Does all of Capitol Hill smell like toast right now, or do I have whatever ailment that is where you smell phantom toast and then you die?

toast.jpg

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

39 replies on “Am I Toast?”

  3. While we’re on the topic, I have one shirt that, no matter how freshly laundered, always smells like stale peanut butter. All my shirts are made of the same fabrics. What’s up with that?

  5. OMG you guys ME TOO!!1! but srsly, i once used a bath towel as a temporary drying rack and it got near a peanut butter cooking experiment and it now permanently smells like peanut butter.

  7. I can’t smell it, but…

    I used to live in a city with a big brewery on the edge of town. When the wind was right (oh, nearly every evening), the smell of slightly sour toast would waft through. It’s from the barley, I think.

    So, Elysian / Pike Brewery?

  16. I work down the street from The Stranger (no, not at The Crypt) and I always thought that smell was from KFC. Now that it’s gone, I have no idea. Maybe it’s the crematorium at Bonney Watson?

  17. Isn’t there an old bread factory towards the back end of Capitol Hill? And by that, I mean a factory that used to make bread – not a factory that makes old bread.

    Other than that, I’d go with the Elysian beer ingredient theory. Let’s hope it’s not a stroke, then where would we get our Lindywest-isms?

  22. i’m pretty sure the toast smell is coming from the charred remains of the bellevue/pine building. i work one block down, and the wetter it gets, the stronger the smell.

    ps – that’s a really big fucking tarp covering that thing.

  23. You are not crazy… I work from home and smell that burnt toast smell all the time during the day. Drove me crazy for a while during the summer when I had the windows open a lot because I was afraid I had bad wiring in my office or something, but then I smelled it when I was outside and realized it was not an electrical fire waiting to happen.

    My guess is that it was piecora or something… but the proposed bread factory idea makes a lot of sense too.

  25. I’ve worked several different jobs around here during the last few years, and I’ve smelled the mysterious toast smell many times. We’re not alone, as others have corroborated. Several theories include the aforementioned Elysian, and Cafe Vita, which runs a large coffee roasting operation less than a block from here.

  26. Vivace roasts their coffee on this block too. people in the Sales dept. are always toasting things too. perhaps a climb up the stairs would answer this question.

  29. The toast smell comes from the confluence of the Caffé Vita and Vivace roasters being within the block. The smell will get stronger and stronger as it goes, morphing from toast to burnt toast to bleh, what’s that smell?
    Be glad you don’t sit near the window. When I was downstairs I got the lovely burnt toast and greasy KFC smorgasboard all the time. :

  33. Count yourself lucky. Whenever my coworkers prepare their lunch in the microwave that is thirty feet from my face, which is now, the entire office smells like the most rancid bongwater you can possibly imagine.

  37. I’ve lived on the the hill for over twenty years. Way before there were coffee roasters up here. Take a deep breath. Hold it. That there is roasted people from bonny-watsons.

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