Seattle´s Famed “Gum Wall” Cleaned up

Seattle’s famous “gum wall”, said to be made up around one million pieces of chewing gum, is being cleaned up.

Seattle’s much-loved tourist attraction, the “gum wall” located underneath Pike Place Market, is being steam blasted and scrubbed clean for the first time in decades.

The cleaning begins at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Seattle theater-goers have slapped their last piece of Trident on a wall with the moniker of the “second-germiest” tourist spot in the world.

The wall has always been covered by wads of gum in many colours, a few stretched to make elaborate messages and designs.

The concern is that all of the caked-on gum on the walls at the Pike Place Market may be damaging the building’s bricks.

“It´s an icon. It´s history”.

Market officials hope to contain where people put their gum in the future but say they aren’t holding their breath.

The industrial strength cleaning will not mean the gum-sticking tradition will die, Mercedes Carrabba, owner of Market Ghost Tours in the marketplace, told the NPR station.

The wall started as a simple depository for unwanted gum from theater-goers at the nearby Market Theater.

The two-man contracted cleaning crew wore special suits and masks to protect them from the tutti-frutti flavoured gasses released into the air.

The post Seattle’s 20-year-old “Gum Wall” gets cleaned appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

“We’ll find out at the end of the week how right my guesstimate really is”, she said.