Last week, those of us still glued to the gum wall battle going down on Slog turned our attention from abstract arguments about the political nature of the wall and stories full of armchair auto-psychoanalysis to more concrete concerns. Namely, was Pike Place planning to compost the gum? And how much gum was on that wall in the first place?
In an official Slog poll in which we all got to guess how much gum was on the wall, a poll whose options included “2,200 pounds” and “720 pounds,” the vast majority of you, no doubt in the throes of indecision, marked “Kill me now” as your guess. I, too, voted for my own swift destruction, and for the same reason.
Emily Crawford, director of communications at Pike Place Market, guessed the 2,200 pounds figure based on rumors and arithmetic, two things which never got nobody nothin’. After weighing a day’s worth of steamed-off gum gunk, Kelly Foster, general manager of Cascading Building Maintenance, estimated the total weight closer to 720 pounds.
To me, Foster’s guess seemed sounder, rooted as it was in a sample size. And yet, one couldn’t entirely discount Crawford’s guess. She worked at Pike Place, she knew people, the wall was her turf. I couldn’t tell who was more likely to be right, and so I turned to death.
(My decision to mark “kill me now,” I want to assure you, had nothing to do with the extent and depth of The Stranger’s gum wall coverage. I’ve been honored to participate in a conversation about one of the city’s chewiest and most resonant monuments.)
Anyway okay so yesterday evening Crawford e-mailed me the exact poundage of gum that Foster and his crew steamed off the wall. After 130 total labor hours and 94 Seattle Seahawks buckets full of gum, the official number is: 2,350 total pounds of gum.
That’s more than a ton of gum. That’s the weight of a full-grown adult polar bear.
Crawford, with her maths and murmurs, was closer to the truth. As a reward, she and her acolytes get five minutes extra recess today.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go throw myself out a window.
