A little guy epiphany, obtained today after having passed a certain pizza restaurant on Magazine:

"Mom! New York has a Statue of Liberty!"
"Yes, it does, honey."
"And New Orleans has a Statue of Liberty!"
"Yeah, we just passed it in front of the pizza place..."
"Both New York and New Orleans have 'new' in their names!!!!"
"That's right."
"And they smell the same...

(uhhh, I guess...)

"But New Jersey doesn't have those things, except for the 'new'."
"No, I guess not, but technically, the Statue of Liberty is in New Jersey."
(confused look) "Really, Mom?"
"Yes, but it welcomes people who are coming in to New York by boat."
(relieved confirmation on his face) "Yeah!!!"

Later on, Dan said to me, "I don't know about the same smells..."

Depends on where you are in NYC and at what time of year. Advice to those of you traveling on the Belt Parkway near the easternmost outskirts of Queens - don't visit that brand-new Target shopping center on a hot day when the breezes off Jamaica Bay are coming in. Not all the methane from that reclaimed landfill across the parkway has dissipated just yet.

Aside from that, I'd say, yeah, some of the smells are similar. New Orleans' smells are NYC's minus the dumpster smells from various retail businesses, the choking exhaust from many, many cars and city buses, and the cooking smells (not all of 'em good) from the apartments above and beside your own.

Pretty much the same.