Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers
By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: October 28, 2005
An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome.
"It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant."
he odor had followed Mr. Padilla and his friend along their walk in Lower Manhattan, from a dormitory on Fulton Street, to Pace University on Spruce Street, and back down again, to where they stood now, near a Dunkin' Donuts. Maybe it was from there, he said. But it wasn't.
Mr. Padilla was not alone. 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.
By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m.
"We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know."
There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that. Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not describe that smell.
Maple Sugar Smell Mystery!
Something strange is going on-- last night the whole city smelled like maple syrup! Gothamist has gotten reports from all over Manhattan-- and we smelled the strange, sweet odor as far south as Chambers Street. Gothamist Contribute also has some reports:
The whole city smells like maple syrup and everyone knows it! Tell us why. October 28, 2005 02:38 AM
Same smell is pervading the Greenwich Village / NYU area -- both outdoors and in, I smelled it in my apt earlier and thought a neighbor was making french toast or something but it's clearly something bigger. Maple syrup dirty bomb???
October 28, 2005 02:09 AM
I'm on W. 96th St. and I can smell it, too. I thought there was some food hidden in my room somewhere.
October 28, 2005 01:04 AM
The air smells of maple syrup in the Upper West Side. Anonymous individual sources questioned at street corners around Harlem agree that for some reason it smells very sweet and syrupy. Everyone speculates that a pancake truck or maple syrup factory has caught on fire. Perhaps Gothamist can investigate? (around Columbia Uni area + Harlem area)
October 28, 2005 12:50 AM
Maple syrup dirty bomb? Commence panic! [Related: You Can't Make It Up also noticed the smell!.]
Update: The New York Times doesn't know what it is, either!
Posted by Jake Dobkin
http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2005/10/28/maple_sugar_smell_mystery.php
How strange. I wonder what in the world would cause so many people in such a large area to smell this? Furthermore, what the heck caused the smell?
..reading on
I posted it somewhere after this post-today