2007 will bring tens of thousands of new residents fumbling their way through life in The Big Apple. The New York Building Congress projects that by 2010 New York City’s population will swell to 8.4 million, an increase of 400,000 people over an eight-year period. As a 23-year-old from Georgia and a new Brooklynite, I’ve been dying to live here since I was five. But I quickly learned that a subway map and Zagat Guide wouldn’t teach me how to be a real New Yorker. Here are seven tips from my own trial by fire on how to thrive during your first months in America’s largest city.
• Subway Smarts: Everyone reads or listens to music while packed in clown car-like conditions on the train, even when holding a coat, briefcase and wearing high-heeled boots. Learn to box out old ladies for a seat on the morning Q; use your intuition to decide if the guy talking to himself is harmless or homicidal; visibly judge tourists taking pictures on the train, but have your camera phone ready to nab flashers.
• Everything But The Kitchen Sink: Newbies quickly learn how easy you can get groceries, international takeout food and Ikea delivered to your door. But high-grade marijuana? For recent grads used to amateur dealers whining about being “dry,” living in the five boroughs offers a new experience: efficient, discrete weed, home delivered after just one phone call. An acquaintance in Greenpoint boasted about how much he loved his service. He just found out about a “buy four boxes for $50 each and get-one-free” deal. Here in NYC, even the drug dealers run promotions.
• Become a Multiculturalist: If you are going to live in the most diverse city in the world, and perhaps the most politically correct, don’t look provincial. My roommate Alice from Idaho tried to schedule her interview with the Jewish Museum on Yom Kippur. Don’t imply to a Pakastani friend that Arabs and South Asians are the same. Learn the difference between a West Indian and West African accent. Don’t ask Irish soccer fans if they are pulling for Britain. You aren’t in Kansas anymore.
• Hey, Big Tipper: Twenty percent is standard, duh. But after working coat check for my catering company, I’m only further convinced that to tip is to be closer to God. You’d be surprised by how many people don’t tip for coat check, even after checking a stroller, and asking you to get their coat and recheck it three times and using your table as a baby-feeding station. Usually people who don’t tip give you a smile and an extra thank you. But this is Gotham, and politeness is no substitute for cold hard cash. To be the best kind of resident, support the arts and tip an extra dollar. If you think you can’t afford it, get a night job in the service industry. Then you’ll understand.
• Indulge in Real Estate Delusion: When you discover the only places where you can afford to live are “up and coming,” stay positive and delude yourself about your surroundings like I do. Alice and I like to call our neighborhood Prospect Heights. It may be Crown Heights. Why evoke unnecessary images of infamous race riots? The man who stands on my corner every day appearing to conduct a symphony merely adds character. The break-ins next door and the shootings down the street are clearly exaggerated. Who cares that there is nowhere to buy bagels or good produce within a 20-minute walk? At least we’re not infiltrated by yuppies with $1000 strollers.
• Dating: For heterosexual males, the frat boy act isn’t going to cut it. Your ability to pay for dinner trumps your skills at beer funneling. For straight women, to get a proper sampling of the men this metropolis has to offer, relax your definition of “too old” by ten years. Then religiously get tested for STDs. For everyone: don’t date anyone who regularly wears sunglasses inside. This indicates they take their hipsterdom way to seriously, and you can’t trust people who won’t show you their eyes.
• Survive infestations: After settling in, we were faced with an infestation problem. And I’m not talking about bedbugs. I’m talking about houseguests. In our first two months, Alice and I estimated that a third of the nights we’d spent in our apartment we’d had visitors—Relatives and friends plugged our coordinates into their “free place to stay” radar—and we began to feel inundated. After joking that we’d become proprietors of a B&B, we decided to stop offering the friendly “you can stay with us any time” because of how literally everyone seemed to take it. And while it’s harsh, we’re pulling out Nancy Reagan and just saying no. We don’t feel bad though. We’re New Yorkers, so we’re allowed to be rude.
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