SEATTLE — About 130 man hours and 94 gallon buckets later, Pike Place Market's gum wall is the cleanest it's been in decades.
Crews gave the wall its first full scrubdown last week because the sugar from the caked-on gum might be damaging the bricks.
The tradition started as people were waiting to get into the Market Theater.
Over the years, the market has steam-washed some of the walls, but this was its first full cleaning.
Three workers wearing rain gear shot water heated to 260 degrees to get the gum down.
"We love the wall and we want it to come back. It just seemed like a good time to let the wall re-emerge," Emily Crawford of Pike Place Market said.
It's estimated that there were more than a million pieces of gum on the walls.
The weight of the gum that was cleaned off the wall was 2,350 pounds, or 1.175 tons.
KIRO
