Diaperman to New York City: He Who Smelt It Dealt It

As the evacuation orders roll out, New York and Jersey City are each blaming the other for a strong gas odor that has enveloped Hoboken, Jersey City and parts of New York City. Fox News just reported that Jersey City officials have recommended residents and businesses to shut their windows, turn off their HVAC systems and commence panic operations in general. Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah Healey, affectionately known as Diaperman,  has moved to an undisclosed location. CNN reports that certain routes of the PATH system are shut down, and we just heard that numerous New York City school systems have now been evacuated. Rumors that Rockefeller Center was evacuated, or that the mysterious odor crawled across the Hudson River tubes on little cat feet have now been denied. Con Ed thinks the odor is coming from Greenwich Village and here in Jersey, PSE&G feels the culprit is a leaky pipe in Jersey City.

Here at the Magic Factory in Jersey City, we can categorically say that we did not do it. Our windows and hearts remain open.

Comments

[Gaylord Fields]

Ken, i work in Rockefeller Center, and i've been told to stay put and keep toiling away. Also, PATH service to/from WTC is still running as of 10:15 or so.

And Con Ed has evidently absolved Jersey City and believes the source of the stinky gas is in Greenwich Village.

[Krys O.]

Now the blame has shifted to Chelsea. Bloomberg says that we won't blow up.

[Krys O.]

Hmmm, just walked out the door from the office building here in Fairfield, NJ and it smells pretty rank. Could be the Passaic River, though.

[Nicholas]

If its from Chelsea, its most likely all the art thats causing the stink. Maybe all that debris, trash and garbage that has sat underneath all the cities mentioned above for god knows how many decades, is taking its revenge upon us, finally.

[Steve Barton]

This is why so many of us find those "I'm from New Jersey and I'm glad about it" songs y'all share (and thanks!) so amusing. Air smells great in Atlanta today (and it's the pine trees here that set off the EPA alarums every summer).

[Nicholas]

Actually, New Jersey has plenty of pine trees, in fact, its got a whole southern forest full of them. Its the far north that is heavily industrialized. Large portions of New Jersey are farmland, forest, and well manicured green.

[bartelby]

It was me. I inadvertently left a few more egg salad sandwiches in the Hoboken PATH station. They're probably not good to eat anymore so if you find them put them into a trashcan. Or rather if you are on PATH, carry them with you until to get a a transit system willing to splurge on trashcans and then throw them away. The pickle might still be good.

[shaun]

Dont worry it'll all blow over...ha ha!!. Sorry only joking,good that we can eh?.
Glad it was nothing to serious......

[bartelby]

I _am_ serious, it's one of those individually sealed pickles. It should be fine. Folks unfamiliar with my culpability for the egg salad sandwich smell of the Hoboken train station should know I long ago accepted responsibility for my actions. Even though it's a larger quantity of egg salad sandwiches this time I can tell you I didn't enjoy it the way I used to back in my days. You know how it is, the holidays are amateur season.

[Dave the Spazz]

From the "Under the Tinfoil Hat" Department, here's my take on The Big Stink. In overzealously prepping for Bush's Let's Send More Troops to Iraq speech on Wednesday, CIA spooks seeded the clouds early this morning with a seemingly harmless stinkbomb. Anything to get NYC (big media) and the rest of the country yapping about a possible terrorist threat...

[hemaworstje]

Hallo ken , kinda rude but y now me.i don'care that much.
to lazy to start up my email. my Wiiproject has come to an end , got the project succesfully rounded up ,missing one last item.
xxx and hé,lets be carefull out there.

[lee]

the Chinese completed their tunnel thru the earth to the Pearl river market & they were celebrating with some 100 year old eggs. i got to try some dog jerky, and ended up with some barking spiders. and they were purring! excuse me if i contributed to the odor.

[lee]

it's a prep test for a new false flag op. . they're only testing the resiliency of particular buildings they want to be safe. evryone else is ....um... not that important.

[Station Manager Ken]

It's always sad to NOT subscribe to a good conspiracy theory, but I think the current theory of Jersey Swamp Gas is probably right. Having lived downwind from the swamps for a good 20 years now, I can count on both hands the number of times Hoboken and Jersey City air has been swamped with the bloom of some swamp plant. Every few years there's a day where the air here is peppered with little fuzzy balls because the seeds of some swamp plant bloomed that day and blew over Hudson county; another day everything smells of kitchen gas, another day it's maple syrup. I remember maple syrup day. That day scared me a lot more than yesterday because if the odor smells like maple syrup, then somebody's hiding something.

And today's New York Times got the odor *completely* wrong - the repeatedly described the odor as "sulfur" or "rotten" which it was not at all! It was a powerful odor of kitchen gas. The smell that you get when your pilot light goes out. Not rotten eggs! NY Times...
-ken

[Ray Brazen]

I knew there had to be a good reason for me to stay in Florida a few extra days and delay my return to NYC...

[Krys O.]

I work about 50 yards away from the Passaic River and it was exquisitely ripe yesterday. The smell is exactly 70% sulfur, 28% rotten eggs and 2% undetermined toxic waste dumped over the last century in our post-industrial age. Since the groundwater seems to seep into our tap water making this smell an everyday thing, we're used to it in this part of NJ.

[Krys O.]

From a local utility provider regarding the odor of mercaptan:
https://www.columbiagaspamd.com/community_outreach/mercaptan.htm

[bartleby]

Seriously though New York smells funny every day. Nerve gas smells pleasant, similar to apples and freshly cut grass or thereabouts. Mustard gas is, I'm pretty sure, another story but a pinch and dash of mustard gas insufficient to so much as knock a pigeon out of the air is not a big health risk. It's likely either the marker gas they use with natural gas lines, poop or some other pollutant. In the age of modern chemistry an unpleasant smell is not necessarily an indicator of a greater health hazard than a nice smell or no smell at all.
On the up side it may cause rents to level off before total bedbug infestation.