You Did What With Who . . . And Who Is That Guy Anyway?

Which is the salient detail of this story — that a man had an affair with someone who is “mentally challenged,” that said man is active in conservative politics or that Sopranos extras seem to get into a ton of trouble? Hard to say:

A Queens man active in conservative politics was arrested yesterday for punching out a former friend in a fight that stemmed from an affair the man had with his ex-pal’s mentally challenged cousin, police and friends said.

Gerard Borriello, 48, of Rosedale, was charged with third-degree assault and released with a desk appearance after the scuffle outside the “Second to None” bar in Franklin Square, L.I., according to Nassau County police.

The slugfest left Jerry Russo — who claims to have a bit part in an upcoming “Sopranos” episode — with a broken nose.

Sweet Syrupy Smell, I Wish I Knew How To Quit You!

If we spent as much time investigating . . . oh, never mind — that weird syrup smell is much, much more interesting:

New Jersey has been accused of many things, and almost none have had to do with smelling sweet.

But when a strange, syrupy scent descended on parts of New York City and New Jersey twice (and possibly three times) in the fall, theories spread faster than warm Aunt Jemima on pancakes. Speculation fell on the Garden State, a historic center in the production of fragrance, flavor and hoary olfaction jokes.

. . .

The evidence appears to be mounting: the earliest recorded calls for the October incident came not from New York, but from New Jersey. And a recent odor pocket was noticed by several people in Hoboken.

And finally, the Times has some intriguing data that may push forward several new theories:

The smell came on at least two dates: Oct. 27 and Dec. 8, both Thursdays, in the late afternoon or early evening.

On both days, the barometric pressure was high, and the wind was blowing lightly from the west, about 10 miles an hour or less, according to data compiled by the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

Climate experts say that these atmospheric conditions often prompt what is called an inversion, a phenomenon common to the late fall and winter in New York that keeps pollution trapped at low altitudes.

Call logs for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection show that on Oct. 27, the first recorded complaints came from parts of New Jersey. A third occurrence of the smell came on Dec. 15, also a Thursday, when Hoboken residents who had noticed the odor previously claimed they smelled it again.

So Thursdays are important, New Jersey is important — the question is what? The Times goes further — into Jersey itself — to investigate:

Government agencies said that they do not believe the scent is dangerous and that they did not receive any complaints that day, but a spokesman for the city environmental protection agency said the current theory is that it most likely came from New Jersey.

“It’s food processing,” said Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the city’s environmental protection agency.

Mr. Sturcken said that this was “based on common judgment of our air inspectors,” and that “things do drift over often from Jersey.”

After visiting several fragrance facilities, the smell couldn’t be pinpointed to any one source (“From afar, the air smelled faintly sweet, like strawberry. Through the gates and into the parking lot, the smell became muskier, until at the front door, an earthy scent could be detected, like ginseng.”). New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection is also investigating. Meanwhile, the data keeps coming in:

On Dec. 8, Erich Rastetter said, he was driving home to New York from flying lessons in Lincoln Park, N.J., when he was hit by the smell on Route 80 near Teaneck.

“It was really cold that day, and I had the heat on full blast,” said Mr. Rastetter, a computer network administrator who lives on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan and also detected the smell in October. “I remember this blast of really sweet, really strong smell, and I kind of smiled and it kind of came together, that it was the smell.”

He said he opened the windows of his car to make sure it wasn’t coming from inside. “It only lasted like two or three minutes,” he said. “As soon as I went past that roll in the road, it started disappearing fairly quickly.”

Smell Returns?

Has the strange smell from October returned? Inconclusive:

Perplexed pedestrians phoned the Fire Department and 311 yesterday afternoon when the sweet yet bewildering odor resurfaced in areas from the Flatiron District to the upper East and West Sides.

“It seems to be a repeat of what happened in October,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, which is probing the scent.

The DEP used haz-mat equipment to check for compounds in the air at E.82nd St. and York Ave., Columbus Ave. and W.94th St., and even a spot on Maiden Lane downtown yesterday afternoon.

So far, investigators have found nothing sinister about the aroma. Testing will continue tomorrow if the scent persists.

Meanwhile, the Times sent out its writer to investigate and found nothing:

This reporter took his nose for a stroll on 42nd Street between 11th Avenue and Lexington Avenue. Nose in the air, he detected nothing except for a rotten-egg smell midblock at Madison Avenue.

See also: Gothamist Smell Map.

Mysterious Smell Comes, Goes And Leaves No Clues In Its Wake

Folks never quite figured out where that sweet smell came from:

The night air all over Manhattan was brisk, with a hint of winter and a dash of something sweetly out of the ordinary. Some thought it smelled like maple syrup. Some said caramel, or a freshly baked pie, or Bit-O-Honey candy bars.

From downtown Manhattan to the Upper East Side, Prospect Heights in Brooklyn and parts of Staten Island, the question was the same on Thursday night and into early yesterday: What was that smell?

The aroma not only revived memories of childhood, but in a city scared by terrorism, it raised vague worries about an attack deviously cloaked in the smell of grandma’s kitchen.

It was so seductive that many New Yorkers found themselves behaving strangely, succumbing to urges usually kept under wraps. One woman who never touches the stuff said she was inspired to eat ice cream.

The investigation — that they’re “investigating” it sounds freaky enough — was thorough, yet investigators picked up nothing . . . or so they say:

Late yesterday, nearly 24 hours after the smell had spread through the city, sparking hundreds of bewildered calls to the city’s 311 emergency hot line, officials said that they had determined that the smell had not been hazardous and that it had dissipated as quickly, and mysteriously, as it had appeared.

Even after chasing down anonymous tips and chasing up several blind alleys, however, they did not know where it had come from.

The odor was first detected around 8 p.m. on Thursday in Lower Manhattan. It seemed to spread quickly uptown and into parts of the other boroughs – so quickly that officials expressed concern. The city’s Office of Emergency Management sent out feelers to the Police and Fire Departments, state emergency response agencies in New York and New Jersey, and the United States Coast Guard, which communicated with tugboats and container ships at sea to determine whether the odor was being detected there.

Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, coolly told reporters yesterday that tests and air monitoring had revealed “nothing of a hazardous nature.”

“It’s believed to be some sort of food substance, but we can’t substantiate that at this time,” Mr. Kelly said. He confirmed that the source of the smell seemed to be in Lower Manhattan.

The chase led the city’s environmental bloodhounds to some interesting places. Investigators working on a tip checked the Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven in SoHo, but the owner insisted he had not been the culprit. His staff had spent the afternoon roasting almonds, he said. And anyway, chocolate, for those who really know, smells bitter, not sweet.

“Perhaps if it was a chocolate smell, people would be running here today,” Mr. Torres said from his shop, which he said was no busier than normal for a Friday in autumn. His chef, Susana Garcia, 31, who was on duty Thursday, said the mysterious odor was definitely more like maple syrup than like chocolate. It was, Mr. Torres said, a kind of warm-your-heart holiday smell appropriate for this time of year.

See also: “Smell hath no fury: Breakfast odor in city called nontoxic” (Daily News, October 29, 2005); “Sweet Smell of Mystery Wafting Along” (New York Post, October 29, 2005), which posits the passing ship and Canadian assault theories (“The theory that it came from a ship passing through New York Harbor makes sense, given the prevailing north-by-northwest breeze that night, but others abound — from antifreeze to ‘rebel’ trees to a Canadian assault. . . . The Canadian Foreign Ministry did not return a call seeking comment.”); “That Smell” (New Yorker, October 31, 2005), which suggests a real estate-related scheme (“It’s a well-known fact, among real-estate agents, that prospective buyers respond enthusiastically to the smells of cinnamon and baking dough. Brokers often instruct sellers to put an apple pie in the oven just before showing an apartment. This ploy came to mind last Thursday evening, when the smell of maple syrup unaccountably permeated the entire metropolitan area.”).

The Sweet Smell Of Maple Doughnuts, Or Perhaps Eggos

Perhaps you caught wind of the sweet smell permeating the air last night that officials assure us was in no way harmful and hopefully was not connected in some way to preparations for some sort of terror attack, albeit a not altogether unpleasant one:

An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome.

“It’s like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes,” he said. “It’s pleasant.”

The odor had followed Mr. Padilla and his friend along their walk in Lower Manhattan, from a dormitory on Fulton Street, to Pace University on Spruce Street, and back down again, to where they stood now, near a Dunkin’ Donuts. Maybe it was from there, he said. But it wasn’t.

Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister.

There were so many calls that the city’s Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it.

By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m.

“We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there’s nothing hazardous,” said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. “What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don’t know.”

Having smelled the smell firsthand, I can report that it was a very familiar (yet the exact name eludes me) smell. I want to say it was like a doughnut. Others came up with similar observations:

There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that. Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not describe that smell.

French Vanilla sounds about right, actually . . .