Seattle Is Scrubbing 20 Years of Stickiness Off Its Famous Gum Wall

There’s a lot to see in Seattle, including the Space Needle, Chinatown, and—earning its spot as the second-germiest tourist attraction in the world—the Market Theater Gum Wall. (You win, “copiously kissed” Blarney Stone in Ireland.) But if you haven’t already gotten your hands dirty with a visit to the wall, which has over 20 years worth of gum packed on by tourists and locals, you’ve got about a week before the city scrubs it down with an “industrial steam machine.”

The wall usually gets washed every other month, but on November 10, it will be completely cleaned for the first time, according to the Seattle Times. The cleansing process will take three to four days and 280-degree steam to melt the estimated 1 million wads of gum. Then a two- to three-person crew equipped with five-gallon buckets will be ready to collect them all. The job will cost roughly $4,000. (As The Atlantic previously reported, gum cleaning costs cities and business owners millions of dollars).