded beyond one wall and onto other walls of an alley, pipes and even the theater’s box office window.
Contractors have been asked to save the piles of gum so that they can be weighed in order to calculate how much of it has been collected over the years.
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Crawford estimates that there are about 2,200 pounds of gum on the walls, according to an Associated Press video.
