It started somewhere between 1991 and 1993 when theater goers waiting in line for late-show improv performances at the Market Theater started leaving their gum on the walls of Post Alley near Pike Place Market in Seattle. “Our audience would line up on that wall, and I don’t know who started it, but they put a penny and a piece of gum on the wall,” a volunteer for Unexpected Productions explained to the Bellingham Herald in 2018. Theater staff made two attempts at removing the gum before realizing the futility of their efforts.
From that modest beginning emerged the city’s most unusual tourist attraction – two walls in a darkened alley covered entirely with gum – with travelers from across the United States and around the world making the trek to witness the Seattle Gum Wall for themselves. “It’s the top three: Pike Place Market, first Starbucks, gum wall,” a visitor from Taiwan told the Bellingham Herald. “Everyone’s DNA is here. Everywhere.” A tourist from Canada added, “It’s one of the things that you always hear about, that you have to see. It’s on Trip Advisor.”
Over the years, more elaborate ways of leaving one’s mark on the Gum Wall were developed. The most popular is still the “moon effect,” which is basically using a thumb or forefinger to push the gum on the wall, creating a crater in the middle. Objects can be used instead of fingers, but any coins left on the gum tend to disappear quickly.
Those with more patience can chew multiple pieces to spell out their name or “write” messages with the gum, which usually advocate “love,” “hope,” or “peace.” The Baltimore Sun even reported in 2013 that someone used 170 pieces of gum to write “Will You Marry Me Nikki J” on the wall.
A steady stream of tourists visits the Gum Wall on any given day, leaving a piece of themselves – in the obvious form of gum – on the wall before they leave. Some refer to it as “participatory art,” while others consider it “community pointillism.” One nineteen-year-old visitor told the Spokesman Review in 2006, “You can’t help but think what story is behind each piece of gum.” A Seattle native, meanwhile, explained to the Associated Press, “It’s an icon. It’s history.”
That history got washed away in November 2015 when the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority decided to remove twenty years’ worth of gum from the alley’s walls. An estimated one million pieces of gum, weighing 2,350 pounds – a literal ton – had accumulated by then, and it took an industrial steam machine three days to melt and remove all of it. The temperature of the steam reached 280 degrees Fahrenheit, with the cost of the project totaling four thousand dollars.
“We filled 94 five-gallon buckets,” a spokesperson for Pike Place Market told the Bellingham Herald. “It was layered seven inches thick.”
On November 13, 2015, a terrorist attack in Paris, France, killed 130 people. As soon as the Gum Wall was fully cleaned, a “flash mob” immediately began putting up new gum to create a peace sign in the form of the Eiffel Tower to honor those who died and show support and solidarity with France. “We thought if we were doing something sort of silly and meaningless down here, that we had an opportunity to give some meaning,” an organizer from Mob the World told the Seattle Times.
From there, the Gum Wall continued to grow like it had during the previous two decades. The Bellingham Herald reported in 2018 that the Gum Wall had reached eight feet tall and over fifty feet long, encompassing both sides of the alley. “It’s on all the lists of things to do,” the Pike Place Market spokesperson explained of the Gum Wall’s continual popularity. “Over the years we’ve seen marriage proposals, prom dates asked.”
Other cities have tried to duplicate the Gum Wall – including Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispo, California, and the Maid-Rite Sandwich Shoppe in Greenville, Ohio – but none have gained the same level of notoriety as the original in Seattle. Actors Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart paid a visit to Post Alley in the 2009 film Love Happens and stuck their own gum on the wall, adding an element of romance to the ritual, while Washington Governor Jay Inslee told The Stranger that the Gum Wall was his favorite thing in Seattle.
Art, romance, peace, solidarity, even politics – the Seattle Gum Wall has it all, stuck on fifty feet of brick and mortar and growing larger every day.
Anthony Letizia
