10 Ways to Pretend You're a Native New Yorker

If you can fake it here, you can fake it anywhere.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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It takes courage, drive and a certain amount of adventurousness to leave your hometown and move to the Big City, and the last thing you want to hear after making that journey is how you’re not a real New Yorker. Yet so many do, struggling every day to shake off that perceived (whether real or not) stench of not belonging.  

New New Yorkers will always feel the need to adapt, change, and fit in, whether they’ve been here two weeks, twenty years, or helped the Yankees win a World Series (sorry A-Rod, you could fly a time machine back to the 1600s and help found the damn city and you’ll still never be one of us.) Most of them learn early on that the best strategy is to fake it til you make it.   

New York is a melting pot, and nobody wants to be that gunk of frozen chicken broth that won’t dissolve in with the rest of that delicious, multicultural soup. Here’s a few tips to help show everyone else that you’re just as much of a native New Yorker as that cabbie from Hoboken who doesn’t speak a word of English. 

Except you, A-Rod. You’ll always be that gunk of frozen chicken broth. Always. 

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10. Never Stop at the Top of the Subway Stairs

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9. Eat Street Meat Without Fear

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8. Play Law & Order Bingo, and Play It Well

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7. Detach Yourself In a Way The Buddha Never Meant

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6. Give Tourists Directions, But Make Them Work For It

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5. Have a Yankees Cap

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4. Settle Into a Business Class Hot Spot

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3. Own the Crosswalk

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2. Robin Byrd is the Word

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1. Ignore the Weather

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