I grew up in a town on the Androscoggin River (affectionately known as the 'Scogger) in Maine. It was once known for being on of the ten most polluted rivers in the country (if not the world, at one point). Though it never caught on fire like the Cayahoga, the dumpage from the paper mills made the river smell just RANK! On rainy or humid days, you could smell it from miles away.

The pink foam on the surface was pretty, but wronger than a wrong thing.

That said, it was still better then the smell that used to emenate from Westbrook, ME. I think that might have been a paper mill as well, but I'm not 100% sure (the paper mill in Brunswick never smelled like that, just the river).

On the other hand, the B&M Baked Bean factory in Portland smelled like you, well, had a plate of baked beans in front of you. I know that's not a good smell for everyone, but I love that smell. They also make the brown bread there, and you could smell that too.

Oh, another doozy - Haymarket in Boston around 4 pm on summer afternoon. Chinatown in Boston on a summer day comes a close second. Rotting vegatables and fish smell - yecch!

Large swine farming operations are not the best neighbors.

Speaking of local smells, several years ago, Durham used to smell like a mixture of cherry pipe tobacco and chocolate when the tobacco was curing in the warehouses. They've stopped that. Pity. I don't smoke and don't plan to start, but I quite liked that smell.

I don't smoke and don't plan to start, but I quite liked that smell.

I love the smell of unlit cigarettes, especially when the pack is just opened. They should always be that way.

I drive through West Memphis AR every day, and there's a stretch from the Mississippi to about 8 miles west that smells very strongly of the waste purification plants. I do not understand how 30,000 people can produce more crap than the 650,000 who live in Memphis proper.

I'm not actually sure that Memphis has a distinctive smell of its own, though I'm happy to have pine trees and rose bushes immediately outside my windows.

There's a Talking Heads song about Memphis and the smell of the river (but I don't know if the river they're talking about is in/near Memphis).

I was actually going to say that the closer you get to the river, there is a distinct smell. Otherwise? Not so much.

eta: And, I assume the Talking Heads are talking about The River, the Mississippi River.

I drive past a Bud plant every day. It's disgusting.

I work above a brewery. Totally nasty. (It's a restaurant that brews their own beer in giant vats, so they only brew once every couple of weeks, fortunately.)

I was actually going to say that the closer you get to the river, there is a distinct smell. Otherwise? Not so much.

Yeah, but on the eastern shore it's just a general funky slow-moving river smell and only penetrates a few blocks inland. The western shore is a different matter entirely, as apparently the river acts as a barrier to the poo-bearing winds.

I can't believe no other Bayistas have popped up to mention this yet, but up until about 20 years ago Hills Brothers had a roastery perched right on the edge of the Bay, and people driving into San Francisco over the Bay Bridge would roll down their windows about halfway between Treasure Island and the end of the bridge and drive straight into a dense, glorious olfactory fogbank of roasting-coffee bliss. SO. AMAZING.

That roastery and its heavenly smell are key components of the mythic San Francisco of my dreams. If all the good things of this world eventually reappear in heaven, it'll be there.