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When City Smells Turn Into Odor Violations
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 30, 2010
Modified Jun 30, 2010
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 30, 2010
Modified Jun 30, 2010
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New York City is filled with unique little scents, like 'em or not, and each turn of the corner can bring a new top note to your olfactory collection. Some say smell is the most nostalgic of all senses, so maybe one day down the road you'll get a whiff of hot fishy garbage and it'll take you back to all those sweltering summer days you spent in Chinatown. But for now, these smells are just a nuisance to some—and according to the Wall Street Journal, 311 gets 1000 odor complaints per year, pertaining to restaurants alone. Each one is then
investigated by the Department of Environment Protection, and only a small fraction get violations in the end.
One 65-year-old TriBeCa man, Allan Tannenbaum, told the paper that he suffers from "smell blasts" from a nearby Indian restaurant called Salaam Bombay—"Let's say you're having some cereal for breakfast and they start cooking. All of a sudden your Cheerios taste like tandoori chicken."
The restaurant owner, however, notes how some people love the smell, explaining, "We have an Indian restaurant and somebody doesn't like Indian food smell. But most of my customers come in and they feel the smell is so great, very tempting." And therein lies the problem: what smells bad to one, may smell like a delicious dinner to another. Case in point, one odor complaint made over the past month was against a bread shop in Carroll Gardens (we can only assume this was placed by a member of the Atkins army).
Some restaurants have spent thousands on specialists to change the direction of their exhaust system so their smell moves away from nearby residents, and Salaam Bombay's owner may rack up a bill close to $35K in efforts to appease Mr. Tannenbaum, who has caused quite a stink himself at community board meetings. If you think that's extreme, remember back to 2007, when one Upper East Side condo board sued a Subway sandwich franchise owner for half a million bucks because of the smell!
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Allan Tannenbaum
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Salaam Bombay
smell
violation
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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