BECOMING PART OF THE GANGS OF NEW YORK

A few tips on how to blend in like a local in New York City:

1. Never, ever look up. There is nothing to see here.
2. Don’t stop moving. This is a concrete jungle after all, and jungle rules apply. If you stop, busy New Yorkers will stampede you.
3. Take huge liberties with traffic signals as you cross the street. Bonus points for crossing the street while staring at your iPhone!
4. Regularly complain about the subway delays and never, ever get into an empty subway car (Trust me there is always a reason.)
5. Get that obligatory Times Square photo and then GET OUT and never go back unless it is for TKTS tickets deals.

Things that I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to figure out (serious blonde moments):

• What Downtown, Midtown, Uptown actually mean... At home, Downtown is not actually ‘down’ but just a word to mean “where the tall buildings are” which obviously is not true in New York.
• That Brooklyn is not just one street with brownstone buildings, at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge as movies mislead me to believe. It’s f#*^ing huge.
• That a bodega is a corner store. (I know! I also thought there was this dedicated legion of Italian delis where everything was fresh, homemade and delicious. Only New York could find a way to make a corner store sound classy...)

Things I still don’t understand about New York:
​What’s the deal with ShakeShack?