Monday, January 12, 2009

Scents of Place: Brooklyn



This is quite a day for smellscapes.  Niche fragrance house Bond No. 9, which specializes in perfumes themed after specific New York 
neighborhoods (Riverside Drive, for example, or Broadway Nite)
put out a press release promoting its latest offering: Brooklyn.

It features the usual marketing rhetoric, with a mix of Imagery Voice
a unisex scent with a desirably masculine attitude
and Ingredient Voice
notes of cardamum, geranium leaves, and cedarwood.
Gawker contributor Hamilton Nolan teed it up for ridicule
My Brooklyn cologne would feature essences of kielbasa,
Newports, and BQE exhaust fumes.
The ensuing snarkfest in the comments produced a few smellscape gems. My favorites:
Pabst Blue Ribbon, cheap cigar guts, subway urine,
and Peaches Geldof’s armpits

Three day old PBR cans, krylon, crack smoke, and
old bong with a topnote of BO.

Guys, we should buy this now. It’ll be twenty times
the price in two years thanks to scentrification.

Silly marketers . . . what about the sea of skinny
man-legs in tight jeans made you think
“desirably masculine attitude,” pray tell?


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My neighborhood smells like expensive suits, mimosa, frangipanis, pine trees and political scam bags.
The palace of Mr. Governor is my neighbor.