Memories Made (part 3)

Are you a germophobe? 

If so, I can gaurantee you won't like this post. 

But hey if you stick around, you might learn something new without having caught any of the germs.

There's a place in Seattle, right under Pike Place Market that has been attracting tourists for decades.

I must add that it is not the only place in the world that has this form of an attraction. 

Berlin has one as does San Luis Obispo's.

But for this post, we are going to stick to the one in Seattle. 

South of the market's main entrance, off 1st Avenue located on Post Alley, (named after the building that  housed Post-Intellignet Newspaper before it burned down in 1889) is the GUM Wall.

I bet you are going WHAT????? 

Yup!! 

A GUM WALL .......

 You know those chewy, sticky, rubbery, things that one chews and then miraculously they end up stuck to one's hair or even shoes. 

A real pain to remove!

Well.......you can find them stuck to the walls in this alley.

Story has it:

 The wall began accumulating its chewy status in 1993, when people waiting outside the Unexpected Productions theater company started sticking gum and coins to the wall to pass the time.

When this tradition first started, workers at the theater tried their best to keep the wall clean but the number of people who added to it daily overwhelmed the theater's cleaning capabilities. Soon, thousands of pieces of gum had been affixed to the wall and cleaning efforts were completely abandoned for over 20 years.

 In November of 2015, the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority stripped all gum from the wall and steam cleaned the brick underneath to help preserve it. All the sugar from the gum was damaging the wall! The work took 130 hours, and 2,350 pounds of gum old and new were scraped away during the process.

However, once the cleaning was done, visitors quickly began adding gum to the wall again.

 You might envision that the gum wall is just a small strip of wall next to a theater entrance, but gum is stuck to the walls along an alley for more than 50 feet.

The Seattle Gum Wall made a list of the top five germiest tourist attractions in 2009, second only to the Blarney Stone, which actually involves putting your lips onto a surface.

If looking at all these hanging germs makes you woozy...... 

 You can remedy by stopping in at Pike Pub, right down the alley for a fresh pint of  their brew. 😉

To conclude this tour here's a side note- 

 Jennifer Aniston even stopped by in 2008 to shoot a movie scene for Love Happens at the wall.....

Next stop: Fremont neighborhood of Seattle for another weird attraction.

 

 

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