It's common knowledge that New York City smells like one giant pile of hot garbage in the summer, but as the hard-hitting investigative piece children's book New York Phew York revealed, there are a lot more olfactory delights and horrors to be had. Now the Times has discovered that this city stinks, and they sent two professional sniffers out on the streets to determine exactly what disgusting things we're smelling every day. And these pros don't mess around: Céline Barel, a perfumer, "sprays seawater in her nostrils each morning to flush them out," and Pascaline Lepeltier, a sommelier, keeps her apartment "as fragrance-free as possible."
On the street in Chinatown
1. "What you give to birds, when you go to Petco"
2. Garbage
3. "An odor that came from a rat"
4. Wet dog
5. Barnyard
6. "Floor cleaner, but with a very fruity smell"
7. Fungus
8. Cabbage
In a (clean) taxi
9. Kumquat
10. Amber
On the High Line
11. Charred meat
12. Sunscreen
13. The "salty, muddy" Hudson River
14. Warm beer
15. Plants that are "minty, camphoraceous"
In Central Park
12. Ginkgo trees (aka vomit)
13. Rain hitting hot pavement, an odor described as "petrichor"
14. Horse manure; or the scent's scientific name, "cresylic"
· The Smells of Summer [NYT]
· The Smells of New York, Phew York Reviewed [Curbed]
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