Bubblegum Alley

Bubblegum Alley (English for Bubble Gum Alley ) is a narrow road in the city of San Luis Obispo in the state of California, United States. The alley is decorated with used chewing gum for decades. The walls on both sides of the path, where the stick chewing gum, belong to the block with 700 house numbers on the Higuera Street. The glued surfaces are about 21 meters long and 4.6 meters high. At the ends of the alley are gumball machines.

History

Around since the 1960s, the walls are plastered on both sides of the alley with chewed gum. How this tradition originated, is unclear; usually it is assumed that young people from the local high school, started to stick anything to the walls. Tried the city initially to combat pollution of the walls, is now only cleaned once per week the sidewalk. A one-time test of the fire department to solve the chewing gum with water spray from the walls, had unexpected consequences: The torn off chewing gums were thrown up into the air and then rained further afield to the passers-by down.

Ira Hirsch compared the Bubblegum Alley with trying to produce art in hell. In Gareth Sibsons novel Single with Failure the alley with a artwork of Jackson Pollock is compared; in a guidebook the Bubblegum Alley is listed as " probably unappetitlichste Street Landing".

Nevertheless, Bubblegum Alley has become not only a tourist attraction that is visited daily of 300 to 400 people, but is now also used as a backdrop for films and music videos. So she was about to see in the MTV show Call to Greatness. Matthew Hoffman - a collage artist - has created a self-portrait of chewing gum. On Halloween in 2012 appeared Rich Ferguson, an illusionist, Jay Leno's Tonight Show. Ferguson had turned in the Bubblegum Alley is a prank video, in which he apparently lost his head when sneezing and then sat him down again. The film was on YouTube more than viewed 6,750,000 times.

Meanwhile, the custom to paste certain walls with chewing gum, even outside of San Luis Obispo found imitators: One wall of the Market Theatre in Seattle, Washington, is also so " decorated " since the 1990s. In 2009, this wall into the top 5 of the " germiest Tourist Attractions" - so the tourist attractions that are afflicted with the most bacilli.