The Five Best Smells
Ben Domenech ·
April 21, 2012 at 11:05pm
I had the odd distinction of creating a hashtag the other day which became the number one trending hashtag in the world - in this case, #5bestsmells - which was chosen by all sorts of folks on Twitter as a spawning point for offering a public version of closely held sentiment. I view it as a sort of Proustian memory indicator of happiness and pleasure - my own #5bestsmells are, as follows: charcoal grill firing up, salt of the ocean, fresh cut grass, Light Blue on a woman, and bacon.
What's your own #5bestsmells, and what scents inspire various memories for you?
- Comment (87)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (3)
Comments:
Dec '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
Number 1 has to be freshly ground French Roast coffee. I suspect numbers 2 through 5, however, all involve bacon in some capacity.
When I was a kid, I loved the smell of gasoline. That was cured quickly after working as a pump jockey during HS.
Nina (by Nina Ricci) is fantastic as well - that happens to be the fragrance worn by my hot squeeze of 26 years. :-P
Dec '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
5. Puppy breath, garden loam tied for fifth,
4. Gardenia blossoms, closely followed by honeysuckle in fourth,
3. Thanksgiving turkey roasting, even better if someone else is cooking,
2. Bread baking,
1. My clean babies. Sorry, only mine, and only clean. I hope my future grandbabies can replicate that.
Oh, and above all (I know, it's more than five) -- chrism oil. That right there is what Heaven smells like, I'm thinking.
Jan '12
Re: The Five Best Smells
I'll assume you don't want us to include metaphors, so I'll leave off "the smell of a tyrant's defeat," which I expect to enjoy this November, but more concretely:
A glass of well aged La Tache,
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 12:39amThe California redwoods in a light morning's mist,
Smoked lamb with garlic and rosemary,
A glass of Rockpile Zinfandel,
An herb garden (with or without garlic and rosemary).
Sep '11
Re: The Five Best Smells
Oct '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
Every time I drive from my house into the Big City, I pass the french fry factory. Mmmmm…french fries!
Of course, there is the occasional disaster, but what a grand and widely distributed odour that was!
Re: The Five Best Smells
Ben, thank you for a great thread. The rest of the world can thank you for a great trending Twitter hashtag--I missed it.
My favorites: 1) freshly cut grass, which always takes me back to my Florida childhood; 2) The smell of the ocean, which for some unaccountable reason takes me back to summer Boston afternoons during the 80s, to the very moment when the sea breeze really sets up and the blistering heat abates; 3) the moisture-laden, deliciously cool, ozone-tinged outflow from an approaching thunderstorm--Florida again; 4) Running most anywhere in the West and, while approaching water, smelling the moisture before seeing its source; and 5) [gotta go with Diane E. here] the smell of a baby's head, which always reminds me of my three boys.
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 12:51amDec '11
Re: The Five Best Smells
1. Gardenias.
No comparable # 2-5. :)
Feb '12
Re: The Five Best Smells
Not one person said "new car smell".
Dec '11
Re: The Five Best Smells
You've inspired me; perhaps the waft of a crisp new dollar bill?
Nov '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
"White Shoulders" on the neck of a particular lady; freshly ground coffee from my supplier (my No. 3 from the Kaffeeklatsch in Huntsville) making in the pot; power smoke from a shotgun round on an autumn morning; smoke from a Dunhill (Las Palmas) #210; and, suppers cooking in the houses along my route from the Public Library to my house on late winter evening in the 1940's as I rode my bicycle home.
Sep '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
1. Confederate jasmine/narcissus in the dark2. Bohicket Creek after a lightning storm -- ozone, pluff mud, salt air3. Johnson's Baby Powder4. Bubblegum lipgloss in tenth grade on Charsy Ritter5. Original Coppertone
Re: The Five Best Smells
Oops. Diane's baby head thing made me forget the following (which replaces my smell # 4 in comment #26 above): The smell of Jet-A on an airport tarmac.
Mar '11
Re: The Five Best Smells
You beat me to number 1, Doc. I"m also a big fan of woodsmoke, which I produce from my fireplace in obscene amounts. I'll double KC's choice of incense burning on charcoal in a censer. That's three and four. Five would be redacted.
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 2:10amApr '11
Re: The Five Best Smells
The new car smell gives me a headache.
Sorry. :-(
Feb '12
Re: The Five Best Smells
EThompson
You've inspired me; perhaps the waft of a crisp new dollar bill? · 17 minutes ago
I like the smell of twenties better.
Feb '12
Re: The Five Best Smells
Charlotte
The new car smell gives me a headache.
Sorry. :-( · 9 minutes ago
No, don't apologize. I think it's kind of refreshing that just about every ones list has smells that just happen and don't cost you a thing to experience. I think it's great.
Dec '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
Natalie
EThompson
You've inspired me; perhaps the waft of a crisp new dollar bill? · 17 minutes ago
I like the smell of twenties better. · 1 minute ago
Benjamins! I wanna sniff me some Benjamins!
Nov '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
On first read, Diane, your #2 is extremely dark. Hiding something?
First off the top of my (still intact) head:
1. Freshly baked bread
2. Freshly baled wheat
3. Apple (or cherry) blossoms
4. A thick-rinded navel orange as it's being peeled
5. Trout on the grill (close tie with Turkey coming out of the oven).
Five worst smells (sorry, this'll have to do, I don't #tweet):
1. Someone else's old sweaty socks (for some reason we seem less sensitive to our own body odors)
2. Rotten potatoes
3. Bat urine
4. Decaying flesh
5. Fresh vomit (here I sense little difference in sensitivity to one's own)
Sorry to inject those into this mouth-watering thread. Arlo Guthrie once said, "You can't have a light without, like, a dark to put it in."
Jun '11
Re: The Five Best Smells
Have you ever smelled Turkish lemon cologne?
Every time I smell it it takes me back there.
Nov '10
Re: The Five Best Smells
Second thoughts:
Pine or Spruce in a wood kiln, and wet pottery clay. Don't know that I could decide which of my 5 to replace, though.
My five worst were hastily chosen.
To replace bat urine, I remember not far from our home in waterloo was a brewery across the road from a large fiberglass casting plant. There was nothing quite as bile-inducing as the natural/artificial combination stench of rotting hops and fiberglass resin wafting in the breeze on a wet fall day.
And to replace vomit (sorry, a worthy nominee): In Fresno we lived a few blocks from the Gallo winery (world's largest). Their compositing operation involved a half dozen or so large bulldozers that would turn the precious "leftovers" on a several-acre ripening field out back until "done". When the wind would shift just after they'd freshly turned the sludge...nothing compares. Often this would coincide with the days the farmers decided to spread pig manure.