Follow Your Nose

Not long ago, I set out in pursuit of a really good teriyaki sub on the recommendation of my sister. Big John’s, a joint on Yates Avenue in the city of Commerce, was my destination. It was a long drive, but the directions were perfect. The alternating odors that greeted me in the parking lot, though, threw me totally off track.

Chocolate. Sour apple. Peach.

Nothing close to teriyaki approached my nostrils. I entered and read the menu. Nothing chocolaty. I inquired. The Asian man behind the counter gestured around the corner.

So, after ordering my teriyaki sub, I headed in that direction. I saw a sign that read Gold Coast Ingredients. Inside, Laurie Goddard, vice president of Gold Coast, explained that the company manufactures kosher, organic, all-natural flavors for food. When I commented on the chocolate smell, she said, “It’s interesting everyone senses a different smell.” I asked her what she smelled at that moment. She sniffed. “Maple, maybe . . .”

I went back to the car and ate my sandwich. The air reeked of blueberries. It was right then, my olfactory senses heightened, that I decided to wake up and smell Los Angeles. I would take a drive and explore the city as I never had before--at least not consciously: with my nose.

A few weeks later, I made a beeline for “Watts Adjacent,” my nickname for my old neighborhood. I once associated Watts with the smell of dead dog because there was almost always a bloated, about-to-burst beast on some street. Not so much anymore.

Heading east on Century Boulevard, I passed a city sign: “Magnolia Square.” I wondered whose dream it was to line this street with magnolias, wondered when the first one was chopped down and replaced by a sidewalk-busting ficus. The fresh orangy smell of magnolia, that smell that makes me wish that I could jump like Kobe to fetch a high-up bloom, was about to burst. But it didn’t quite fill the air.

So I kept on driving until I arrived at a sweet spot in this desert of a neighborhood: the Watts Senior Center Rose Garden. What looked to be a 20-foot-high chain-link fence enclosed regimented beds of rose bushes. As I laced my fingers through the fence, the padlock rattled. Clink. A Ft. Knox of flowers.

A man approached. “Come back in late April or early May. They’ll be in bloom then.” I promised I would. As I walked away, I heard a pop and up jumped a citrus smell. I looked around, then down. A sprig from a mock orange bush peeked out from underfoot. I picked it up and looked for its source. It wasn’t within noseshot. I stuck the sprig in the bud vase next to my steering wheel. Lovely.

Suddenly, something smelled electric-y, like a toaster or iron blowing out. I drove on.

Motoring north on Central Avenue, I approached Slauson Avenue. I slowed down as I neared the Tampico Spice Co. I inhaled deeply, relishing the scents of cinnamon, sage, curry and other exotic spices from far-off places that I couldn’t immediately pick out as I started to go by the imposing, half-block-long building. Far-off places like Costa Rica, like Madagascar. Lucky me: A train halted traffic and prolonged my lingering. Tarragon. Rosemary. Vanilla. Cayenne. Especially the cayenne.

And then I was off. As I hit La Cienega Boulevard, the oil wells looked like they were doing something nasty. I guess they were. They were pumping oil, and I smelled it as I passed. Trying to count the pumps, I missed my turn at Stocker Street. Quickly, I doubled back to sniff what’s up on “The Boulevard.” Crenshaw.

No arch, fountain or lighted sign marks the northern entry into the Crenshaw neighborhood. A curtain of scented smoke does. It’s Phillips Bar-B-Que, at the corner of Crenshaw and Adams, housed in what used to be Mr. Jim’s. “You need no teeth to eat my beef,” went his radio slogan. That said, a nose sure helps these days, given the pungent aroma outside Phillips. I took it in before making a U and getting onto the 10 East.

The driver behind me seemed determined to make me exit at Arlington. Car exhaust. Diesel fuel. A ripe homeless encampment. I turned up the music as if it would sweeten the stink. There are limits even to Carmen Lundy’s singing. Thankfully, up popped a waft of honeysuckle. There, too, was that electric smell again, my sister’s hair burning in the morning.

I headed north, crossed Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and passed under the Chinatown arch straddling North Broadway. I slowed down. Open shop doors emitted the smells of garlic and dried fish and ginseng. I tried to sniff out the scallion pancakes of the Mandarin Deli. As I departed, the smells fell away as quickly as they had risen.

Leaving C-Town, I got another blast of that short-circuiting smell. I looked to the left, and there was the MTA Gold Line. I elected to move to higher ground.

A friend once described the smell of the eucalyptus trees on Laurel Canyon as “absolute sensuousness after a rain.” Lucky me. It had rained the day before my drive. After getting lost, I broke down and called Lynn, a former co-worker. “Turn at Wonderland and you’ll see some short trees in front. The bigger ones are in the back.”

Finally, Wonderland. First there was stillness. Then a breeze swept through, animating a million green blade-like leaves. They became rubbing flints, flaunting their full bouquet. The aroma under the giant trees was intoxicating, fluorescent, if a smell can be fluorescent. Was it just me, or is the wind fairer up there? Heavenly. Nice. Nasally? Forget the Vicks. Zip up Laurel Canyon and take a deep breath.

I continued on Laurel Canyon and over into the Valley. I had no idea where I was going. The Valley is, for the most part, a mystery to me. I ended up on Roscoe Boulevard and then drove west on the advice of my friend Ariane, a teacher and Latin food fiend. My head was turned right, then left by the savory, sizzly smells coming from food trucks parked off and along Roscoe. These are the garden-variety taco trucks that dot Los Angeles. I stopped at one near White Oak around which a small crowd had gathered.

I got out and ordered my first-ever plate of carne asada. A Latino lady peered down at me from the sliding glass window through which she took up cold cash and handed down hot food. The sizzling steak provided a soundtrack to the smells of lemon and lime juice, garlic, onions and red peppers. Cilantro. “Hot,” the lady said, handing me my plate.

Back in my car, something said head west. I rolled my windows up a block before the corner of Fairfax Avenue and 6th Street because that spot gets a little stinky from what seems to be a combination of sewage and tar. Once I was safely past, I rolled the window back down, and my nose perked up: Where was that jasmine smell coming from? I never did figure it out.

Next, I took the long way to nowhere in particular, sniffing all the way. I found myself at the Mormon Temple on Santa Monica Boulevard. A huge, uniformly green lawn spread out before me like a blanket. “It’s mowed every Wednesday, unless it rains,” Jeff Miller, an assistant with the temple’s public affairs office, told me later. The angel Moroni, high above, presides over the mowing every week. I imagine him trumpeting to the gardener, “You missed a spot.” If the pastoral and tangy smell of fresh-cut grass sends you, drive by the temple one Wednesday.

By now, I was on olfactory overload. What, I wondered, would be the sorbet for smells, a palette cleanser for the nose? I crept toward the edge of the continent. It’s so easy to forget that the Pacific Ocean--our imposing, shared backyard of endless water--is so close.

I smelled it before I saw it. An aromatic swirl of salt and sun and surf went to my head like something good. Once on the beach, the wind tossed up the warm, sweet funk of seashells and sand granules. An occasional breeze carried the scent of bananas, chocolate, coconut. I looked around. Sunbathers were slathering on sunscreen. I sat for a while, marveling at the coming and going tide lapping California and tossing a welcome spray. The sun began to set, bringing a sense I’d never noticed before. The aroma of the beach as it cooled off became less intense, calmer. Some people say that each beach has a distinct smell. I’ll have to sniff them all out another day.

As I drove home, I spied the drivers around me, their windows rolled up tight. They didn’t know what they were missing.