In Praise of Smelly Places

Fish stink. Or, at least, many of us feel this way. Urban harbors and open-air fish markets have this particularly pungent, musty odor that curls nose hairs and seeps into our pores, traveling home with us long after we’ve left. Most of us, however, would be sorely disappointed if we turned up at a fish market in Baltimore, or Seattle, or San Francisco, only to discover that it smelled like nothing at all.

This is the wonderful quality of urban odors: even what we commonly think of as the stinky smells are crucial to our experience of a place. Just as a street with no pedestrians, or a park with no birdsong or a lakefront without breeze might offend our senses of sight, sound and touch, places that just don’t smell like much seem somehow incomplete – even inauthentic – too.