Gum Wall 


By André Luiz Silva and Vagner Damasceno 


Why do you chew a gum? Soldiers chewed gums to relax during the Second World War, some people use it to clean their teeth when they are in a hurry, some people like it, just because it is sweet. However, if you go to Post Alley in Seattle, you will find a different way to use a gum.


The Gum Wall began around 1993 when patrons started to stick gums in the wall while they were waiting too much for a show at Market Theater. Theater company workers scraped the wall twice, but gave up when it became a tourist attraction of Seattle, and in 2009 it was considered the second “germiest” tourist attraction in the world. 


The existence of the Gum Wall encourages other kinds of urban art, as posts, graffiti and sayings in the rest of the alley. The fact is that as a kind of art expression, it changes itself with time, as well as, it is changed by some individuals in their everyday life without any previous concept or idea. In addition, as an urban intervention, it adds the alley’s wall some colors and texture, and also a distinct fruit aroma to the surround area. 


In our point of view, the Gum Wall is a good example of Do-It-Yourself, it’s a sample of how small actions can be powerful and how they can increase an environment - nowadays the gum wall is part of a local culture and it has been used as background for movies (Love Happens in 2009) and wedding photos. 


Sources: http://weburbanist.com/2010/08/29/stuck-on-you-seattles-gum-wall-is-pretty-gross/ http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-seattle-gum-wall-a-sticky-attraction.html




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DIY City Beautiful in the Pike/Pine Corridor

Alena Griffin, Inness Wragg, Victoria Evert

DIY City Beautiful

For our DIY urbanism photo-diary we explored the two-block segment of the Pike-Pine corridor directly East of Broadway. This is an area set up best for foot traffic, with limited parking and many street-level businesses including retail, restaurants, bars and clubs (as well as street-food vendors that appear on the sidewalk after dark). The area is also bordered by Cal Anderson Park, so that between night and day attractions it is almost always an active, vibrant area. Though none of the artifacts we found were directly related to each other, the proliferation of spaces (small and large) where individuals had decorated this neighborhood created a definite identity for the community. In addition to more long-term art projects, the unusually snowy weather at the time of our walk through the area encouraged interaction in the environment, and allowed for extremely temporary enactments of DIY public art.

Urbanism is seen as the way of life of the people that inhabit cities. Thus we understood DIY urbanism to being how people informally make the city even more of their own. The City Beautiful Movement in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries attempted to take beautify the city through planning. In a sense, the images we captured were a DIY City Beautiful; people taking what could be lifeless spaces, and making them so much more.

We found that this is especially the case in areas where people walk. There is much more of a connection with an immediate area if people walk through it; it lends time to noticing what surrounds. It creates interaction with the urban space around them. From permanent pieces such as the painted wall to temporary additions such as the snow chair or the snowman head on the Jimmy Hendrix statue to the pieces of art next to the curb, these are ways that people are “doing urbanism”.

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