Strange Pleasant Smell

Posted on by scott

A strange but pleasant smell was reported to have engulfed Manhattan and Queens last night . . .

Justine and Shannon Fowler and I were on the way to a Japanese restaurant at about 8:00PM, and discovered ourselves sniffing the air. “Something smells like caramel,” Justine said. I thought it was more like peanuts roasting (in sugar, so almost the same thing). Shannon mentioned maple syrup. The smell followed us from the East Village all the way to Hudson Street on the west side.

“How odd,” we said. How could one smell stretch so far across the island?

Even more astonishingly, the story appeared in the New York Times this morning entitled “Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers.” The story reports that the smell extended as far as Astoria, Queens.

According to the Times:

Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister. There were so many calls that the city’s Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it.

But there is no word yet as to what the strange, sweet-smelling cloud may have been. I have detected no behavioral changes in my fellow New Yorkers today, nor any other mysterious effects.

It was quite nice, though. Did any of you also smell it?

In Pretties-related news, photos for the front cover of Specials were shot on Tuesday. I’ll share any images that come my way.

11 thoughts on “Strange Pleasant Smell”

  2. imagine it was a supervillain at work, in a batmanesque scenario. not being privy to the inside story, this is what life would look like to john q. public in batman’s universe. puzzled by the mystery, until the police commissioner began to panic on camera.

  3. Actually, Claire, the heaviness and sweetness of the smell made the following words pulse in my head: “underground nectar mines.”

    Could it be that our hummingbird overlords are finally about to make themselves known? I, for one, would like to take this opportunity to welcome them once again.

  4. really off topic but….YOU CAN ALREADY PRE-ORDER MIDNIGHTERS 3; BLUE NOON RIGHT NOW!!!!!..on amazon.com. 🙂

  5. all joking aside, is anyone else worried about biological warfare. i think the batman villain profile is pretty much in keeping with terrorists so far. why is no one else freaking out? i left the city for the weekend on friday and am afraid to go back.

  6. I wouldn’t worry too hard about the strange smell. It’s a lot harder to spread biological agents than smells, after all. Plus, the strange smell is very pleasant, and I didn’t wake up blind or anything (as in Day of the Triffids).

    And yes, you can order Midnighters 3 right now! It even has an Amazon ranking . . .

  8. I know this if off subject but I just had to say that, I just finished reading PEEPS and it was brilliant Cal is a cool protagonist and it is a brilliant way of putting a twist of the vampire myth. I just let my friend borrow it because he was intrested after i told him what it was about.

  10. Ami: Um, I’m afraid I don’t know about Malaysia. Ask your local bookstore, I guess.

    Tevans: Thanks! Really glad you liked it.

    twix: It’s called SPECIALS. And it comes out in May.

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