SMELL: Corner of Water and Pine streets at lunch hour

If names evoked smells, one might expect the junction of Water and Pine streets in the Financial District to be a fragrant one: a clear stream babbling beneath resinous evergreens. Though there are no pines, there is water: a pocket park across the street featuring a man-made waterfall, and Café Water, a corner deli unremarkable in all but one respect: the fetid gust of steam-table food smell wafting out of its garage-door-size kitchen vent.

At 10:45 one Friday morning, just past egg-on-a-roll hour but before cheese-steak time, the scent was of soy sauce with undercurrents of vinegar. Inside, workers were stocking a steam table running the length of the room and crowned with turrets of plastic clamshells.

The vent’s emissions were confirmed: at $7.79/lb, glossy orbs of chicken studded with sesame seeds, slayed asparagus spears festooned with a stripe of chopped pickled peppers, squirming heaps of lo-mein. 

Saran Wrap rolled back over each tray gave the impression that the food was napping under a sheer blanket.

The back wall of the deli offered a vista of soft drinks behind rubber flaps. The bathroom was the kind of place where you flush with your foot and open the door with a scrap of paper towel. Café Water received a C on its most recent inspection by the Department of Health. I noticed a clip-art sign posted to the steam table. It featured a yellow armless hand (a glove?) fondling two chicken drumsticks: PLEASE DO NOT SAMPLE FOOD. 

A family of jet-lagged tourists slouched at a table overlooking the Pine Street alley, nursing a bottle of strawberry Nesquik. A few businessmen twiddled with their smartphones in front of the panini bar, where stacks of wan sandwiches awaited pressing.

Outside, I made a pass by the vent again. Fried chicken. It was approaching 11 a.m., when the early lunchers would begin to trickle in. Moving away from the vent, I realized the odor trailed me all the way across Water Street, where the waterfall beckoned. The chlorinated smell—almost as astringent as pine—soon obliterated the greasy musk. The splashing water tickled my toes.

TOUCH: Inwood Hill Park caves

On a recent sweltering summer’s day, I traveled to the northern tip of Manhattan. I crossed the Inwood Hill Park soccer field, took the left fork in the trail, and soon found myself alone in a forest filled with birdsong that might have been heard by the Wiechquaesgeck Indians who, centuries ago, inhabited this woodland—and the caves that lay just steps ahead in the park’s eastern cliffs. 

On the Place Matters website, a commenter had recommended visiting the Indian caves on just such a summer’s day “to suck up the cool air that gets thrown out from the caves. It feels like instant air conditioning... free too! It’s a place that transports you to a time, a people and way of life far removed from ours.”

Though I’d been prepared for spelunking, almost immediately I spotted recesses and craggy overhangs in the rocks above the path. In fact, there was a makeshift trail that appeared to wend between them, and a campfire pit at the base, suggesting that the caves were frequented by Boy Scouts, s’mores-toasting tourists—or people in need of warmth and shelter. 

The first cave was wide and shallow—more of a grotto—and emitted no cooling air, just a lazy swarm of flies. I continued up the hill.

The second cave I came to was deeper and narrower; a Sapporo can glinted in the back. As I ducked in, however, I was struck not by a refreshing rocky breath but by more flies, this time a buzzing horde, which bombarded my face and swarmed around my head. They all but drowned out the birdsong. I recoiled, swatting at my eyes in the sudden bright sunshine.
 

Peeking in again, I saw that the cave walls were indeed studded with flies—the beady, blue-tinged sort. This time I forced myself to linger in the entrance, and soon the swarm subsided. Only then could I appreciate the damp, stony coolness of the air; it felt like placing a clay mask over my face. It smelled thick and sharp. Frayed cobwebs caught the light. Flecks of mica flickered. I noticed candle wax dribbled on a rock by the entrance.
 

I continued up the hill to the few other caves, stopping to pluck a wineberry from a thorn bush and to perch on a rock in the leafy light, trying to detect an ancient presence.
 

The caves had transported me to a people and a way of life far removed from my own. But it wasn’t the one I was expecting. The air they gave off was less refreshing than spooky. It wasn’t just the flies. It wasn’t just the bread tags, toilet paper, dime bags, and discarded clothing I turned up among the leaf litter. The stories told in their buzzing, swarming, mineral breath were of stolen moments, illicit activities, homelessness, decay: the stories of desperation that lurk beneath so much of our city’s dappled light.
 

SMELL: Seven random smell delights

This month, as last year, I offer seven sense delights for the seventh month. Last year, sights; this year, smells.

1. Horse manure and hay

Exiting the N/R/Q subway station at Fifth Avenue–Fifty-ninth Street, where all the carriage horses line up outside the Plaza

2 Fabric softener on a rainy day

Gusting from air vents from a laundromat, a little breath of faux-freshness as you walk down a sidewalk

3. A just-opened bag of brown sugar

The NYPL Rose Main Reading Room smells like this, inexplicably

4. Syrup and powder, menthol and talcum: classic old-fashioned pharmacy

Behrens pharmacy in Fort Greene

5. Wet dog, stagnant mop-water, mildew, and rotting flesh, for no immediately obvious reason

Outside 284 Broome Street, reportedly the smelliest spot in the city

6. Rotisserie chicken, salted hanging deli meats, bakery, cold lettuce, floor cleaner

Gristedes at Twenty-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue

7. Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge
Rosehips, saltwater, and sand, cool waftings of the marsh, and a faint tinge of burnt rubber and tar

SOUND: Wave Hill’s copper beech tree before a rainstorm

There’s something different about the air at Wave Hill, the public garden in the Bronx on the cliffs above the Hudson River. Perhaps it’s because the wind usually comes from the west, straight from the Palisades across the river and hits you right there on the bluffs.

Perhaps it’s because the garden’s juxtaposition of sweeping vistas and intimate nooks creates unpredictable air currents. Or perhaps it’s because the trees here are generally not clustered in groves but stand alone, free to interact with the elements on all sides. When the wind blows, all sides of the tree move with it, and often don’t touch any other trees. Walking through the garden on a windy day is rather like meandering through an orchestra pit in the midst of a symphony: as you pass each tree, its unique tone sounds out for a moment against the sibilance of the trees around it.One such tree is the venerable copper beech located on a quiet patch of lawn between the aquatic garden and the shade border. More than a hundred years old, it has elephantine bark, silvery gray and in places marked by wrinkles so intricate it seems to be melting. The boughs dip to brush the ground.

One afternoon last week, as I wandered the gardens, I felt the breeze stiffen, and the sun shuttled behind clouds. A stray raindrop splattered onto my bare arm. I took shelter beneath this beech tree and was struck by the sound of the leaves rustling in the building wind: a susurration that moved in a wave around the circumference of the tree. The leaves whispered with brief pauses in between movements, almost as one might to soothe an anxious child: shhhhh (now) shhhhhh. And as the breeze died, the sound died in a hiss almost like the tide receding along a sandy shore—only to build again.

I moved to stand closer to the leaves, which were thick, oily, and mahogany colored, gently cupped like hands waiting to receive the coming rain. But up close, the sound was not nearly so remarkable, more of a papery touch, barely audible.

Stepping back from the tree into the garden, I saw the tree’s bodily sway in the breeze was just as soothing, as parental, as its sound: a listing to accommodate the strange, changing air, just enough to keep it flexible, just enough to keep it strong.