Gum Walls and Other Reasons to Love Seattle

Published July 17th, 2024

Photography by Jennifer Bain

Who knew that chewed gum could be so grotesquely beautiful?

Covered in teeth marks, stretched into all kinds of weird and wonderful shapes, hundreds of thousands of pieces of gum in a kaleidoscope of colours adorn the brick walls of a Seattle alley that’s lovingly known as the germiest place in America.

To think we almost missed it.

My son Charlie and I were taking a shortcut through crowded Pike Place Market to get to the Seattle Aquarium before it closed, when we stopped at an information booth for directions.

“I bet you’re going to the Gum Wall,” the gentleman behind the counter incorrectly guessed.

Say what?

The man eagerly told us all about the infamous wall we’d never heard of, how to get there and — most importantly — where to score gum. Sunny Honey sells three wee pieces of natural gum for a buck and it’s conveniently right by the stairs down to the unlikely attraction.

Stepping into Post Alley was like being transported into a Jackson Pollock painting.

Charlie and I dutifully chewed away, then found just the right spots on the wall for our small (but virtuous) white offerings.

“Add a piece, don’t take a piece,” the visitor booth man had advised and we didn’t need to be told twice to only handle our own germy creations.

The story goes that Unexpected Productions — the city’s longest-running improv theatre — started leasing this historic brick building in 1991. For reasons we’ll never know, a patron waiting in line for a show one night stuck a piece of chewed gum on the alley wall and topped it with a penny. 

Other gum enthusiasts unleashed their inner artists and within a few years, the once ordinary brick wall was covered in coin-topped gum offerings. Then one day, someone in need took the coins but left the gum, and that idea spurred even more people to add both gum and cash.

But Unexpected Productions says the landlord — Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority — wasn’t impressed and eventually forced it to remove the gum. The gum magically returned and had to be scraped clean a second time. The gum returned a third time and the market decided to let it be.

“The wall continues to grow and evolve to this day,” says Unexpected Productions, “and much like an improv performance, it is different every single day.” 

The Gum Wall has organically expanded across the alley but so far stops where the brick buildings end. The theatre figures its part of the canvas — eight feet high and 54 feet wide — holds about 50 pieces of gum per brick for a gruesome grand total of 250,000 pieces and counting. 

Now the market itself celebrates the “hidden work of art” as “an intriguing representation of Seattle’s unique charm and character.” Steps from the wall, Ghost Alley Espresso sells Dubble Bubble for 50 cents a piece.

My favourite comment on the subject comes from Colorado visitor MFerg1 who wrote this on Tripadvisor in 2017: “A tour guide advised this is the 2nd most germ ridden place in the world beat out only by the Blarney Stone (people kiss it). It’s actually very interesting to see gum everywhere but also makes your skin crawl slightly.”

My skin didn’t crawl, but Charlie’s a more sensitive soul and so his kinda did. I pulled him from grade six in June to take a Princess cruise from Seattle to Alaska’s Inside Passage and back, figuring I’d broaden his horizons. 

We followed the route many took during the Klondike Gold Rush from 1897 to 1898, stocking up on prospecting supplies in Seattle, travelling by sea to Skagway, Alaska and hiking the brutal Chilkoot or treacherous White Pass trails. 

Of course we had a cush journey on the Discovery Princess and didn’t get as far as Dawson City, Yukon where the gold had been found, but we did hike the first hour of the Chilkoot Trail and took the scenic White Pass & Yukon Route Railway to the White Pass Summit.

We checked out the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park offerings in both Skaway and Seattle. In the city’s visitor centre, we stepped on a scale to see what we were worth that day in gold ($3,002,688 USD for Charlie and more than that for me). 

We also spun a giant “strike it rich wheel of fortune” to see whether we would have been successful Gold Rushers. The answer was no. Of the 100,000 people who set out for the Klondike, only 40,000 reached it, 20,000 worked claims or prospected, just 300 made more than $15,000 in gold, and only 50 kept their wealth for any length of time.

It was far more lucrative to be a Seattle merchant outfitting Stampeders with gear, clothing and food.

Speaking of wealth, a coffee company called Starbucks opened a small shop in Pike Place Market on March 30, 1971, and we all know what happened after that. 

As a fan of grande mango dragonfruit beverages, Charlie was keen to make a pilgrimage to the site of the first Starbucks. There’s almost always a lineup outside on the street, but we got a jump on the crowd at 7 a.m. and chatted up the cheerful greeter who wrangles the crowd. 

“Heritage exclusive” drinks in hand (iced ube latte with oat milk and halo halo frappuccino with mango whipped cream), I voted for breakfast at the nearby Crumpet Shop. 

It was high time Charlie tried the small English griddle bread made from an unsweetened batter of flour, water and yeast. It’s cooked in round rings on a griddle and comes out with holes on the top and a spongy texture.

All it took was a little butter and raspberry jam on a warm crumpet and Charlie was hooked.

We had barely 24 hours in Seattle, but CityPASS helped set the agenda. The pass gets you into five top attractions — the Seattle Aquarium, the Space Needle and then three more from a list of five — for a hefty discount.

Charlie has a fear of elevators and nixed the 184-metre-tall Space Needle but okayed the aquarium, so that’s where we communed with harbor seals and tufted puffins and watched a scuba diver feed the sharks.

We dashed over to the Seattle Center — an “active civic, arts and family gathering place” on a 74-acre campus. The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) wasn’t yet open for the day but we admired the wild building designed by American architect Frank Gehry.

Gehry’s “instantly recognizable designs,” MoPOP points out, “use unusual shapes and angles, daring colors, and unique materials.” In this case, the fantastical museum that looks different in every light and from every angle reminds us that music and culture are constantly evolving.

Time really does march on. When I spotted a bronze statue of Chris Cornell, Charlie had never heard of the local rock legend or Soundgarden. Clearly I’ve got work to do on the musical education front.

We took a quick stroll through Chihuly Garden and Glass, admiring the work of Tacoma-born Dale Chihuly who led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art.

But isn’t it always the simplest things that stand out?

With the Space Needle as a backdrop, we photographed a Dr. Seuss-like flower sculpture called Sonic Bloom that uses solar panels to generate power so it can glow at night while educating people about solar energy. 

The Space Needle, by the way, was built as a cultural centrepiece for the World’s Fair in 1962 when the theme was “The Age of Space.” It represents the forward-thinking spirit of Seattle.

We can also thank the World’s Fair for the Seattle Center Monorail. It carried more than eight million people during the six-month fair and is still going strong, whisking tourists between downtown’s Westlake Center mall and the Seattle Center.

The three-minute ride, on either the Blue Train or the Red Train, cost just $3.50 for me and half that for Charlie. Both times we nabbed front row seats right beside the friendly drivers.

We made the most of our short time in Seattle, although like most cruise tourists we barely left the Pike Place Market area.

There was always a mob scene around the market’s mascot Rachel the Piggy Bank. Rubbing the snout of the bronze swine while making a donation to the Pike Place Market Foundation reportedly brings good luck. Talk about germs though.

Cute as Rachel was, farm animals are a tad mundane for a trip starring a gruesome Gum Wall. So I introduced my son to another more elusive creature that calls the Pacific Northwest home. 

Sasquatch stands in the market atrium under a giant squid, clearly pissed to be so exposed. Carved in cedar by Rich Beyer in 1978, the forest dweller also known as Bigfoot poses grimly for endless photos, some that show his pronounced male member and others that cover it up.

You can guess which awkward shot I’m going to frame.

Jennifer Bain

After a career at daily newspapers, Jennifer began travelling the world in search of quirk in 2018. She goes wherever the story is, but has a soft spot for Canada and has been to all 10 provinces and all three territories. Jennifer has won multiple awards and written two cookbooks and three travel books. She lives in Toronto but has a vacation house on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, which some cheekily say is one of the four corners of the supposedly flat earth.