Capturing The Scents Of The City, One Bottle Of Perfume At A Time

Bond No. 9 has created a perfume line in homage to nyc, with the ambitious task of creating separate scents for the many disparate neighborhoods in our great city, as well as scents for the Hamptons and Fire Island. And in this universe, only Manhattan exists. Sorry Brooklyn, in spite of what your guide book says. The photo to the right shows an advertisement in last weeks NY Times for The Scent of Peace, which is part of the Midtown collection, for reasons that are unclear. There are a total of 33 scents listed on their site, and though I have never sniffed any of them, I imagine they all smell like perfume.

Browsing through the selection, there are scents which attempt to capture the essence and smells, apparently, of a number of neighborhoods that one might not really want to smell in a bottle. Chinatown for one. Thoughts and smells of Chinatown have never preceded a daydream sequence whereas I imagine spraying it's scents all over me, but I'm not really a cologne wearer anyways.

Wall St.? What does Wall St. smell like? Cocaine? It used to smell like money I imagine, but now...it might smell more like burning money. I could see how that scent, with a touch of fruity accents, and just the right amount of some special sauce, could be a pleasant smell. For 14 year olds and men who spend much of their free time at bars.

Or how about Nouveau Bowery? Not the Bowery, which Bond No. 9 evidently determined to be to downmarket and smelly for even this line of perfumes, but Noveau Bowery, "The sweet scent of skid row transitioning to ultra-modernity." Ahh yes...That smells so good. Calgon, take me away.

And then we have Riverside Drive. It's not a road or bikepath I frequent, and I wonder how good the Hudson smells, along side a highway of speeding cars. But Bond No. 9 has captured that one of kind smell, and put in a bottle.

If any of these seem appealing, it would be the scents capturing our beaches at Coney Island, Fire Island, and the Hamptons. A cool breeze, lemonade, the bright sun, that is a scent I would like to wear.