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.

  • Pisha [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    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

  • Lester_Peterson [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    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.

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    It’s a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs.”

    So… any gas station in the USA?

  • DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    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

  • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    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them all and from my observation there is agreement: NYC is both the dirtiest major city globally and has the most outdated mass transit system.

    • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      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?

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      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.

        • ScotPilgrimVsTheLibs [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          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.

          • crime [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            3 years ago

            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

      • Caitycat [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        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.

    • ScotPilgrimVsTheLibs [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      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.