I walked around Eastern Market with my nose in the air.

Let me explain… it was a Tuesday and I was working…and smelling. All sorts of fun smells (read: slaughtered animals and trash) that stirred childhood memories of chicken coops and dirt. The uniqueness of Eastern Market is that it is a gathering place for Detroiters and non-Detroiters, and (possibly more importantly) because it remains a working market amongst all the other craziness.

So, I noted where the smells were lingering and made a map. This is by no means a comprehensive map of smells – I encourage you to go and note your own. The smells are charted on a spectrum of red to yellow. The red swatches denote conventionally “bad” smells, and the yellow denote “good”. The darkness of the color represents the intensity of the smell.

I am constantly tickled (like the kind of tickle that sort of hurts/itches but still makes you laugh) by the significance of signs and images in Detroit (more thoughts about “city-as-sign” later). Ask anyone who’s visited the Market and they will rave about the experience that conjures an image of beauty and wonder. Eastern Market is a beautiful place visually. But it’s also smelly. Because it’s real. It’s the combination of all the senses, not just the visual representation, that makes a place. The pictures of the sheds will never really encapsulate what it feels like to be there…which is part of the reason it’s considered to be an authentically Detroit place. It’s romantic, dirty, beautiful, and chaotic all at once.