Henry Erickson and Greg Spellman are two 24-year-old Pacific Beach residents who moved from San Francisco to San Diego for college in 2009. They met their freshman year and bonded over their love to pub-crawl. Together, they moved out to Pacific Beach their senior year of college and have never thought of living anywhere else.
“We have the prime set up,” Erickson said. “We live, work and play here.”
Although the bar and restaurant they go to changes every night, there is one part of their night that doesn’t.
“We gotta get to the pole every night,” Spellman said. “It’s good luck. Never had a bad night with it.”
Spellman is referring to the telephone pole that is covered in gum on the corner of Bayard and Garnet. For years, this pole has collected random pieces of passersby’s chewing gum. Erickson and Spellman say they don’t know when other people started sticking their gum on the pole or even when they started doing it.
“I genuinely think we were standing here one night, bro,” Spellman said. “And you are gross and stuck your gum there, with all the others, for no reason and then we had a really great night at our usual spot and the next morning couldn’t figure out what we did different. Our hung-over brains decided it was the pole.”
Erickson and Spellman are not the only ones who don’t know how or when the pole started, in fact no one spoken to could provide a definite answer.
Eve Anderson, a long time member of Discover PB and the Pacific Beach Planning Group, says she doesn’t know who started it or why people have continued to add to it. Unlike Erickson and Spellman, Anderson is greatly opposed to the gum pole and is disgusted by its presence.
“I don’t know who the original culprit was or how the masticated remnants ended up there,” Anderson said. “I guess we should be thankful there’s only one pole like that in Pacific Beach. We sure wouldn’t want to start a fad.”
Anderson has noticed that the gum pole is not the only way that gum has a presence in Pacific Beach. She has noticed that there is gum all over the sidewalks on Garnet Avenue and along Mission Boulevard.
“I’ve been told that much of it is from people about to go in the bars who’ve been chewing since they left the last bar and are trying to get rid of beer breath or whatever,” Anderson said. “I don’t know how true it is but you’ll notice that the gum problem is only really bad on Garnet and on Mission Boulevard, which is where the bars are,” she said. Anderson wants to have the gum removed and the pole scrubbed. She thinks the only way to stop people from sticking their gum to the pole and spitting it out on the street is to start some sort of program similar to one the city got behind in regard to cigarette butts.
“We need a campaign, a fun, eye-catching manner to make people think twice about spitting gum on the sidewalk,” Anderson said. “Something along the lines of the ‘Hold your Butts’ campaign, which has successfully helped to decrease cigarette litter.”
Veronica Hayes was born and raised in Pacific Beach and has seen the gum pole for as long as she can remember.
“To be frank, it doesn’t bother me,” Hayes said. “I think it takes a certain kind of person to live in Pacific Beach because of the culture here. “The environment attracts a certain clientele. They are the type of people who stick their gum on a pole for no real reason. The gum pole just fits with the vibe of PB, take it or leave it,” Hayes said. Some people agree with Anderson and are absolutely disgusted by the pole, others fall in line with Hayes and aren’t bothered by it and then there are people like Kevin Smith. Smith has lived in Pacific Beach for more than 10 years and has never noticed the pole.
“It’s actually funny,” Smith chuckled. “I walk my dog past this thing everyday on our way to the beach and I have never noticed this. Is it art or something?”
According to Cathy Stringfellow, a multimedia art professor at San Diego State University, public art is defined as any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain. In her mind, this pole is not that. An artist collective is defined by Stringfellow as an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, and due to the lack of coordination, she feels this is not that either.
“I would never want to take the title of art away from anything present in our beach communities,” Stringfellow said. “At the same time I am hesitant to give the label art out to just anyone and anything. “Is graffiti considered art? This is somewhat a destruction of city property in my eyes, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder right?” she said. The jury remains out on both the origins of the gum pole and what the future holds for it. Opinions of residents and visitors span both ends of the spectrum. Most people agree that if it poses no real health threat, although it may not be nice to look at, they don’t mind it.
“My only fear is when it comes to my daughter,” said Jennifer Little, a Pacific Beach resident. “I can’t tell you how many times I have to tell her not to touch it when we walk by it. Just a curious kid I suppose but the city could help me out. We have enough to deal with living in a beach community, could we not have a pole of god-knows-what in the center of it?”