Sometimes, when you’re driving on a long, impermanent-feeling road in the middle of nowhere, you drive through a cloud of manure stink, the hot, enthusiastic smell dumbly lingering around some farmland. It smells like what it is, acres of crap, but it’s pretty OK to be reminded that acres of crap exist, and for them to be reminded of you.
Usually I get gently smacked by the smell of garbage day in Sunset Park, never hard enough to truly mind, never soft enough not to notice. The variations of the garbage terroir here are a biodiversity that I do not particularly cherish. But on a just-not-freezing night made of air that feels like cold cream, the garbage might smell kind of nice. Little mounds of it are standing around at the lip of the curb, like non-creepy smiling strangers.
Pete Beatty 