eeeeuuu! that smell, can't ya smell that smell??? LA Reeks today!

She responds, "Do you want to ride the bus or not?"

The rain must have caused Instant Algae Birth/Death/Rotting.

I am doubtless lying.

I probably just have stinky/dirty co-workers though.

Ah what do I know, I barely have a sense of smell.

Does this mean you'll need some Medicine?

SHUH!

It's always smelled like dirty cement, at best, afterwards.

BEFORE there's a tropical rain storm, the cement often smells like a combination of butter and dishwater. I fucking hated it.

Oh, wait... (haha)

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Wow, you've never smelled that SoCal pre-tropical storm aroma before? It's really unique. Things get really humid, and somehow the humidity collides with all the cement somehow, and there's this buttery asphalt smell. I can't believe you don't know what I'm talking about!

Mysterious Stench Swirls Around City
Southland residents from the coast to the Valley report a rotting garbage-like odor.
By Valerie Reitman
Times Staff Writer

September 22, 2005

Steve Randall caught wind of the stench on his way to work. It reminded him of a hot and humid summer day - in Manhattan.

"It was that sort of weird, clinging cloud-of-garbage-like smell that has come to characterize New York in August," Randall said.

Considering that it was cool and rainy en route from Westwood to Santa Monica on Tuesday, Randall wanted to make sure he wasn't imagining it. He asked the security guard at his office to come outside to corroborate. The guard didn't smell anything unusual and instead lampooned Randall. " 'This is what fresh air smells like after it rains,' " Randall recalls the dubious guard's retort.

But his wife had smelled the same thing at their Westwood home.

And so it went across the Southland, as some detected strong odors from the coast to the Valley. Workplaces and weblogs were buzzing, with descriptions comparing the smell to old socks, rotting cabbage soup, kimchi, moldy wet wallboard and the "dampness of the air interacting with my cat's litter box."

But others in those same places didn't detect anything unusual.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, the regional government air pollution control agency, fielded about seven calls from residents in Granada Hills on Tuesday night reporting odors of garbage and sewage. But the inspector the agency sent to investigate didn't detect any odor or possible cause, spokeswoman Tina Cherry said.

City and county officials said they didn't know what might have triggered the odors either.

But environmentalists speculated that the first heavy rain in weeks had flooded storm drains with debris, oil, animal waste and litter. As the material decomposed, it may have created odors. This could explain why the smell was detected in some areas and not others.

"Whenever we get a significant amount of rain, especially where there's a lot of concrete and asphalt, it causes a build-up in storm drains," said Matt McClain, spokesman for the Surfrider Foundation. "When it's decomposing, you get a lot of smells."

It's this "first flush" of the season that causes the most water pollution, McClain said.

Carolyn Sun, 30, a jewelry designer, says she inhaled the odor en route to a party in Miracle Mile on Tuesday night. "It was like a stew of sulfur, sewage and bad omen."

Los Angeles County health officials said that bacteria levels in the coastal waters - which many storm drains run into - were 10 times the acceptable state levels Tuesday and were expected to be even higher Wednesday.

They advised against swimming in the ocean for at least three days.

In addition, the red tide of algae bloom in the ocean has been particularly heavy in the last few days, which may be responsible for fishy odors that have wafted to areas within about a quarter-mile of the coast.

"It was really bad this past weekend," said Heather Hoecherl, science and policy director of Heal the Bay, a nonprofit organization in Santa Monica.

Reddish by day and glowing green at night, the red tide moves with the currents. "It's patchy throughout the bay, so some areas might be more funky than others," Hoecherl said, noting that after Tuesday's rains, surfers were describing the shoreline as "one big glowing blob."

I like this person.

Sounds like my 20s.

After Katrina, the federal government temporarily suspended sulfer
content limitations in gasoline to allow the remaining refinery capacity to produce gasoline as rapidly as possible. Removing sulfur takes more processing so allowing higher levels allows the refineries to make more gasoline.

But this results in all sorts of sulfer compounds in car exhaust such
as hydrogen-sulfide, the lovely chemical that gives farts their fine
aroma as well as being used as an odorant in natural gas to make people aware of leaks.

We can expect to enjoy this smell until they get all of the refinery capacity back online and start enforcing the limits on sulfer content in gasoline again.

Parts of downtown Seattle have always been stinky near the alleyways though.. imagine that.