Smells of the City

[taestell]

As more development happens North of Liberty, I wonder if we'll get a bunch of new residents complaining about the beer brewing smells from Rhinegeist and Sam Adams.

[Yves Behar]

Ces't La Vie I say. The city's gonna have some smells.

[Largue]

18 hours ago, taestell said:

As more development happens North of Liberty, I wonder if we'll get a bunch of new residents complaining about the beer brewing smells from Rhinegeist and Sam Adams.

 

This actually has a surprising impact. I walk by 3 Points every day and sometimes the smell is so strong I have to cover my nose! I'm sure I'll get used to it though, much like the people north of Liberty will get used to it after some time.

[oudd]

It's truly a culinary tour of smells biking down through Mohawk and Brighton. You get the spent grain processing smell from Emmert on Dunlap, the hoppy/malty smells from Rhinegeist and Sam Adams, the smell of roasting coffee from Deeper Roots on Colerain/Bank, and finally the pickle warehouse on York St. 

[NorthsiderWithaDog]

On 1/10/2019 at 9:27 AM, Largue said:

 

This actually has a surprising impact. I walk by 3 Points every day and sometimes the smell is so strong I have to cover my nose! I'm sure I'll get used to it though, much like the people north of Liberty will get used to it after some time.

 

 For me, this brings a sort of character to the area. The breweries bring jobs and visitors to the area, so I guess it is a trade off, and there are certainly worse smells in the city. Something I hadn't really thought about though. 

Edited January 11, 2019 by NorthsiderWithaDog

[ryanlammi]

In the summer when I leave my windows open, I can often smell the breweries. I really enjoy it, but I'm a little removed and up on the hill. So it isn't right in my face, but a few blocks away.

[taestell]

There is the meme about suburban growth, "cut down the trees and name the streets after them." Meanwhile in cities: "When I bought a new condo in the Brewery District, I didn't realize that I'd have to put up with all of this nasty beer brewing smell from Rhinegeist and Sam Adams!" I know that's not an apples-to-apples analogy but there's something funny about it, to me at least.

 

For the record, I love the smells of beer brewing, but I know people who find it absolutely disgusting and repulsive.

[Chas Wiederhold]

Living on the western edge of OTR, I get a lovely combination of Samuel Adams Brewery scent mixed with a brine-y Kaiser Pickle scent. I wish I could say that I love pickles. The ability to appreciate the scents is a good litmus test as to whether or not you will be a good neighbor, IMO.

[edale]

Can't wait til a weed dispensary or grow site eventually opens somewhere in the basin so we can have a total cacophony of polarizing smells swirling around OTR and the West End. 

[Guest jmecklenborg]

Givaudan Flavors near Paddock Rd. used to be the smelliest manufacturer in the area, by a longshot.  People assumed the smell was coming from Seagram's but it wasn't. 

[jjakucyk]

^ Is that the one that smells like slightly rancid raspberry syrup?

[Chas Wiederhold]

Until the Mod's create a separate thread for "Fantastic Smells and Where to Find them: Cincinnati" I'd like to list some of my least favorite smelling places that I experience on my way to the Little Miami Bike Trail from downtown:

1) Caraustar's cardboard recycling plant on Wooster... smells like hot moist stale paper pulp on a good day.

2) Municipal Sewer on Kellogg... well, you can guess what it smells like and the potency and potential for you to be gassed to death while biking on the Carrel St trail is determined by temperature, wind direction, and how good of a week Cincinnati's chili parlors have had.

[Guest jmecklenborg]

48 minutes ago, jjakucyk said:

^ Is that the one that smells like slightly rancid raspberry syrup?

 

Yeah.  I haven't smelled it in a long time, though.  At least five years and maybe more.  Mark who owns the Greenwich Tavern in Walnut Hills works there, so he'd be the one to ask. 

 

 

[Traveler Joe]

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

Givaudan Flavors near Paddock Rd. used to be the smelliest manufacturer in the area, by a longshot.  People assumed the smell was coming from Seagram's but it wasn't. 

 

Some of it certainly was from seagrams as they made alot of there "puckers" line there.  I worked construction a fair bit at Gividuan, got some really interesting smells when tearing out old floor tile and drains in assorted production areas.  

[SleepyLeroy]

14 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Yeah.  I haven't smelled it in a long time, though.  At least five years and maybe more.  Mark who owns the Greenwich Tavern in Walnut Hills works there, so he'd be the one to ask. 

 

 

I wanted to start a "What does Carthage smell like" blog as i drove to and fro to Evendale for work. Some days it's Flintstones vitamins while others it is freezer burned  green peppers.Other days it does have a fruity smell that would incriminate Segram's even though they have been gone for years. It changes slightly every day. I feel sorry for Carthage and the surrounding area. At least the rancid compost go awry  smell is gone finally.

[IAGuy39]

The worst smell besides chicken and hog confinements has to be a beet sugar processing facility in Wapheton, ND and Quaker Oats in CRapids, IA.

 

Cedar Rapids, whose officially slogan is City of Five Seasons (W,S,S,F + Season of Fun!) is widely called City of Five Smells. You also have in addition to making oatmeal and cereals (crunch berry day smells great but besides that it's bad) also has Corn processing plants surrounding the downtown.

 

https://petergreenberg.com/2008/11/17/dont-go-there-5-stinky-places/

 

 

[BigDipper 80]

Wild Flavors in Erlanger regularly smells like what can only be described as burning Fruit Loops. 

[GCrites]

I've heard some older people say that the Chillicothe smell used to make it all the way to the South Side of Columbus before they did something to make it subside somewhat in the '80s.

[Guest jmecklenborg]

We drove through Gary, IN when I was a kid on our way to Chicago.  This was before the EPA had succeeded in cleaning the place up.  The sky was orange and it smelled like cancer. 

[wpcc88]

2 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

I've heard some older people say that the Chillicothe smell used to make it all the way to the South Side of Columbus before they did something to make it subside somewhat in the '80s.

 

I've recently moved south and we're over 10 miles/20 minute drive from the paper mill in the area and you can still smell it.  A lot of the time it's the by-product from those mills such as turpentine and mush that really makes it smell.  The pine in Georgia & South Carolina are notorious for it and  moisture/fog really carries it a long way.  There are some new growth pine swaths as you head towards Jackson so I'm willing to bet when they were processing it in Chillicothe that resulted in the smell carrying.

[wpcc88]

Also if you've ever been near a coke plant, the black coal kind not the white Columbian kind... that's probably the worst smell or a sewage plant when they're burning off all of our TP

[freefourur]

^ rendering plants also have an awful smell.

[Largue]

"Smells of City Living" I'm so glad this is a thread.

 

It's interesting how Cincinnati developed their industrial district to the west of downtown. Most cities tend to place their industrial district to the east so the prevailing wind doesn't blow the smells into downtown. Due to the basin and its relationship to Mill Creek, I suppose Cincinnati didn't have much of a choice in the matter. 

 

On a better note, living in Pendleton is nice because you step outside to the smell of Lucius Q BBQ. The worst part is I'm always hungry... 

[ryanlammi]

I work about 1/4 mile from the Skyline Chili plant in Fairfield. Most mornings it smells like I'm in a Skyline Chili.

[Gramarye]

I grew up in farm country.  My sister raised sheep for 4H.  There was a chicken farm not too far away, at US-40 and the aptly named Swamp Road.  City living has its smells.  But so does country living.  And I'll take the smell of the city in the vast majority of cases.

[freefourur]

2 minutes ago, Largue said:

"Smells of City Living" I'm so glad this is a thread.

 

It's interesting how Cincinnati developed their industrial district to the west of downtown. Most cities tend to place their industrial district to the east so the prevailing wind doesn't blow

 

I once read that most industrial cities have black neighborhoods on their east side for this reason too.  They were generally restricted to living in areas that no one wanted to live.  (Ex. Kingsbury Run area in Cleveland)

[X]

4 hours ago, taestell said:

There is the meme about suburban growth, "cut down the trees and name the streets after them." Meanwhile in cities: "When I bought a new condo in the Brewery District, I didn't realize that I'd have to put up with all of this nasty beer brewing smell from Rhinegeist and Sam Adams!" I know that's not an apples-to-apples analogy but there's something funny about it, to me at least.

 

For the record, I love the smells of beer brewing, but I know people who find it absolutely disgusting and repulsive.

The rural equivalent is moving to your exurban subdivision and then complaining about the smell of of the livestock.  Happens a lot, and it becomes quite a problem for the farmers trying to maintain their business while their neighbors sell out to developers.

 

The breweries throughout Ohio City smell wonderful, as does the coffee roaster next to us on Columbus Road.  Down the hill in the Flats there is a grain mill that smells similar to the malt smell of the breweries crossed with breakfast cereal.  It smells gr-r-reat!

 

Of course, further down the Flats are the steel mills and concrete plants, and during an atmospheric inversion, the smell of sulphur can blanket half of the city!  And the lake and the river can smell like dead fish at the wrong time of year, too.

[SleepyLeroy]

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

We drove through Gary, IN when I was a kid on our way to Chicago.  This was before the EPA had succeeded in cleaning the place up.  The sky was orange and it smelled like cancer. 

 

[wpcc88]

31 minutes ago, X said:

The rural equivalent is moving to your exurban subdivision and then complaining about the smell of of the livestock.  Happens a lot, and it becomes quite a problem for the farmers trying to maintain their business while their neighbors sell out to developers.

 

The breweries throughout Ohio City smell wonderful, as does the coffee roaster next to us on Columbus Road.  Down the hill in the Flats there is a grain mill that smells similar to the malt smell of the breweries crossed with breakfast cereal.  It smells gr-r-reat!

 

Of course, further down the Flats are the steel mills and concrete plants, and during an atmospheric inversion, the smell of sulphur can blanket half of the city!  And the lake and the river can smell like dead fish at the wrong time of year, too.

The Ford & Chevy plants always had a distinct smell too, not sure if it had to do with something in the castings or what but you could always smell it at 71 & 480. 

[wpcc88]

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

I grew up in farm country.  My sister raised sheep for 4H.  There was a chicken farm not too far away, at US-40 and the aptly named Swamp Road.  City living has its smells.  But so does country living.  And I'll take the smell of the city in the vast majority of cases.

This is very true.. Chicken litter is probably my least favorite smell of all time... Columbus folks, take a ride out to Croton in late July and you'll know what I mean

[GCrites]

5 hours ago, freefourur said:

 

I once read that most industrial cities have black neighborhoods on their east side for this reason too.  They were generally restricted to living in areas that no one wanted to live.  (Ex. Kingsbury Run area in Cleveland)

 

But West Sides were also unloved because that's where all the dust and dirt blew in from the prairies, farms and deserts. And whatever side of the river is dirty in river towns was also run down. So in Cincinnati the West End was never settled well, but Cincinnati has a big mountain protecting it from dust and weather the further north you get on the West Side. In Columbus, Uncool Crescent is uncool due to the dusty West Side, dirty river South Side and industrial fallout East Side.

[GCrites]

One more reason Cleveland gets to be Ohio's Real City is that it smells like a Real City.

[viscomi]

When the wind is just right out of the south, southeast the smell from the steel plants wofts into downtown Cleveland. It actually happened a couple weeks ago and my work sent out an email stating that they were investigating a strange odor outside. I laughed to myself at that. 

[KJP]

On 1/11/2019 at 3:46 PM, freefourur said:

 

I once read that most industrial cities have black neighborhoods on their east side for this reason too.  They were generally restricted to living in areas that no one wanted to live.  (Ex. Kingsbury Run area in Cleveland)

 

Great thread!!!

 

There wasn't much housing in the Kingsbury Run area. It was mostly railyards, refineries and industry (plus homeless camps during the Great Depression) from the get-go. The first black neighborhood in Cleveland was Central. My Shaker Heights aunts and uncles in the 1930s went to the jazz clubs there and bought their marijuana there too. It expanded with the booming African American population in the 1950s' Great Migration and was displaced by construction of the massive Northern Ohio Food Terminal in the late 1920s and by the Willow Freeway (I-77) in the 1950s.

 

But if you track where Cleveland's first, pre-Civil War iron/steel works were located, you can find the original ghettos of Cleveland. The first one wasn't in the Flats but at East 33rd-38th along the lakefront (Forest City Iron Works), near which some of the city's oldest poor immigrants (New Englanders, British, Scots, Welsh, Protestant Irish, etc. followed by the first Slovenians in the 1880s). The next was the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Co., located at Center and Detroit streets on the West Bank of the Flats, next which was the Catholic Irish Olde Angle ghetto. And then you had the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company (aka Newburgh Works/Central Works/Central Furnace), off today's Rockefeller Avenue (named because Standard Oil's first refinery was located here and stood until the 1970s). Nearby was another early settlement of Slovenians followed by African-Americans who began arriving after the Civil War but came in greater numbers during World War I and spread east along Cedar -- the main street of Cleveland's 1920s-30s Jazz Age (as well as the prevailing wind direction from the booming southern industrial Flats before and after the Great Depression).

 

But suffice it to say, if any of us went back to visit a major American city 100 years ago, the scent would knock us on our duffs. If it wasn't the smell of manure in the streets and stables from the last of the horse-drawn carriages, the "rotten eggs" smell from the burning of sulfurous coal in just about every household furnace as well as the massive steel plants in the Cuyahoga Valley.

Edited January 14, 2019 by KJP

[ryanlammi]

Buffalo smells really good. Apparently they make Cheerios just outside of downtown, and it smells wonderful when the wind catches it just right. I couldn't place the smell when I went there until someone told me. I thought it was waffles or something.

[freefourur]

28 minutes ago, KJP said:

 

Great thread!!!

 

There wasn't much housing in the Kingsbury Run area. It was mostly railyards, refineries and industry (plus homeless camps during the Great Depression) from the get-go.

I should have been more specific and stated the neighborhoods surrounding Kingsbury run.  

[surfohio]

Akron used to smell like a giant Twinkie. It made you feel hungry all day. Then at night some place would burn tires or something similarly noxious when I lived by Annandale St. Akron, a city of contrasts. 

 

I really miss biking to work thru Ohio City, especially late summer mornings when you hit a wave of Great Lakes Oktoberfest being brewed.

 

The water treatment plant just south of DT Columbus smelled exactly like Edgewater Park circa 1992. It mildly burned your throat, just like the waters of Lake Erie used to. Very nostalgic! 

 

 

[Mildtraumatic]

On 1/11/2019 at 3:44 PM, Gramarye said:

I grew up in farm country.  My sister raised sheep for 4H.  There was a chicken farm not too far away, at US-40 and the aptly named Swamp Road.  City living has its smells.  But so does country living.  And I'll take the smell of the city in the vast majority of cases.

Nothing like the smell of freshly spread cow manure in the morning. It could last for weeks where I use to live.

 

Smells like, defeat... 

[YABO713]

When I played football at St. Ignatius, during two-a-days, Great Lakes would always be brewing, and the distinct smell of what I assume is hops would overtake the field. That smell will forever be associated with running until I'm ragged, and everytime I smell it, I'm taken back to high school two a days. 

 

Also, going over the 490 bridge at certain points in the day and catching the eggy smell from the steel plant - my fiance always blames me for farting, despite the fact that I've explained it to her a dozen times. PRO TIP: 490 Bridge is a good place to fart and blame it on the steel mill. 

[Mildtraumatic]

^  

16 minutes ago, YABO713 said:

 

 

Also, going over the 490 bridge at certain points in the day and catching the eggy smell from the steel plant - my fiance always blames me for farting, despite the fact that I've explained it to her a dozen times. PRO TIP: 490 Bridge is a good place to fart and blame it on the steel mill. 

 

[oakiehigh]

A couple Cincy locations I've either worked, visited, or lived in in my life.

 

West End - Coffee, beer, and pickles.  I love all 3!!

Bridgetown - On days when the wind was just right, we could smell the old Lawrenceburg Seagrams/MGP plant Distillery.   

Carthage - I always got a butterscotch type of smell near Paddock 

St Bernard - Soap, lots and lots of soap

Mt Healthy Heights - Unfortunately for these folks live out there, they get the smell of Rumpke most days of the year.  This is one smell I can not take!!!!!

[ryanlammi]

I used to work at Cincinnati's Metropolitan Sewer District. Our office was right next to the main treatment plant on the Mill Creek in Lower Price Hill. It usually wasn't too bad, but if it was really hot out, the smell was unbearable.

[GCrites]

When PS3s get really dusty inside they smell like a West Virginia Turnpike Travel Plaza in the '80s when people could smoke. Both the little Northbound ones and the big Southbound one that used to be the Glass House.

[327]

On 1/11/2019 at 5:31 PM, wpcc88 said:

This is very true.. Chicken litter is probably my least favorite smell of all time... Columbus folks, take a ride out to Croton in late July and you'll know what I mean

 

Anyone who proposes chickens in the city should be required to visit Croton.

[SWOH]

On 1/17/2019 at 8:48 AM, Mildtraumatic said:

Nothing like the smell of freshly spread cow manure in the morning. It could last for weeks where I use to live.

 

Smells like, defeat... 

 

Honestly the most polluted place I ever lived was Indiana... actual farming smells a lot worse than most city smells IMO and the pesticides / poisons used on a farm, as well as the ones used on suburban lawns, are a lot stronger than anything consumer grade you'd find used in most urban areas.

 

 

That being said, if Dayton could fix their wastewater treatment facility so it didn't smell like a sewer pipe in Moraine and west Dayton most days that would be awesome

[YABO713]

There was literally a pile of human feces in between Toast and Il Rione this morning on West 65th. That's a hazard of a morning jog, I guess. 

[mrnyc]

i'll leave out the old rotten eggs steel plant smells, that time has mostly passed. also the wonder bread smells as you drove downtown columbus.

 

but i remember when i lived at the continent briefly in north columbus you could often smell the beer brewing from the budweiser plant nearby. you could smell it driving around I-270 too. the continent has fallen way off, but i cant imagine that mammoth bud plant brewing smell has changed.

[wpcc88]

Having spent a lot of time in the south this past year any of you folks that think you’re going to escape this moving there, beware of paper mills. Charleston & Savannah have the stench of them; along with their horse drawn tours, think New Orleans.

[mrnyc]

^ good tip. i bet dayton doesnt miss those smells from the mead paper days.

[mrnyc]

ny certainly has its own memorable smells lol. yep at the top of the list is piss and homeless fragrance. after that would be vehicle exhaust and smoggy days. down the list, but more prominent in da hood would be poultry businesses and dog crap bombs everywhere because the poors dont ever pick it up. truth. way down the list for me, but probably higher on it for some people, would be the street trash and sanitation, but that never bothers me. restaurant kitchen vents do bug me when you walk by them, especially with the fried food. and last on the ny smells list would be the wildcard mystery smells that waft over town ocassionally, leaving you scratching your head.

 

otoh, all is forgiven after a storm when it smells great for awhile, it really does! or anytime when you are near the water.