Fragrance designer Ann Gottlieb takes a whiff of Chinatown (Beth Fertig/WNYC)

NEW YORK, NY August 25, 2006 —There’s nothing like turning a New York City corner and being nose to nose with a garbage truck in mid-August. It’s no secret that New York is more – well - aromatic during these warmer months. WNYC’s Beth Fertig followed her nose with fragrance designer Ann Gottlieb to figure out the distinctive scent that says “New York in the Summer.”

REPORTER: Every fragrance consists of a blend of smells. A single perfume for example may have as many as 200 different ingredients – some stronger than others.

So if the smell of New York City could be bottled, one major ingredient would have to be car exhaust. And anyone who’s ever watched a city dog, out for a walk, knows another powerful odor comes from that special place right by the sidewalk curbs.

GOTTLIEB: There is such a putrid smell coming from that, that just is so unpleasant.

REPORTER: “That” is a sewer grate. Ann Gottlieb literally stopped in her tracks when she noticed the odor while walking in Herald Square.

GOTTLIEB: This to me is also reminiscent of the summer in NY. Because you smell this kind of garbagey sewer-like smell, it’s awful, it smells a little sulpher-like.

REPORTER: Gottlieb usually spends her days smelling things that are much more pleasant. She’s a fragrance designer who’s worked for Calvin Klein, Elizabeth Arden and Christian Dior, just to name a few. She’s sort of an olfactory sociologist who can tell you which scented soaps are popular in every part of the globe. And she knows the science of scent.

GOTTLIEB: Fragrance diffuses more in the heat.

REPORTER: It’s something scientific involving molecules speeding up in the heat, right?

GOTTLIEB: Absolutely, molecules. It’s affected as well by humidity. The higher the humidity the more it would be held in the air which is why you notice odor more, garbage smells unpleasant smells especially.

REPORTER: But this pungent blend of car exhaust, sewage and garbage is also competing with nicer smells. Just take a walk through Little Italy.

GOTTLIEB: There it is. As you approach it you can just smell the delicious smell of baking bread right in the air. We should go inside.

REPORTER: We enter Parisi’s bakery on Mott Street, drifting on a sweet cloud of fresh-baked bread and a hint of something sour.

GOTTLIEB: Ah, it’s baking bread mixed with pickling spices. I smell things like vinegars mixed with the bread.

REPORTER: But the semolina loaves and baguettes we see in the window are baked at another site nearby. Joe Parisi says we were actually lured inside by the warm scent of the pizza place across the street.

PARISI: That’s Lombardi’s pizza oven. They burn the coal to heat up the oven, so that’s what you smell.

REPORTER: So what are we smelling in here?

PARISI: Roasting peppers, we just got done roasting. That’s good old pepper being burned!

REPORTER: Smells are deceptive that way; notoriously difficult to locate. City environmental officials are still stumped by the mysterious scent of burning sugar – or was it maple syrup? – that descended over Manhattan twice last fall.

We walk south through Chinatown, a cacophony of odors that boggles the senses. Gottlieb stops outside a grocery store on Grand Street.

GOTTLIEB: The combination of dried octopus or squid and what looks like anchovies mixed with the vegetables, I think it’s really quite interesting rather than something that I would have expected to be a little more unpleasant. It isn’t too fishy. REPORTER: I almost smell herbs in there?

We cross the street and find the cause outside another grocery: Dried mushrooms.

GOTTLIEB: They smell almost nutty in their dried form, and quite delicious. A bit earthy. Absolutely a really rich, dirty smell. Earthy in a positive way, earthy dirty not unpleasant dirty.

REPORTER: That other dirty, however, can be found just a few feet away

GOTTLIEB: Oh right here, right here is a wonderful garbage smell. Here we are on the corner with actual garbage to one side of us. And potentially very smelly food on the other side of us so this is a very good odor space right here.

REPORTER: So are you saying there’s an equalizing effect here, if you have enough of these food places outside will it get rid of the smell of the garbage?

GOTTLIEB: In fact that is the way fragrances are made sometimes. There are many malodorous ingredients that form the backbone of some fragrances. But because of the way they are blended and artfully, masterfully put together the ultimate compound is gorgeous.

REPORTER: Get ready for this it’s going to be pretty bad…

But some locations seem impossible to freshen up. We’re entering the subway elevator on Canal and Lafayette.

GOTTLIEB: I never thought about this. But it smells hot. A little bit about body odor. Maybe a little bit like feet. That’s what it smells like in here. It smells like dirty feet.

REPORTER: Our fellow passenger has just one word for it:

PASSENGER: Horrible.

GOTTLIEB: Define horrible, horrible in what kind of way? PASSENGER: Well it have a bad smell.

REPORTER: Gottlieb says that reaction is typical. Humans have a difficult time describing smells. We tend to use adjectives like “good” or “bad” because we aren’t used to relying on our noses like other animals. And our sense of smell is located near the part of the brain that stores emotions with other senses. That’s why smells can produce intense reactions and memories.

GOTTLIEB: I smell feet again.

REPORTER: We’re on the subway platform under 7th Avenue and 33rd Street now.

GOTTLIEB: It’s the same smell as we had in the elevator. It smells like dirty feet. Smell it? Ugh!

REPORTER: As we board the uptown express, these New Yorkers offer their own descriptions.

WOMAN: Bathroom. Urinal (laughs)

WOMAN: It smells worse than my daughter’s pampers. (laughs)

But maybe the subway isn’t a lost cause. If good smells can outweigh the bad above ground, Ann Gottlieb thinks they also have vast potential below ground.

GOTTLIEB: Maybe private money might do it. A fragrance company or someone who had a vision.

REPORTER: So we could see subway elevators sponsored by a fragrance company to make them smell better?

GOTTLIEB: Well if you can have parts of highways that kept clean because of contributions by individuals, why couldn’t you sponsor the air in an elevator or subway stop? This might be an idea born on the Broadway express.

REPORTER: Now try bottling that one. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.