Artist's Interpretation of Stinky Midland Steel

The other day I was over at Radio Shack not buying cell phones or overpriced shoddy merchandise, and when I came out of the store I could smell the scent of the Ford engine plant in Berea, a good 10 or 15 miles away. It was raining and windy, and my guess is that the smell drifted over because of it, but I still found it pretty off-putting. It made me think about how a lot of the buildings I document, especially large factories and other industrial-type things, have very unique smells. Unfortunately, neither print zine or website are very good formats for sharing smells with people, and most of the ones that would be associated with Rust and Brique are probably carcinogenic and I'd get sued.

The only one I can really remember well enough to say much about is Midland Steel -- partly because despite being more or less completely destroyed, the site still smells, and partly because it's somewhere I pass by fairly often. It's got this weird lemony petrochemical smell -- kind of like a more sedated, sludgey Lemon Pledge. It's not entirely unpleasant, really. I had a flashback to it when I was drinking some of this fancy health-food-store bottled iced tea from Japan called Teas'tea. I got the Lemongrass flavor, and it tasted *exactly* how Midland Steel smells. I had one of those moments that should be familiar to all, where you find something really disgusting but you just keep drinking it because it's sort of temptingly gross. I think most people have been through this, because if they hadn't, no one would ever get used to the taste of beer or coffee. In other tangential news, I keep getting this craving for wasabi peas since I ate a bunch at a party.