Frank Senior, a lifelong New Yorker, recognizes changing neighborhoods by their smells. He tells Craig Taylor about a city full of surprises

Smelling New York: a blind man on the scents and sounds of the city

I’m blind, so my nose tells me what neighborhood I’m in.

My dog and I – we walk. We’ll walk from 125th down to Houston. The smell of Harlem is definitely different now. It’s more open. There’s a new class of people. The whole thing feels like someplace else.

As we walk through the city, I hear the different kinds of neighbourhoods – black people turning into white people, Spanish people turning into black people. I hear the sounds of the languages, the vendors, the different kinds of ways that the different cultures sell their stuff, present it.



Black voices, white voices. I used to even be able to pick out if someone was bi-racial. They just had a texture in the voice, and a clarity in the voice, and a thickness in the voice that would say: this is both. And now it’s harder to do because everybody’s mixed now. It’s not as easy.

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Years ago, I used to walk in Hell’s Kitchen and pass all the railroad apartments and all the tenement buildings and people sitting on the stoop playing checkers. You could hear the dominoes, you hear the checkers. And then you could hear who’s playing them. Because Spanish people love dominoes. You hear them banging the dominoes, boom boom boom. Black people would be playing checkers. You’d hear them slamming the checkers. There was a difference.

I’ve been living in the city all my life. When Times Square was, you know, the dump, the symbol of the underworld – when you got off the bus at Port Authority, it smelled like sex – I used to say: this is what tourists have to come in to? Nasty. Sex, groin, hair and underarm. You name it. That’s what it smelled like. Pee. Everything. I mean that’s how bad Times Square was. It was horrible.



Sex, groin, hair and underarm. You name it. That’s what it smelled like. Pee

I used to run a newsstand on 42nd Street. People used to come to my stand because they knew I was going to be open. I was always open. I got to know the city that way – the people, the goodness – just by being out there.



There was an English dude, a nice guy. I used to welcome him because a lot of times I didn’t want to sit there by myself that early in the morning. He’d come by at about six. He’d sit and drink his coffee and stand outside and talk to me, give me a New York Times that he’d just finished reading. We did this for three months. One day I said: “Yeah, man, do you play chess?”

He said: “Yeah.”

I said: “We should get together and play some chess. Where do you live?”

He said: “Oh, mate, I live on Central Park West.”

Oh man, I thought, this guy has some bread too! “What’s your address?” I asked.

“You know 65th Street?” he answered. “You walk up to 65th, make a right and I’m the fifth bench in.”

The guy was homeless! But to me, he just smelled like cologne. He was clean.

So, you always know you don’t know. That’s the other beautiful thing about New York.

One day, I was standing on Madison and 23rd. I came up to the corner. I felt my dog’s head nudge someone so we could fit. And he goes to me: “What are you, blind or something?”

I started to say: “Fuck you!” But instead I started with “Yo, man, what do you think I got the dog for?”

He goes: “Oh, you got a dog? I’m blind, too.”

He said: “I was going to ask you to help me cross the street.”

I said: “I can do that. I can help you across the street, man.”

He grabbed my arm, held it tight, and we went across.