the smells of los angeles

[totient]

Now that it's not so smoggy any more, I'm struck by the way smells linger in the desert without rain to knock them down. Passing through an intersection I smelled the sawdust smell of woodworking, but from recent rather than active construction. Parks smelled of flowering trees no longer in bloom. Steve Lubanski's bike shop had that oily bike shop smell outside it as well as in. There's not much of the fragrant native desert flora around in the built-up areas to compete, either, so it's easy to pick things out. Fascinating.

Comments

[muffyjo]

This is so exciting! And that's very interesting, with the ability to separate out the smells, I imagine that if you grew up there, you'd be more familiar with being able to name smells more specifically.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

well, except (a) it was more polluted then, and (b) I spent a lot of time growing up with a stuffy nose, which I've grown out of. Even so, I do remember being able to distinctly smell what people were making for dinner going down the street.