Fresh Pine Scent!

New York is a city known for many things - one of which is the strange but always pungent smells that emanate from the numerous open sewers, street level dumpsters and sidewalk garbage cans that seem to cover the entire island. So strong are these smells that they can frequently make you wretch and dry heave if you inhale too deeply. As a pedestrian in this city you quickly adapt and learn to simply not breathe through your nose when appropriate.

With this huge quality of life issue dogging most New Yorkers it's often "refreshing" to discover a street level experience that actually presents you with a pleasant olfactory sensation. In Yorkville, the Upper East Side neighborhood in which I used to live, just such an experience would occur around Christmastime. In this neighborhood on 2nd Avenue between 90th and 91st streets was a rather large Christmas Tree market set up on the sidewalk. This particular block was ideally suited for this purpose because there was a park on the west side of 2nd avenue on the grounds of the Ruppert Towers which eliminated the problem of excess foot traffic from block residents competing with shoppers looking for that perfect Christmas tree. As a result of this rather light foot traffic, the market could extend halfway up the block on 2nd Avenue without preventing people from passing through on foot. The market itself consisted of trees lining opposite sides of the sidewalk allowing pedestrians to pass through even if they weren't in the market for a tree. For the 3 or 4 week period directly before Christmas I would deliberately pass through this market on my way home so as to enjoy the rich pine smell that these trees created. If you closed your eyes and walked a little bit slowly (ok - a LOT slower) you could imagine yourself hiking in the Adirondacks or snowshoeing in the Del Water Gap. When walking through the tall, 6-foot+ high trees not only could you smell the fresh pine but also you could not see the traffic on 2nd Avenue or any of the bars and markets/delis that dot the area. The smell combined with the visual impairment caused by the trees really transformed you to another world free of the oppression of the city just for a few moments.

Neighborhood residents never seemed to mind that this market was taking up valuable real estate on a crowded city street. Perhaps it was the collective spirit of the season that caused people to warm up to this idea. Or maybe it was the Christmas-inspired temporary sense of dislocation that people enjoyed.