SMELL: Seven smells for the seventh month

In Sense & the City tradition, I present a collection of seven sensory impressions for the seventh month, this year with a focus on local smells, both iconic and underappreciated.

1. Golden Gate Fancy Fruits & Vegetables, Flatlands, Brooklyn

Pre-war paint layers, fruit skins, old wood varnish, cardboard box, newsprint

2. Crushed ginkgo berries on sidewalks in autumn (here with collectors)

Acrid vomit

3. Metal buckets of road asphalt heating up curbside over a fire

Tar smoke, sticky blackness, butane

4. Glaser's Bake Shop, Upper East Side

Strudel, cinnamon, warm sugar, cool icing

5. Overthrow Boxing Club, SoHo

Sweat, leather, old sneaker, basement

6. Orange manhole steam chimneys

Hot air, mildew, wet cement

 7. Tottenville subway platform, last stop on Staten Island Railroad

Ocean