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Oh, God! It's back. The maple syrup smell that has occasionally made appearances in NYC over the last couple years is back! We can smell it in the office right now. "NY1 has been receiving calls from as far south as Lower Manhattan and as far north as Harlem." [NY1]
Maple Syrup Smell is Back!
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4:14 PM on Fri Feb 29 2008
By Sheila
2,778 views
73 comments
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Okay, fine, I confess--I poured maple syrup all over the city.
And I was the that poured sulphur everywhere when the whole city smelled like gas last year, too.
It's people. It's people.
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SECRET MILITARY EXPERIMENTS, TESTING TO SEE AN URBAN POPULATION'S REACTION TIME TO A GAS ATTACK.
When my baby pees himself he smells like maple syrup. Then my husband and I put him over our pancakes. Yummy!
@CodePink: I poured ass all over Alphabet City.
This happened at a really old factory I worked at. Turns out that the building in the early, early 1900's had been a candy factory in it's infancy, and the smell was related to that.
Perhaps NYC is built upon some sort of prehistoric Candyland?
@CodePink: That's my dream. Maple syrup is my favorite thing of all time. I might be OK with drowning in it.
Whoever smelt it...
@LolCait: CLOVERFIELD MONSTER WANTS WAFFLES!!!
@AndIAmTellingYou: Dealt it!
Don't you worry that it's just a sweet sweet diversion? Is some company handing out pink slips again?
Well, it was either Maple Syrup or New Car Smell, so consider yourselves lucky.
Does Cloverfield give off a smell?
@fiveinchtaint: can we talk about maple sugar candy? how about those newfangled maple cookies with the maple filling? maple butter? oh, I could go on and on and on about maple. maple maple maple maple... even the word is scrumptious!
@the supergoddess: Grandma?
@fiveinchtaint: When we were little, my siblings and I used to take cupfulls of freshly fallen snow and pour maple syrup on them. Snow cones!
Entities that could be behind this:
IHOP
Aunt Jemima
Bisquick
The state of Vermont
Terrorists
My guess? The creators of Flippin' Flapjack:
[images.boardgamegeek.com]
@CodePink: Laura Ingalls?
I've smelled this smell in New York occasionally for the past decade. I have no idea why it became a news item suddenly last year. Maybe I just have a sensitive nose. Now, can anyone explain the intermittent banana candy smell in Long Island City?
I'll take maple syrup over the normal cloud of ass that usually wafts in from NJ anyday.
Sorry, it was just too easy.
@the supergoddess: You're a pepper too! Those maple cookies are insane! I never buy them because I'd eat them all immediately. I've not yet found a maple candy that gives me the same maple boner as the cookies or the syrup. Suggestions? Best maple syrup I had was on a maple-infused (!) waffle somewhere in Vermont. But I was super hung over so I might be exaggerating the memory. Maple butter. Mmm.
@CodePink: Can't believe I never thought of that!
@LolCait: Well, it's been longer than 10 seconds. So I'm pretty sure it's not Northrax.
Boston has supposedly had a molasses smell in certain parts for years now...
[en.wikipedia.org]
@InternMary: Personally I like it better over pancakes, but do your thing.
@Itsjustcatnip: Ohhhhhhhhhh! Late-entry commie!
Probably too contextual, though.
I would like to bottle and sell to homesick NYC expats that found-nowhere-else scent of piss, machine oil and ozone.
@CodePink: Ah, youth. We did the same thing with vanilla extract and sugar. In retrospect we should have tried to snort it, a la "Better Off Dead."
@Michael Jahn: Found year-round in the subways but citywide whenever the temperate exceeds 80 degrees.
@Fuzzy_duffel_bag: Pa?
@fiveinchtaint: There's still time.
@sedated: Yeah, that's some fancy stuff right there. Delicious!
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: Boston smells like young college ass as soon as the sun comes out...in late May.
i want to know who these people are that are making calls to report smelling maple syrup.
I think it's Mapplethorpe Syrup.
@fiveinchtaint: those cookies do something wholly unnatural to me. I negotiate with myself before buying them, like "okay, you can have a box but you're not eating for at least a day and a half afterwards. and that'll cost you an extra half hour on the arc trainer, plus four sets of walking lunges." "ouch, four sets? okay, fine - fair enough." "but just one box! I see that look in your eyes." "YOU NEVER LET ME HAVE ANY FUN!"
@DorothyMantooth: Hah! You are invited over for the rerun of that episode.
I've been smelling it on the UWS for five years, maybe more. Early morning is most common. Once at 3 in the morning I went out looking for it, thinking it a local phenomenon.
It's more malty than mapley. Or malted maple.
Lately it's been inside, even tho in winter all the windows were clothes. Earlier this week the smell got into my clothes it was so strong.
@CodePink: Ma. Perhaps Nellie Olsen. Gotta change that avatar picture.
Boston's molasses stockpiles were due to rum production. I don't know how much rum production their was in NY. However, I do know that on the Upper East Side there are remains of buried cisterns from all the old German breweries, which apparently give shelter to mosquitos.
Smelt it last night on Riverside, too. Made me want to lick the sidewalks. Yum.
@weazel: because what? we're all a buncha fahkin' drunks? (yes, yes we are actually. stereotypes come from somewhere!)
@the supergoddess: Haha! I think I just offended the office old guy for laughing out loud.
Where the hell is PimpMyCouch for this convo? I'd be curious to know if the Canadians really enjoy maple syrup as much as their gift shops lead me to believe they do.
Oh - maple syrup on grape nuts cereal - gravel-y to heavenly.
I think it's part of Canada's subversive plan to invade America.
@In Other News...: Awesome! I. Am. There!
@Ummwhat: Umm. I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but urine that smells like maple syrup can be a sign of a serious and life-threatening endocrine problem. Don't mean to panic you or anything. Just trying to give you a heads up:
[en.wikipedia.org]
@weazel: First let me say that I do this all the time! So I'm totally not writing this to make fun! (Promise!)
But I think "all the windows were clothes" is just beautifully poetic in that fashion-week-just-ended kinda mid-winter-blues-y sense. Makes me wanna design somethin'!
@Furious George: And on that note...have a nice weekend!
Having watched There Will Be Blood attentively, I think we're experiencing "seepage". Daniel Plainview will arrive soon to drink our mikshake.
@Furious George:
That was oddly servicey of you.
@dado: I really didn't say that to be facetious, though. One of my best friends' newborn daughters suffered from this disease, and while rare, it can be serious. I'm just trying to help here.
Mass ketosis devolving from the resurgence of Atkins.
ZOMG I SMELL IT!!!!!1! I'm in the vicinity of... oh wait, Batman doesn't say where the BatCave is, why should I say where (REDACTED) is?
@She Blinded Me With Omniscience: That's right - America is like a great big old buffer zone for Mexico, isn't it? To protect it from those darn Canadians?