Seattle’s going to clean its famous Gum Wall for the first time in 20 years

Seattle’s Pike Place Market is famous for a few things: being the birth place of Starbucks, “flipping” fish (where the market stall holders throw fish around, basically), and this wall:

Yes, that is what it looks like. A wall full of many many layers of old chewing gum. Let’s take a closer look at that:

The Gum Wall is an institution. It’s been around for decades. Now, for the first time in 20 years the Pike Place powers that be have decided it’s time to clean it up. They’re planning the give it a thorough steam cleaning on Nov. 10. Until then, they’ve put out an open call for people to post their favorite Gum Wall photos online. There’s quite a collection on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Apparently there’s a lot of love out there for this wall:

Sticky situation… #seattle #gumwall #stickyyy

A photo posted by Jaimie Goodwin (@jaimiegoodwin) on Oct 29, 2015 at 3:55pm PDT

https://twitter.com/hashtag/gumwall?src=hash

According to local news station NBC King 5, there are around 150 pieces of gum per brick, adding up to about a million sticky deposits. But the cleaning isn’t the end for the wall—apparently people are welcome to add new gum and build a new saliva-encrusted monument after the cleaning is done.