Curley: Seattle’s gum wall will never be the same

There’s beauty and a disgusting quirkiness in the famed Seattle gum wall that is being power-steamed from the city’s lore. And, contrary to the popular belief, KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney sees the city’s cleansing as an even better potential tourist attraction. You know, like the Berlin Wall.

Crews unstick old gum from famed Seattle wall

Crews started cleaning the city’s famed “gum wall” near Pike Place Market on Tuesday. For the past 20 years, tourists and locals have been sticking their used chewing gum wads against the wall, some stretched and pinched into messages, hearts and other designs. People also have used the gooey gobs to paste up pictures, business cards, and other mementos.

It was melted off on Tuesday.

People first began smooshing their gum to the wall while waiting for shows at the nearby Market Theater. 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.

The cleaning crew will collect and weigh the gum each day it’s removed. The cleaning is expected to take three days.

Once the gum is gone, people will be welcomed to start over in creation of a new tradition of grotesqueness.

Co-host Tom Curley, a frequenter of the gum wall, sees no point.

Curley Why bother?”

Tom TangneyThis might be the best thing we can imagine for tourism because there is so much gum, you can get lost in the shuffle, now you can be one of the first “gummers.”

JC: No… Some of my gum is on that wall… If you had put a lock on the lock-bridge of Paris, wouldn’t you feel bad?

TT: Well, I’d understand it, I’m an understanding kind of guy.

JC: There are probably 10 or 15 pieces of my gum on that wall. I’m part of it.

TT: And John, you can take your kids and make it a family gumming exercise.

JC: Nobody wants to be the first, second or tenth guy to put up their thing. It’s going to look like crap.

TT: I bet you in a year it’s going to look as good as it does right now. I think it’s a great thing, it shows us we can start over, clean slate.

JC: …Maybe we should boycott it.

TT: It will be like a tourist attraction because it’s not there, like the Berlin Wall. People go to Berlin to see where the wall was, and it isn’t now.

JC: Thank you, Ronald Reagan.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.