It's not littering, it's a contribution to culture

I suppose this might be true for any city, but I recently was marveling at the sheer number of gum stains on any given parcel of pavement in New York. As I walked from my Vteer gig at the senior center, I scanned the sidewalk passing under my feet and found myself wondering what the average time span in gum age was on any given square of concrete (oldest piece vs newest, though maybe color and tackiness can identify the latter) and wondering whether that data could possibly be of use to anyone. "Where are my scientific contacts who can carbon-date the samples I scrape up from each gum stain so we can find out the precise historical moment to which it is linked?" I thought. "More importantly," I wondered, "What could one do armed with such information?" I guess my plan then would be to make a different kind of tourist map (not unlike the Maps of the Stars in LA...Maps of the Stains?) with which to tour New York. What a pain in the ass, both to make and to do. Forget it.

Maybe it's enough that there is mid-century modernist art literally at our feet everywhere we go. Some of the materials (gum, grime on concrete) might even date to that era. Who knows. It's like some crazy collaboration between litterers and time that resulted in an infinite number of abstract picture planes which we'd believe to be relevant to art history if they were framed right and hanging in the MOMA. Imagine:

"Untitled," 1955
Oil on canvas 60 x 88 inches

Brilliant.