25 Things that Only a Born and Raised New Yorker Would Understand.

Here's for you, Rad-Pa Mike. :)
1.  Alley cats and alley ways.  Good for baseball, racing and red-rover.
2.  Steamy pot holes and rusty fences.
3.  Women dressed to the nines until you get down to their feet, where they are wearing the latest pair of running shoes.
4.  Stick Ball and Hand Ball
5.  Dancing and jumping around in the middle of the street, enjoying high-pressured water from a broken fire hydrant.
6.  Sitting on a strangers stoop with the crew, occasionally moving over to let the resident in.
7.  Older ladies in colorful lawn chairs sitting along the sidewalk, every day until dusk.
8.  Candy stores that smell like Curry and sell more magazines than candy.
9.  Neighborhood rivalries and rumbles.
10. Hearing "Shut up!" and "Make me!" yelled out of random windows over the constant honking of the taxi cab.
11. Illegal merchants boldly selling beaded jewelry and black market tapes, Cd's and DVDs on the street. 
12. Everyone knows at least one guy named Jimmy, Joe or Mikey.
13. The Botanic Gardens in Brooklyn.  Paradise in the middle of the concrete jungle.
14. Apple juice and Popsicles during hot summer days at Central Park.
15. Christopher Street and Gay Street
16. Jewish men dressed in black suits with perfect curls respectfully bouncing under their black fedoras.
17. Everywhere else, you have black, white and Hispanic.  In New York, you have Jamaican, African, Italian, Greek, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Costa Rican, Cuban, Irish, Iranian, Lebanese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and so on.  People keep their very identities in New York.  It is a salad bowl rather than a melting pot.
18. Cab drivers that are willing to run someone over to get you where you need to go, and aren't ashamed to ask you for a tip, then let you know if it was good enough.
19. Coney Island and Astroland! Ride at your own risk.
20. Entire apartment buildings that smell like Spanish rice or spaghetti and meat balls.
21. YO!
22. Hanging out in "The Village" on the weekends.
23. Being jealous of the rich girls from Long Island
24. Money doesn't get any older than The Hamptons
25. No one calls Roter Rooter.  They call the "Supah" or the "Plumbah"







Good old New York. I lived in Brooklyn for a long time, and I cherish these memories.  No tourist could possibly understand them.