One of my top ones is the smell outside on the first night of fall people turn their heaters one. It happens to be right now. Hasn't been below 65 since March and now suddenly it's in the 40s. All that dust burning off of heaters all at once all over town. It smells wonderful. Putting me in a Christmas sort of mood.

One of my other favorites is that smell when you snap a ripe tomato off the vine. I wish it wasn't so fleeting.

Rain on hot pavement is up there too. As is pool water on hot pavement, which is very very different from rain.

The mall used to be one of my favorite smells, but malls don't smell like they used to. It was an odd combination of fragrances and cosmetics and leather and fast food and salon chemicals and candle stores and candy makers and everything all at once. The smell would shift around in character and intensity as you moved about the mall, but the core of it was always there.

Movie theatre lobby is a great smell. They should bottle it.

First day of school was a wonderful smell, and there's nothing in the adult world to replicate it. Sometimes office buildings sort of come close, but it's just not the same smell. Wes Anderson does a good job of turning that smell into a visual aesthetic. I just wish you could smell movies.

And then there's the #1 best smell: unpacking Christmas decorations.