Pamplona’s autumn smellscape reflects the city population’s fixation with food. Glasgow’s winter smellscape is of building and construction, the scents of regeneration underpinned by greasy food particles hanging in the omnipresent dreich, with a highly specific smell of the clockwork orange subway system – damp, metallic sponge is a descriptor, but really it is just the smell of the subway that starts as you descend the inner stairs to the platform.
— Kate McLean, on mapping the world's scents. Read more at The sweet smell of Amsterdam … and it's not just cannabis, say odour mappers at The Guardian.
Oh my goodness, as a visitor to Glasgow a couple of times a year, I know exactly what Ms McLean means about the smell as you enter the subway! Frasers department store used to be on my ‘to do’ list every visit as it was excellent for hard to find fragrances, but not so much in the last few years I’m sad to say. There doesn’t appear to be an independent perfume store in this wonderful city, just the standard high street department stores & the ‘discount’ chains.
DC has an “entering the subway” smell too, wonder if it is the same?
I’ve visited DC but not used the subway – I can say that the Glasgow “tube” does not smell the same as the London one though!