portrait of the bubbleblower as a young man

portrait of the bubbleblower as a young man
Originally uploaded by emdot.

Who knew ?

Who ever imagined ?

An alley where the brick walls are plastered with the masticated then discarded remains of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of wads of bubble gum ?

Over on flickr emdot posted this shot of a self-portrait that someone created using wads and wads of yicky sticky gum.

Which would have been plenty enough excitement for me for one day, but she also included a link that explained that this portrait is located in San Luis Obispo's Bubble Gum Alley, (more shots here) where people have been smushing their gum onto the alley walls since the early 1960s.

Wow. I love that this place exists. Why doesn't every town have one of these? It seems that after the smoking ban was implemented here in L.A., the city council would have at least set aside some space for "Nicotine Gum Alley" or the "NicoDerm CQ Patch Park", right?

And it seems like this might be a good solution for Singapore as well. If they would just de-outlawify bubble gum again and designate a specific area of the city for its disposal, they would simultaneously crush the seemingly uncrushable blackmarket in bubble gum AND create new revenue streams with the resulting rise in tourism/bubble gum tax receipts.

keep your fingers crossed...