Pajiba

I work at a coffee shop (termed loosely) and my favorite smell is when the espresso hits the vanilla or cinnamon syrup.

That smell on someone when they come in from the cold. Best smell ever. And if you're lucky, you get to stick your nose in their neck and smell it right before you warm them up.

My first trip to a major league park was 1986, when I went to "old" Arlington Stadium to watch the Texas Rangers play the Boston Red Sox. Sure, it was a converted minor league park but to me, it was a palace. The freshly cut grass was emerald green under a brilliant blue sky and, as the cut grass smell mingled with the aroma of roasted peanuts, grilled bratwurst and the musty smell of the old park, I felt that it must be what heaven was like. I've never forgotten that day and even though the Rangers have a nice, new ballpark, still look forward to reliving that day every season.

The smell of snow topped by the smell of fresh linen sheets topped by the smell of coffee. Happy place.

Freshly cut grass.

I am easily satisfied.

Outside of the gallons of lady-smelling swamp glops, friendly goops and hog waters that I slather onto my person in the shower, out in the world and through the cosmos, I love the smell of Dettol. It smells like cleanliness of the first order and of the highest quality, but it is fragrant in such a non-abrasive and smilingly confident way. It does not need to impose itself absusively on the olfactory factory--this is not an autopsy, and Dettol has the sense to know that. I am passingly aware of the Lysols, Pine-Sols and every corrosive, fume-punching ammonia slap that, while effective, send you running for your portable fan and the knob on your bathroom door, all in order to maintain the integrity of your lung function. That is spurned lover behaviour and not the modus operandi of Dettol, so I hope you all remember that next time you are handcuffed to a bottle of Javex.

Oh, that fresh, washed-hair-in-the-verdant-woods, oh-I-can-see-why-it-would-have-the-royal-insignia-but-I-will-use-this-product-anyway-in-spite-of-the-Windsor-family`s-uneducated-bigoted-odiousness-oh-Heaven-on-a-flitting-wing-lovely-Dettol!

Dettol is the Miss Honey, whereas everything else is a Miss Trunchbull. And though I love her entertaining ways and it may seem like a bad comparison because of that, Miss Trunchbull did break a kid`s arm. Dettol would never break your arm.

I remember for the longest time I would get really turned on by the smell of cigarette smoke. I have no idea why either. The only thing I can think of is because maybe the smell would make me nostalgic for a simpler, more innocent time in my childhood when my family and I were living in the Ghetto. (If you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic.) The smell would just kind of make me remember my old baby-sitter who would feed her soul-crushing addiction while suffering my presence. I’m guessing that somewhere along there I got so used to the smell, that when I finally moved to the fresh air and peaceful solitude of East Jesus Nowhere, I grew to miss it. So actually when I was in high school, I would find myself making a point of talking to the smokers after one of their little lunch-time sessions, and breathe in the lingering scent upon them (Creepy I know). Mmm nothing quite like the smell of cancer-ridden death…

Definitely with you on the amusement park smell - especially the roller coaster grease. I work at one, and I jump at the chance to go crawling under the rides whenever I can. I just LOVE that smell.

I love the smell you get when you light the candle in a jack'o'lantern. It's really specific and really good.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one with an inexplicable love for the smell of gasoline. And the assorted smells of baseball.

But the greatest smell in the world is the smell of rain on the air in the desert, when the day is scorched to 110 in the shade and then the clouds slide across the sky and the temperature drops 40 degrees in five minutes. Just before the down pour starts and just after it ends, the air smells alive.

After a cold Canadian winter I love the smell of a barbecue in the Spring. It usually coincides with playoff season.

@ the_wakeful
@ Edith
@ stopthemadness aka Angry Black Lady

Oh I totally know what you’re talking about. The smell gets me all hot and bothered as well. But apparently we’re not alone, judging by the number of people with oil-drenched mechanic fantasies (That new sex-survey is amazing…). Remember that chick Saaphyri from the Flavor of Love: Charm School? When they all had to make their own perfume and the guy said “All right I want all of you to think of a scent that will evoke a powerful memory from you” and Saaphyri responded with just one word: “Gasoline…” When I watched that I was like “Oh my God, someone else gets it!”

@ stipe42

As someone who lives in the wilds of Arizona currently, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. Lurves you for mentioning it!

Detroit Lions ftw, btw..!!!!!! Worst team in the league, baby!!!

Black coffee when it's too hot to start drinking, autumn leaves, and chlorine.

Ditto on that gasoline smell. The others: books, clean linen, snow, beach, coffee, cinnamon, Christmas tree, earth.....come to think of it I am beginning to sound like a commerical for Demeter...

1. I'm sorry, but my #1 is and will be always be vagina. My ex-wife didn't trim down there, which trapped her natural scent close and would drive me wild.
2. Fresh-cut grass.
3. Fresh coffee.
4. Rum-raisin apple pie, just out of the oven.

Sweet grass, right after it rains.

Rain on hot tarmac/cement, at the end of Spring/start of Summer.

It smells of youth.

Apple orchards. We usually go on the first really crisp fall day, and the smell of hay, apples, cider, donuts, bad coffee, and wood smoke all mingling together just makes me so content. Fall is my favorite time of year!

I do also love the smell of the first big snow of the year. Everything smells so clean and new!

the streets of NYC -- it's been ten years since I lived there, and every time I return it almost makes me cry I miss it so much.wethotdogs-urine-trash-roastchestnuts-taxifarts. God, it's beautiful.

Espresso. I love the smell of properly brewed espresso. It haunts me dreams. I've been working on a story/novella/novel/dear-Godtopus-why-won't-you-stop-writing-it based off this obsession for years. Keep your filthy sugar-pumps off of my precious espresso. For every trace of toothache inducing vanilla in my cup, I will thrash you soundly with your foam-straining spoon.

Yet, if I get too close to the espresso (even smelling it too long) at the wrong time, I can give myself a migraine. Which is another way of proving that deep down, I hate myself more than I hate my worst enemies. Next, I'll develop a taste for sticking my tongue in electrical sockets.

Good dry red wine, buttered rum, and whiskey. (I promise I'm not that bad of a drunk.)

Hot asphalt.

I second the smell of the rain in the desert. It sets my mind on fire.

I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet that the next time I smell Budapest, with its interesting mix of the fumes of dying buses, homeless people, sausage, bread, fire-water sweating from old men, and the Danube, I will just cry and cry from missing it and its gorgeous wretchedness. That smell became life to me.

I love the smell of a field on a hot summer day. Especially after the sun has started to go down and it's cooling off, but the smell in the air is of sun warmed dirt and grasses.

My favorite used bookstore smells like old books and dust, and I love it. There's also a bakery a few blocks from my apartment building, and when I pass it at night, it smells like cinnamon buns, because they do their baking at night.

Parking garages. They don't all have it, but some have this indescribable smell, and I take deep whiffs as I scurry to my car.

And woodsmoke in the crisp air during the first days of fall. And fresh kitty when she comes inside and her fur is all fluffy and cold.

Magnolia blossoms, and honeysuckle that sweet refreshing floral yummmyness. I just love it, also the smell of a cooking artichoke.

My cat used to nap on his back and toast his belly in a pool of sunshine for hours...and I miss that warm furry smell.

Old hockey arena smell, and also skunks...I'm disturbed.

Elusive, my husband loves the smell of skunk, too. He grew up in the country & he says it reminds him of home.

ZombieNurse, me too. I am blessed with SuperNose! I can't hear for shit (mumps when I was little killed all nerves in my left ear), my eyes are only good for distances, but I can home in on, identify, ask WTH with scents. Where others go, "Did you hear that?" I am all, "Do you smell that?" Also, such and such smells like such and such tastes, and vice versa.

And Mr Creepy Creeperton, I too love cigarettes on people, especially when mingled with beer. (Daddy issues? Maybe, but who cares?)

I love citrus especially grapefruit. I love the smell of blacktop mixed with chlorine because it smells like Six Flags, and if you add some fried food and beer mingled with 98 degrees it smells like the State Fair of Texas.

I love how my little brother's skin smells slightly sour and even though he's no longer little and has a kid of his own, whose scent is slightly sweeter than his daddy's was, my brother still smells like the little baby I loved so very much.

But I think my favorite scent is what 6:00 am Christmas morning smells like: A pine-needle tree covered in thick, round smelling Ivory Snow "snow," and edge of the teeth sharp smelling tinsel, mixed with the smell of a turkey in the oven, and left-over fire/open fireplace/flue still open so there is cold coming down the chimney. Add the paper of wrapped presents, wine in glasses from Christmas eve, and the hot smell of our old tree lights (bought in '64 or so) and you have a scents/sense of my childhood.

-Baking bread
-When you open up a book or something from, like, the 1960s and it smells kind of dusty and papery and maybe a little moldy
-New shower curtain liners
-Potting soil
-The first time you turn on the heat in the winter and it kicks out all of its old whatever, and it smells kind of like burnt hair and dust bunnies (or maybe it's just my rickety-ass apartment where that happens)

does the adventureland picture have to do with amusement parks, or that adventureland was set in Pittsburgh

Posted by: Ja Ja Ja Ja at October 16, 2010 6:09 PM
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Both. The amusement park smell I described is specifically the smell of Kennywood, and apparently other parks as well. The coaster grease smell seems particularly strong around the Jackrabbit and Thunderbolt, iirc, and the french fry grease from the Potato Patch, which are the best fries I've ever had. It costs like $34.95 to get inside the park to buy them, but they're worth it. The scent of chlorine drifts from the water rides from time to time. That's just a bonus.

-Matches
-Fried Plantains. I smell them and I'm five again.
-Film Developer & photo labs
-Barbeque
-New sneakers
-Books, magazines, and paper. Especially warm paper right out of a laser printer.
-Gasoline
-My cat
-Sharpies. For real.
-Bacon

ORIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLES!!!

OK, so when you get high enough up in the mountains, you get this early morning smell that's unlike anything else. To me, it smells like cold, but I realize that nobody else understands the vague imagery of my perpetually sleep-deprived brain, so I've been trying to figure out how to explain it better. Basically, it's ridiculously fresh -- a dry wind, frost, dust, and frigid water (yes, that has a smell!). It's similar, but not quite identical, to the smell of a really perfectly crisp fall morning. And I could definitely go on for hours about this, but I'm pretty sure everyone who's actually reading posts in this thread saw "Orioles," laughed at me, and tuned out.

Woodsmoke, the sea, my granddad's carpentry workshop, and my husband's hair.

So many awesome and utterly amazing smells already listed (looks like we need to have a safety-first gasoline fight next Jibacon, guys!)...I'll add:

freshwater lake
baking banana bread
sesame oil
amber resin, bergamot
and my ex's sweat.

dammit.

Rain on asphalt. Especially hot asphalt. Rain on grass. Rain.

Whoever said a bag of good pot- totally.

Peppers grilling.

Citrus.

Women

Myysharona - Ye Gods, can it rain in South Louisiana. Ive never seen anything like it. You can be driving along in totally clear weather, then instantly doused in sheets and sheets of the heaviest rain imaginable. It gets so heavy that not only can you not see other cars until they're less than 10 feet away, but you can't see enough of the road to pull over or get off the highway. You're skittering around because the road is flooding, and tractor-trailers are wizzing past at 80 miles per hour. Suddenly you see a light ahead, and the front of your car emerges into a perfect sunny summer day, and you can look back at the huge gray wall of water you just emerged from. It's the craziest, most terrifying experience I ever had driving, and I've been in a car that drove off a cliff!

Oh, yes! Off and Barbeque accelerant! This means camping, and I am simultaneously appreciating and hurrying the demise of nature like I love to do.

A slice of hot bread right out of the oven slathered in butter. The sweet cream smell steaming off the bread makes my toes curl.

Also skunk.

I'm with McSquish. I love the smell of fall, and it is easily my favorite time of year. There's a little town in New York I visited named Westfield that has a Welch's manufacturing plant (it used to be the Welch's corporate HQ). The village bills itself as "The Grape Juice Capital", and almost every home has a grape arbor. In the fall, the ENTIRE TOWN smells like crisp fall leaves and Concord grapes. It is THE BEST-SMELLING TOWN EVAR.

Boiling crawfish. The intensity of the seasonings we use makes both your eyes and your mouth water.

My Grandma's house, lilacs and sweet milky baby breath.

Chainsaw - that particular mix of gasoline AND fresh sawdust reminds me of my Dad...

I almost forgot: the smell of neoprene and sea salt on my skin. I had a job where my route to work was along the pacific coast highway, so my buddy and I would get up early and hour the water for an hour or so on our way to work. We'd hose off in the parking lot, but you need soap to shake that smell, so I'd always carry the faintest scent of that throughout the day. Days where I surfed were always the best days at work.

My ex girlfriend always wore some unknown (to me) perfume that would oddly make me think "you're gonna be a kick-ass old lady." Then I came to France and quickly learned that the really classy, laid back older women wear the exact same thing. I still don't know what it is, but any time I ran into her after we broke up, I'd have to bury my shirt in the bottom of the laundry hamper immediately after I got home to prevent myself from burying my nose in it for days.

-The smell of a new Barbie's legs. The latex and powdery smell of new plastic is like childhood.
- Lilacs
- Puppy belly. Fat, pink puppy belly. Puppy breath for honerable mention.
- Cum.

I hate being late to these kinds of things. I love the smell of autumn. It's just . . . autumn. The air is cool and the leaves are changing. It smells like high school football and damp grass and, shit. It smells like autumn.

my dad's tobacco
my mum' spanish cologne that she would always try to spray on me though I hated it at the time
freshly slathered meat at the butcher shop in front of my house when I was a kid
the smell of clean towels after you puked your guts out for 24 hours
the old cinema I used to go when I was little, no cinema theater has ever smelled the same. I still look for it when I go to the movies and I hate the smell of new car the chairs have often now

I really love the smell of Smith Jr at night when he's sleeping and gets a little sweaty. He is approaching puberty now, so that may change one day soon. I can't smell Miss Smith, but I think it's because she smells like me (or so Mr Smith says).

The smell of cold air just before it starts to snow.

London in the wintertime. The Isle of Skye in the summertime.

Tapas and sherry in an old, old bar in Madrid.

And gin and limes.

New barbie...right out of the package...

A true ginger's nutsack.

For years I tried to save up for a computer and could never quite manage it on my shitty salary. One birthday, I get a call from my best friend telling me I need to be home at a certain time to receive a delivery--she bought me a new computer. Awesome, right? For nearly a solid year, I would pause by the door to the "office" (formally, room for junk that doesn't fit anywhere else) and breathe in the plastic-y smell of new computer. I'm so sad it's faded now. It reminded me of how awesome toys would smell when you first broke them out of the package.