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Scent of Your Neighbor's Habits

2006_08_cookiesheet.jpgDid you read the NY Times Real Estate article about smelling other apartments' goings on, like their cooking, their smoking, and letting their dogs pee and think, "Wow, that's totally my apartment"? There were a bunch of great quotes. Like:

“Notwithstanding the fact that in New York everyone likes to complain about everything, as New Yorkers, we’re just not accustomed to having complete privacy in our ear-space, our sightline and our nose-space.” - lawyer Jacqueline A. Weiss

“It’s very common that in a 200-unit building, you’re going to have something smelling somewhere... We don’t let our cats and dogs run around our halls. Why should we let our veal chops?” - Prudential Douglas Elliman senior VP, Darren Sukenik

“After some letter writing, smokers do tend to be cooperative.” - Brown Harris Stevens Residential Management executive VP Paul Herman

Frankly, we don't mind the smell of veal chops - but the broccoli and other sulfur-based vegetables do literally stink. And while we could guess that cigarette smoke would be a "kiss of death" if you're selling/renting out an apartment, who knew eau de kitty cat was also up there? Usually opening up a window can help, but why does that neighbor across the hall have to leave their garbage outside their door - can't they just walk down and get rid of it like real human beings?

Have you had problems with apartment smells? What do you do about them? Gothamist has been on the receving end of some wonderful smells (our neighbors down the hall make the most delicious meals during Jewish holidays - at least, as far as we can smell) and some not so great one (cigars). And we're guilty of our culinary ambitions getting out of control (smoke detectors going off whenever we attempt to broil something), but we offer homemade chocolate chip cookies for putting up with us - and it's been working.


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  • Bordewijk

    It has to be the God awful smell of neighbour cooking. Those fu**ers next door eat the same sh*t every single day. The first time I smelled it I felt like going to the take-away, now I feel like going to be sick!

    It's not a cultural thing, that food just reeks man!

  • eyeroll

    Thank fuck we've conquered crime and poverty and can declare war on fried fish and garlic. Yay New York!

  • ...

    Rebuild failed: Writing to '/home/httpd/vhosts/gothamist.com/httpdocs/archive... failed: Opening local file '/home/httpd/vhosts/gothamist.com/httpdocs/archive... failed: Permission denied



    GENIUS TECH WIZARDRY GOTHAMIST!!

  • gordan jordan riordan

    It should be illegal to cook anything in NY, and it should be illegal to smoke in your own home!



    We all expect we'll never be annoyed by anyone when we move from Madison to Manhattan. Fine all the smokers and cooks! Or jail them! Or kill them!

  • Gordan

    Smell of western/ american food lingering in the hall. Lots of cheeses that smell awful.

  • Jordan

    Neighbors cooking. Often get that smell of american /western food lingering in the halls. Particularly lots of cheeses that smell really awful.

  • ungawwa black powah

    it so funny this post came up today. My disgusting ass neighbors FINALLY moved out of there unit!!! (Happy Day!) I had complained about the cat stench- the worst smell in the world to me aside from liquid cow dung and the landlady or broker finally got somone in there - I feel for the woman as she has her work CUT OUT! I mean really can you ever get the stench of cat urine out?! I dont think so. To make matters worse and piss ya'll off EVEN more the bitch smoked while she was pregnant and kept the baby in the that apt with that horrific order!!! The couple ( birds of a feather) smoked so much that had a costcos size foldgers can full of cig butts! like the shit was a piece of art. Can we say trailer trash!? How do people live this way?!???

  • sacre

    my old downstairs neighbor had the utterly nauseating stench of yeast, pu**y funk, beer, ass, mildew & shit wafting out of her apt at all times. it came up thru the airshaft and right into my living room. it was horrible.

  • utw

    The worst smell was of the world trade center smoldering for 6 months. Get over it!

  • k

    indian food. 'nough said.



    complain to the co-op board if you live in one. usually they take action as you're probably not the only tenant affected by someones funk.

  • anon

    I had a roommate who thought it was a-okay to leave cat shit in the hall. It blew my mind. She'd empty the catbox the second her cat went, but then she'd bag it and set it in the hall to take down to the garbage later.



    How the eff is it okay to put your cat doo out in the hallway? She'd leave it there all night sometimes, for our cabbie neighbor to come home to after his shift. It was a level of selfishness that I blamed on her being brand new to New York. Like she heard everyone here is a jerk so she figured she'd go for it and just be a jerk, too.



    Did I mention that she was not my favorite roommate ever?

  • Trilby

    My grandma lived in a building near Sheepshead Bay, full of old Jewish people. The hallways were always redolent of onions and chicken cooking together. A nice smell, but a smell that says "old Jewish people here."

  • jinzi

    my friend just had an incident where a heavy gas/diesel oil smell was in her apartment - after a call to 311 and 5 firetrucks were dispatched to her apartment - they discovered her neighbors directly below her had decided to have a cookout in thier apartment. They had the works - grill, charcol and lighter fluid set up in the MIDDLE of their apartment - they thought if they kept the windows open it would be okay.

  • ABC Girl

    I lived in West New York for a minute and ran out of there as fast as I could. There's an apartment building near the corner of 60th street and Blvd East (opposite the fountain & the WNY Sept 11th Memorial)where the elevator is so ancient you have to close a gate first to make the elevator go. On the second floor, I think there's a tenant cooking cats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The hall reeks of death, animals, urine and cigarette smoke. It' s most overpowering when you pass directly past this tenant's door-- but unfortunately the old elevator causes people to use the staircase more than they'd care to-- and this person's apartment is right outside that staircase.



    Ewww...it's been almost a year later and I can still "smell" that ghastly mixture...

  • GiGi

    Yeah, cigarette smoke wafting through the walls sucks if you're a non-smoker. Both of my next-door neighbors (the old guy on one side of me, and the married couple on the other) love their cigs.



    What's worse is the smell of pot smoke coming through, and I don't mean the sweetly herbal, college-dorm-room variety either. I'm talking about the hard-core, what-the-fuck-is-that-laced-with? dog-poo? ganja shit that funks up the entire place. The couple next door LOVES that shit, and every time I smell it, I want to gag. That smell gets into my clothes closet and everything. Nice.

  • s. apprentice

    The family who put carved pumpkins outside their front door at Halloween and left them until they rotted for each of the 2 years I lived next to them. The 2nd year, I opened my front door, and there was about a 2 foot puddle of punkin juice running from their doormat to the elevator doors!



    The Korean neighbors who cooked the rankest smelling food (sorry, maybe that's a cultural thing). And the other neighbors who, you could tell just from the odor, were simply lousy cooks.



    Various neighbors whose cat box messes were so bad, I could smell it just walking down the stairs. I have 2 cats and can't understand how it even gets that bad.



    My friends' neighbors who left their kids' shitty diapers out in the hallway, allegedly due to Jewish religious observances (huh????).

  • mortonstreeter

    umm for all you whiners there is always the idea of an air purifier ... they work wonders.

  • anonymass

    What's not a surprise is that Gothamist's comments engine sucks a$$ and that having to reload a page several times to even get to the comments section seems to be SOP.



    I'm about 2 more days of this away from never coming back.



    And yes, cats stink.

  • amsci

    And while we could guess that cigarette smoke would be a "kiss of death" if you're selling/renting out an apartment, who knew eau de kitty cat was also up there?



    This is a surprise to you?

  • gah!

    i get my neighbors incense smell which totally reeks and gives me a raging headache some days. sometimes in the hallway garlic/onions. not too bad.



    what bugs me more is ppl who play with their animals *in the hallway*, especially when they are wet, and stink up the hallway. some people do not get the hallway is NOT an extension of their apartment. not even to mention some of us are allergic to animals and do not want dander/hair spread all over the hall.

  • Jen

    Also, whenever I cook, I try to open all the windows to vent the apartment, as the crappy vent with the stove isn't powerful enough. Oh, to one day have an apartment kitchen with a window where I can put a powerful fan!

  • bklynd

    Eh. Our downstairs neighbor smokes and it totally wafts up through the floor. We just deal - how are you gonna ask somebody not to smoke in their own apartment?

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