The City in the Rain

This morning I climbed on the tram, bleary-eyed and rather cold for a Spring day. The sky was gray, still threatening another downpour and the ground was still slick with the sky's last offering. I felt the fresh, chill in the air, more akin to Fall than Spring.

As I stepped off the tram, surrounded by concrete sidewalks and skyscrapers, I was bombarded by a strange array of smells. Smells always heightened after a good downpour. Cigarettes, coffee and subway bread immediately hit my nose after retreating from the stale interior of the tram. They are always stuffy this time of year, with hordes of professional business people in their suits and shiny shoes all crammed together like sardines.

Cigarettes are a smell hard to avoid in a city. There is always someone in front of you, cigarette dangling between his or her fingers, the trail of white smoke lazily wafting towards you as you try desperately to hold your breath so as to avoid foul, stifling smell. After rain, the stale smell of cigarettes lingers in the air, mingling with the smell of coffee. Coffee is a warm, rich, inviting smell--one that invigorates rather than repulses. It's everywhere in the morning, drifting from cafes and coffee cups.

And Subway bread, a smell that is so distinctive that you immediately know you must be in the vicinity of a store where the sugary bread is slowly rising in an oven. It was a smell that quickly blotted out all other smells this morning.

As I rushed away from Subway, the freshening smell of rain hit my nose, quickly followed by dirt. The smell of a dirty city--the kind of smell that is only stirred up by a hot, stifling summers day or after a drenching rain. The kind of smell made of up actual dirt and soot, stale body odors from thousands of people, garbage that has been littered on the ground and no doubt a fair amount of piss. It is an unmistakable, metropolitan smell. It runs amok in the streets of New York and Paris--it no doubt has found its way to Melbourne.

I wrinkle my nose until I'm greeted by the faint smell of perfume. Although too much can choke you on the tram in the morning, just a hint of it drives the city smell from my memory. And so I continue my walk, greeted again by the smell of cigarettes, rubber, smoke, coffee and fresh rain until I scan my keycard and retreat into the office.

And while not all the smells are pleasant, I find them fascinating. They are what makes a city, uniquely a city. All the smell that linger on the concrete and bitumen remind me that it's a city full of people and life.