2,100 Square Feet of 40 Year Old Chewing Gum!

Bubblegum Alley: An alley leading tourists and shoppers from a parking lot to the unique shopping and attractions of downtown San Luis Obispo, a famous college town in central California. The alley is 70 feet long and 15 feet high and just about every square inch of the walls on either side are covered in chewing gum!

History Surrounding the Alley

Bubblegum Alley has been around since the 1950′s. Some believe (and this is just theory) that it started back in the 50′s as a rivalry between San Luis Obispo (SLO) high school students and Cal Poly (a local college). Others believe it dates back to World War II. Either way it’s an alley, covered in gum. The alley has been featured in magazines from the Los Angeles Times to the Guardian in the United Kingdom. It’s been featured on national television on the Tonight Show and MTV. The wall is incredibly interesting. Some may argue with me, but I fall into the group of people who consider this wall art. When you walk up to the wall, it looks disgusting, and it is. It looks like a 70 foot long stretch of wall where passers by shove their gum as the go about their business. Like a huge trash can or underside of a classroom desk. But when you walk right up to the wall, it comes alive. This wall is a tapestry of creativity by hundreds of thousands of people. Every square foot has designs stuck to it, ranging from smiley faces, to sorority and fraternity symbols, to names of loved ones, to song lyrics, from peace signs and wrappers, to curse words and loose change. Artist Matthew Hoffman (couldn’t find a link to him) even created a self portrait on the wall of him blowing a bubble to sits high above the wall beyond arms reach. Art doesn’t always have to be pretty and pleasing to the eye, it just has to hold your attention and make you think.

Controversy

This wall has been stuck in controversy ever since it started (hehe). The wall underwent full cleanings twice, the last being in the 70′s, hence 40 year old gum. That means that some of the pieces of gum on the wall have literally been there since the 70′s! How gross is that!? There isn’t a lot more to say about this work of art without just showing you, so I will leave you with a poem that was written specifically for this wall.

We write our epitaphs on walls with gum,
And though it may be meaningless to some,
We have a symbol of our gummy youth,
Whose walls may not tell some glorious truth,
But eloquently speak of better times,
Of cruising, shopping sprees, and nursery rhymes.
If gum is all you see upon our wall,
Your mind is closed, your spirit shrunk and small,
Though memories of youth may never last,
Gum Alley is our present to our past.”

-“M”, Arroyo Grande

Well, that was interesting! Before I show you this image let me tell you a bit about it. The image is originally a panoramic landscape, meant to be viewed from left to right (or right to left if your Hebrew). I decided to turn it portrait so the viewers could see this wall in as much detail as possible. The alley is VERY narrow, so I simply held my camera with my back nearly against the opposing wall covered in gum, and took five shots while taking large steps to the right between each one. I would guess that this image covers roughly 10 feet of the wall but I don’t really know. Enjoy!