Some guy will post a picture of a pretty standard looking pepperoni pizza and say: “Imagine not living in new york.” And then there’s the whole bodega discourse, which is also funny. “For you non-new yorkers, let me explain: a bodega is not a corner store. It’s a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs.” Thank you sir for explaining that to a slack-jawed yokel such as myself.
I’ve had New Yorkers tell me they know my own culture better than I do because they lived in the Bronx. This one woman insisted I walk on the outside of a sidewalk because Latin men would hit on her. I had no idea what she was talking about because only old men do that where I live. But she insisted it was something we all did.
I think a lot of the more obnoxious aspects of that discourse comes from transplants who are either trying really hard to be seen as a real and authentic NYer, or grew up in a suburb of a city whose downtown they barely visited, and now see common features of walkable urban cores as unique to New York.
Sounds a lot like tryhards that want to be very Californian in California. The only thing I could suggest for people that didn’t live most of their lives in California and want to fit in without seeming like a poser is to learn how to pronounce some basic Spanish words, especially food items. If you say “caysa-deeah” instead of “kwesa-dillah” you’ll be fine.
kwesa-dillah
You can not convince me anyone says this.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: New Yorkers that need to tell strangers about their high standards and about how exceptional and unique and grounded and worldly and tough and cosmopolitan and sophisticated and cultured they are for being from New York are insufferably boorish.
If I watch a stand-up comedian and they mention New York within the first few minutes of their performance, I’m out. I don’t want to hear it again.
What really bugs me is that they brag about their open-mindedness, but call anyone they deem a “dirty redneck” who moves in a gentrifier and thus not welcome in the city as if a good chunk of people living in Brooklyn at any given moment aren’t “small town rednecks” themselves.
Not that they themselves are the problem, it’s landlords, real estate “investors”, and the “muh property values” types.
I’ve met way too many like this when I lived in Upstate New York. You’d get the transplants who lived in the city and then came back acting like they were above everybody else. The people actually born and raised in New York City almost never brought it up.
I’m starting to feel like thats just what happens when people move somewhere. Like something about being a transplant to a city suddenly makes you way more likely to talk about how thats the best city ever and how nowhere else is like it. Kinda like when people convert to a new religion and become really devout to it, compared to people who were born and raised in that religion.
One of the most obnoxious people I ever dated in my college years spent one semester in the UK and came back with Standard Issue Posh British Accent Used By Generically Sexy Love Interest Scientist In Almost Every SyFy Channel Original Movie.
She’d drop it when distracted or off her guard but she insisted it was “natural” to her. :sus-deep:
Confession time? Confession time:
I used to be someone like her. I’m from a small town in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest but I claimed to be from Chicago (closest major city people give a damn about) only went there once every few years. Basically the stolen valor is about trying to feel like you’re from an important place and to make one seem less “normal”.
Eventually I grew up when I realized no one really cared either way. Where I grew up does not make me interesting, and there’s a ton of racist people in the “cool” places in California and New York. Conversely, one really cool guy I met in college came from deep red Texas. Accent and everything. He understood where I was coming from but he helped a lot in getting me to just own it. Yeah, I say “ope” and call soda “pop”, that doesn’t make me a “dirty racist normie”
Yeah, my childhood was kinda boring. But that can’t be helped.
This is kind of a tangent but everyone says “ope” I don’t know why the Midwest acts like they’re the only ones. Grew up in florida and heard it, heard it when I lived in Pittsburgh, heard it when I lived in Boston, haven’t heard it with any greater frequency now that I’m in the Midwest myself
It’s because the Midwestern oafs spread out
Huge wagon trains of Germanic folks heading in every direction with their smoked sausages and folksy wisdom
It’s a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs.”
So… any gas station in the USA?
As someone who lives in New York, let me just say Greatest city in the world only in NYC pizza pie go Mets
Classiest best greatest nicest cleanest city baybee.
27 RINGS DEREK JETER YANKEEEEEES :kitty-cri-screm:
What… What do they think a corner store is?
“For you non-new yorkers, let me explain: a bodega is not a corner store. It’s a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs.”
Dollar General has all of those things. I don’t see what’s so magical about them.
I’ve been to several cities of global importance and size. Moreover, I’ve spoke to people from dozens of countries asking them to compare NYC to the principle city of their country.
Among them all and from my observation there is agreement: NYC is both the dirtiest major city globally and has the most outdated mass transit system.
It continues to blow my mind that New York managed to build one of the first functional metro systems in the world, and then decided that they shouldn’t ever bother to maintain them beyond the absolute bare minimum, for like 80 years. Surely it can’t all be the fault of city planning and Robert Moses, right?
last time I was in NYC I met a guy who was slackjawed that other cities in America also have Chinatowns
Boy is he going to be surprised when he learns about China.
Everything in the store being dusty and expired is just culture, sweaty
All the new yorkers moved down here during the pandemic and as a result rent has gone up like $400-$500 in the last 2 years :deeper-sadness:
The only cool bodegas are the ones in Cuba that give people free rations of food
Wait thats a thing? Gonna save this chestnut for the next time I’m in a conversation about bodegas
Yeah bodega just means warehouse or grocery store in Spanish
bodegas are hardly special. like, pretty much every 3rd or 4th street in London, even in the suburbs, has those too. in fact we have loads of specialist ones for different diasporas foods. as do like most British towns and cities, at least regular ones though maybe not afro or South Asian , and I would imagine is true for a lot of other places
I have legitimately always been confused by the bodega thing for the same reason.
We have several chains that do exactly that and they’re just called “corner stores”.
“You can get eggs, toilet paper, and Gatorade”
Damn, that’s called a Spar, or Premier, or Londis.
I think a bodega is more like a deli
Everywhere with migrants has those.
Well according to CumTown you can get drugs in NY bodegas, here on terf island I have to go meet a guy in an alley behind the shop
Drug dealers often hang out at convenience stores in not-New York too
You can also get cheaper cigarettes, smuggled from out of state, which is nice
Sometimes smuggled from other countries too.
Anybody who cloaks themselves in the garb of “New Yorker” as their entire personality is a boring ass person. NYC is the best place to live in the United States since it’s the only city where you can actually walk everywhere and that’s why I love it but compared to any other city of similar or larger size it’s embarrassing. We don’t even have fucking glass on our metro platforms. Half of the island of Manhattan is a Disneyworld. A decent chunk of the iconic parts of NYC life have closed and are never coming back because landlords refuse to rent to businesses that aren’t Starbucks or Planet Fitness. The roads are decaying, the parks are grassless wastelands, but fuck I don’t know where else I could get a Tibetan momo, bomb ass al pastor tacos, xiao long bao, and fluffy bagels all on the same block.
We don’t even have fucking glass on our metro platforms.
If it makes you feel better, Tokyo is the same.
Yeah but Tokyo has some of the best transit in the world and incredibly well planned districts. If we had that and no glass I’d feel better.
Really hit the nail on the head, I love this place but it feels like swimming in lake thats slowly drying up. Straight up half the island is the most corporate, ugly garbage, just whole entire areas ceded to Citi Bank and Sweetgreen. Its a shame because it really is one of the only functionally livable places without a car, everyone I know in LA, San Francisco, and Philadelphia has a car.
Obviously Im biased but I do so resent the amount of people that come out of the woodwork and have to be kind of shitty in New York discourse? Cool, you have a gas station that sells gatorade and eggs, is it owned and run by the same guy for the last decade or is it a Sunoco? Like, I get it, you gotta get your dunks in, but someone on Twitter posts a picture of a cup full of butter they got at a bodega and everyone has to come in with I CAN ALSO BUY BUTTER who cares dude? Just let the NYC chumps pay their exorbitant rent and try to enjoy themselves.
Yeah it’s a shame that NYC is pretty much the only place I can live in the United States without owning a car, and I can feel it dying. The outer boroughs still have life, but it’s only a matter of time before my local places are replaced with Dig Inns and Trader Joe’s.
Breaks my heart tbh. Everyone with institutional power in this city actively cheers on its death, its terrible. Its got what, ten years left before it just empties out? Its so mismanaged, and its been the only place I can enjoy living since I grew up in a rural/suburban hellhole.
Gonna be honest NYC is not going away, it’s just changing. It’s changed several times over the decades. Your NYC is probably going away though, sadly. NYC of the 1940s is totally different from the NYC of the 1970s is totally different from the NYC of the 90s is totally different from the NYC of today.
If I have to read one more article about how some people in New York are really cool for doing ordinary culture stuff (like starting a magazine or writing a book) while in New York, I’m going to scream
