Aromas

"It's as if we've been peed on by a thousand cats and practically left for dead."

Stella shouldn't feel that the week's sometimes endless rains have give only her neighborhood that particular scent. A young friend of mine said something very similar about an area at UH-Manoa on Thursday. (Yeh, I know there are plenty cats on campus but not THAT many!)

Surprisingly, that drainage dump area at Magic Island has been neither noisey nor smelly, but the "waste water plant" at the Yacht Club corner has been positively reeking, can't sit at the picnic tables anywhere near it, even when the rains did stop.

Comments

Thanks for the quote and the props, Albert...

For what it's worth, though, the monkey pod trees at UH Manoa have been the primary source of that unpleasant P.U. smell on campus for as long as I can remember. It's odd, because there are no trees whatsoever in my neighborhood and the whole place still smells like cat pee - which makes it even more annoying, because there seems to be nothing remotely organic to pin the smells on.

That's what I miss about real neighborhoods like Manoa: the organic elements. Yesterday I was walking to my sister's new house in Manoa and I got to smell the rained-on grass and trees; even with the hint of decay from some of the plants getting squashed on the road, there was still that freshness in the air, that feeling of life and living things still thriving.

Before I moved to Hawaii, I read a book called Fax To Da Max (by the same people who brought you Pidgin To Da Max) and they once had this listing of The Best Smells in Hawaii. They listed Kaimuki as the best place to smell ripening mangoes... which is still true, if you live up in the 1st-to-21st Avenue areas and you're smack dab in the middle of summer.

Stella!

Anyway. The olfactory treats provided by the UH-Manoa campus are well known, and in fact, well documented. When I worked at Ka Leo, I recalled flipping through decades of archives and found more than a handful of stories about them.

So, of course, when some friends and I set out to launch an independent campus paper, one of the first stories we assigned was: Behind the many smells of the university

Cat pee is one common comparison. The other most frequent observation was one we chose not to print.

Thanks for that link, Ryan. Nice to be reminded that Ka Leo used to print an occasional article of interest, unlike this year's editions (for the most part).

Yes, that tree by Sinclair is just horrendous. When it's doing its thing, I make a determined effort to detour from the area. Not surprised thought was given to getting rid of it, although why they'd want to bother relocating it, I don't know. Thing never should have been planted there to begin with.

Ooops! Just noticed when posting that comment that Ryan wasn't talking about Ka Leo but about that "other" campus paper. Heh.

Could use some enterprising students to start another one this year.

Never having been at UH for classes, I can't express an opinion about the odor up there, but it would have to go some to beat the U of Arizona's mile-long mall of grass in March-April when they insisted on fertilizing the whole thing at once. I swear they got the fertilizer from the Ag department (organic, not biochemical).

ahh.. yet another reason I like Kailua. After the rain, it just smells nice and earthy and clean here.

It's the mosquitoes I can't stand.

Mmm. The smell of Hilo, the hilly, grassy, UHH campus on a sleepy, cool Sunday morning. Thanks for the memory...

My wife is immigrating form Thailand,and I was wondering if there was a community of Thai people living hear.

Maybe that will be interesting

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