There’s no poop. For all the times I’ve seen films that take place in San Francisco, I’ve never seen random poop on the sidewalk. Really?! Come on now! Everytime I walk down the streets of downtown SF, I walk around 2-3 piles of freshly-minted human fecal matter. And if not poop, definitely piss. If it’s wet and it’s trailing from a vertical surface, it’s probably piss. Going to work, just in the six blocks from the BART station to my office is like playing hopscotch around the lines of urine moving at different velocities trying to catch up to my feet.
But poop is not my point. Poop just exemplifies it. You see, poop is inextricably intertwined with the scent of a real city for me. It is. I inhale piss and it reminds me of that time I was walking along the Seine river in Paris, or walking out of the subway station to my friend’s apartment in Brooklyn.
Poop, piss, smoke, exhaust fumes, spittle, heavy duty detergents, hard water, hot asphalt, tar, jackhammer dust, rusty metal, discarded rotting coffee cups… THAT is the scent of a city! (LA always threw me off though. It smelled of asphalt, but it smelled of dried dying plants too. It was different.)
So, after having watched a few movies at the SF International Film Fest (I really liked “Sound of Noise”, look a plug!, but no really, the guy who played ‘Andres’ was super yummy hot…), I would like to propose to my fellow film-making friends: BRING BACK SMELL-O-VISION! I would drop money to watch images attached to scents: cookies, bread, old folks homes, closets, old boyfriend colognes, fresh hotel sheets, puppy fur, church confessionals, searing flesh, cigarette smoke, sun tan lotion, BBQ pork spare ribs, whatever! Don’t even need visuals, maybe just sound, don’t even need a story because scents bring their own stories to our own recollection of them.
The power of scent has never been truly harnessed.
??? Name a few scents that you’ve never forgotten.
I’ll start this one off with:
-Coty dusting powder always reminds me of my grandma (now deceased) giving me sniff kisses on my forehead temples.
I think I remember learning/reading somewhere (??) that our sense of smell is the “strongest” in that it last the longest and makes the deepest impression out of all of our senses. We might forget what something feels like (touch), looks like, sounds like, or tastes like, but we seem to NEVER forget what something smells like.
And the funniest thing is that it seems “universal” when…..
PersonA: EWWWWWW!!! Smell this….
PersonB: okay.
LOL.
I always know when I’m in “chinatown” or some other predominantly Asian parts of town….in just about any city or country in the world (that I’ve been to). They all seem to smell the same. The smell of the underground steam exhaust vents in NYC….as well as the subways & “streets” there are very deeply etched in my brain too. There was also an actual gigantic commercial bakery (think HUGE warehouse type factory-building) near where I grew-up and you could always smell the freshly baked bread when you were several blocks away…..my salivary glands are actually gearing up now. LOL.
And “pizza” always gets me too. 8-q”
The naturally occurring clay at my pre-school. The pre-school was a converted house with a big backyard. In that backyard you could dig into the ground in one corner and find this thick clay that was perfect for rolling out and making spiral snails, etc. Can’t really describe the smell – earthy? moist? But I’d know it if I sniffed it again.
Lilacs always remind me of playing outside with my cousins at my Grandpas house. Of course, chicken poop evokes the same memory.
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