Although we rarely navigate the city by our noses, smells have a way of becoming inextricably linked with certain locations.
Spacing Montreal recently caught wind of a photo contest that challenges Montrealers to capture our city’s distinctive odors in an image. Alexandre Cv, the event organizer, challenges participants to go beyond the obvious (bbq chicken and piles of doggy doo-doo) and explore their surroundings with a sense that rarely gets much exercise.
He points out the pizza-smell that permeates Berri metro station as an example of an odor by which many Montrealers can get their bearings.
It’s a friendly, for-fun contest and everyone is invited to participate: all you have to do is Submit up to 3 photos to photodanslaville@yahoo.com cemomentmagique@yahoo.ca by November 1st.
The submissions will be projected on November 7th at Galerie Espace projet, (353 rue Villeray) and a jury will be on hand to select the winners. We’ll also post the best pics up here on Spacing Montreal and stir up some discussion about how we experience the city with our noses.
Alexandre Cv has previously held similar events with the themes “Turquoise dans la ville“, “Gold dans la ville” and “Paranormal dans la ville.”
See the Facebook page for more info.
Photo by Alexandre Cv
4 comments
I’ve also walked through Berri-UQAM as it smells of pot from people smoking by the vents under UQAM’s pavilion at Berri and de Maisonneuve. And I like the smell of hops from Molson’s, baking bread found in a few places such as Pain Doré’s bakery in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, the first dusty scent of wet concrete after a nice long dry smell, the scent of the métro, and Centre Eaton’s food court at lunch time.
I also like the smell of the metro! I thought people would think I was nuts if I tried to describe it…sort of sweet (the way cigar smoke smells sweet), warm and rubbery.
The metro smell comes partly from the peanut oil that’s used on the wooden brake blocks. It’s so distinctive that if you happen to get a whiff from one of the vents that’s not obviously connected to any metro entrance, it’s absolutely unmistakable.
Montreal scents that come to mind: bagels baking in Mile End, coffee also in Mile End and elsewhere, right now the smell of leaves just beginning to decompose, the delicate smell of dried herbs and things in Chinatown.
Oh, interesting, I was thinking about this very thing this afternoon.. scents of the city.. and how cool it would be if we could access scents online the way we can access sounds of the city, as such:
http://cessa.music.concordia.ca/soundmap/en/
Anyway. By far one of my favourite scents of the city is walking on Mount Royal in autumn when the leaves have fallen, that spicy, sweet maple, oak, goldenrod, rose blossom-like smell Laurentian forests give off, and how excellent it is that we have a forest right in the middle of the city to experience these sorta things. Scents. Nature. Cityscapes. Nature-city-sound-smellscapes. :)