Aromas

New York is a city of displaced scents. Some good, most bad. "Piss and donuts," said my college student teacher, "That's what the subways smell like." I agree but personally wish for a little more donut nowadays. The Bleecker Street 6 train stop reeks of spoiled milk, as fetid pools of water have no where to go. Not how I like to start my day, I tend to avoid that exit or test my ability to hold my breath which is next to useless.

I don't want to reflect on the odious smells.

Living in a culturally diverse city as New York, you have to be accustomed to an array of scents and I'm not talking about people. We may be distinct in that regard, however I don't want to get too close to anybody to get a bad whiff. I'm referring to food scents. With the high diversity density in NY, the mix of aromas is inescapable and an odd juxtaposition.

Every time I leave the "new" gym in the morning, I exit through a stairwell with the wafting smell of cooked meat. A "street meat" vendor has strategically positioned himself at the entrance of the gym. Is he hoping that the scent of seared meat with onions and a hint of curry would have catch gym goers in a momentary state of weakness? "So wrong." I think as a I walk out and away.

A block from the gym, I was struck by another scent. It was a pungent, sweet vinegar scent. It wasn't completely unpleasant but severely out of place. It gave me pause and I spun around trying to figure where it was coming from. It was probably venting from NoHo Star.

I was bombarded by so many smells first thing in the morning before I had anything to eat. They had me salivating. The scents also got trapped in my nose, so long after I'd left the vicinity, I was still smelling them. I couldn't smell my coffee after purchasing it and it tasted odd at first, but then things cleared up.

It did leave me a hankering for BBQ at 10AM. *shrug*