New York stinky! Odor complaints in NYC reach disgusting all-time high
This summer in the city isn’t just hot and gritty — it smells!
Walking around the Big Apple these days amounts to an olfactory assault by some of the foulest odors imaginable, disgusted New Yorkers said Wednesday.
“Every morning I smell like a rancid smell, like rotten food that has been sitting there for a while,” said Justin Colon, a porter at a Times Square office tower.
Tech worker Jaiden Williams, 37, described the city’s stench as “gnarly and cadaverous.”
“No matter what you do — if you douse yourself in a bottle of perfume or Chanel No. 5 — the scent is still on the tip of your nose,” the Hell’s Kitchen resident said.
“Because it’s so hot, it permeates.”
Williams added: “Either you don’t come out of your house or you just deal with it.”
Fashion worker Milly Aldon, 45, of Manhattan called New York “an alive city that smells like death.”
“It’s a rotten, lingering smell,” she said. “And if it rains, it smells even worse.”
Calls to 311 show that outdoor odor complaints are at an all-time high after rising 54 percent — to 5,746 through June 30 — compared to the same period in 2021, according to a Post analysis of official data.
On West 46th Street, one office worker was overheard asking another, “Why does the city smell like a used diaper these days?”
The answer, Colon said, is simple.
“I clean the steps going down to the subway. I’ve cleaned up poop so many times,” he said. “This morning I was cleaning up poop.”
One Manhattan cop said, “It is not uncommon to see human feces on the street,” adding: “I guess you only have to pick up after your dog.”
A Manhattan NYPD detective said bluntly, “The homeless people are s–tting all over the place.”
Another Manhattan cop said the city faced a “perfect storm” of hotter temperatures and “abandoned [outdoor-dining] sheds, where people are throwing garbage and homeless are living there, using them as bathrooms.”
“The city is definitely dirtier — and dirt doesn’t smell like perfume,” the cop said.
The owner of Dalton’s Bar & Grill in Hell’s Kitchen said he had to install Plexiglass windows and a metal door on his outdoor dining shed after he repeatedly found people “sleeping, shooting up, having sex, crapping” inside.
Meanwhile, good luck getting those folks to instead use a restroom in one of the city’s parks: inspection data posted online show that nearly 14% were “officially closed” as of July 2.
Potentially adding to the foul problem, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council in 2016 decriminalized public urination as part of the “Criminal Justice Reform Act,” after cops issued 19,456 criminal summonses for the foul offense the previous year.
An NYPD spokesperson said 280 civil summonses were issued for public urination during the first three months of this year, up from 169 during the same period last year.
In addition, 85 criminal summonses were issued for public urination, up from 81 in 2021, according to the NYPD.
A law enforcement source called issuing a civil summons “futile.”
“It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on,” the source said. “You can say your name is Mickey Mouse.”
A spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The city Sanitation Department acknowledged the odoriferous problem and said a new $40 million boost to the street basket pickup program that started in July would help make a difference.
“Every New Yorker knows that the city became noticeably dirtier during the pandemic, as behaviors changed and budgets were cut,” said Sanitation spokesman Joshua Goodman.
“But we’re fighting back – the 10,000 DSNY employees work every day to keep the city clean, safe, and healthy, and that’s why this administration is giving them the tools to do the work they get up every day to do.”
https://nypost.com/2022/07/14/nyc-odor-complaints-reach-disgusting-all-time-high/