The Gum Wall – a Sticky Situation!

Now here’s something to chew on!

Underneath the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle, you can experience a local landmark—The Market Theater Gum Wall. Believe it or not, it is listed as one of Washington’s “must see” tourist attractions.

Just like it sounds, it’s a wall covered in ACG (already chewed gum). This strange and smelly phenomenon has been around since the early 90’s when patrons would wait in long lines to get tickets for the Market Theater.

Apparently since back then, people didn’t have cell phones to keep them occupied while waiting to purchase tickets, someone started this innovative, if unsanitary creation by sticking gum on the wall and then sticking a coin into it. Others quickly followed suit and soon the wall was covered and thousands of wads of chewing gum! Some began sticking larger and larger blobs, even fashioning works of sculpture out of them. This unique and colorful attraction now runs along a 50 foot long section of wall, and gum covers it all the way up to 15 feet high!

Theater workers did scrape the gum away twice, but people just started it up again, and eventually the theater gave up and gave in after market officials deemed the gum wall a tourist attraction around 1999. It seems the odd landmark had achieved a certain notoriety.
The colorful wall emits a cacophony of smells—in every flavor under the sun. It REALLY SMELLS – so keep that in mind when visiting. You might also want to keep in mind that it was named one of the top 5 most “germy” tourist attractions in 2009 by Trip Advisor, second only to the Blarney Stone (which is kissed by up to 400,000 visitors each year).

In 2015, for the first time in 20 years, the Great Gum Wall received a total scrub-down and steam cleaning, because the sugar in the gum was causing the wall to erode! Clouds of cloyingly sweet smelling steam blew through Post Alley and rose up into Pike Place Market as two men in protective suits and masks raked and sprayed down the wall. Gum softened and dropped from the wall onto steel plates that lined the ground to catch the sticky, germ-laden mess. Onlookers snapped photos for Snapchat while TV reporters launched into live reports. The cleaning took 130 hours to complete, and workers filled 94 buckets with 2,350 pounds of gum!

When the cleaning was finished, the gum-sticking almost immediately began again! By the time Pike Place Market put out a Press Release saying Seattle’s famous gum wall was now clean, it was already no longer true!

A couple other facts about the wall for you to chew on:

A scene in the 2009 Jennifer Aniston film Love Happens was shot at the wall.

And for some unfathomable reason it's a popular spot for wedding photos!