Scents and the City

Sometime in the beginning of the summer a co-worker asked me where I was going on my vacation, and I replied New York City. Then, that person said something like, "Oooh, it smells really bad there." I took notice of that because I consider myself to be a little more sensitive than the average person to smells. Big Daddy says I have a bionic nose.

I arrived in New York on a Tuesday afternoon, and was soon on a walk around the neighborhood and through a small part of Central Park. I was delighted that my co-worker's critique of The City smell was not my experience. For a GREAT BIG CITY, New York did pretty well smell-wise. The neighborhood of our hotel, The Upper West Side, smelled pretty good, thanks in no small part to lush and lovely Central Park. I often found myself catching a whiff of something woodsy that reminded me of my youthful summers in Pennsylvania. There were also the smells of food from the various restaurants and street vendor carts. That was nice.

It seemed to me that garbage was collected every night, which amazed me. Our garbage is picked up twice a week, but in a city that size, it would have to be daily. So occasionally one caught the smell of garbage, and somewhere around Times Square I caught a strong stench of urine, but it was only once and then it was the weekend and the City was busier.

Even the fuel exhaust in the Subway tunnels was not as overpowering and unpleasant as I thought it might be. New York smells fine to me. But I have to admit, for the first time I enjoyed the stinky mangrove smell that hit me as we were driving back to our Keys home. It was fun to go away and then it was good to be back.