10 ways to fit in like a true New Yorker

The largest city in America is known for being a melting pot of people, customs and cuisines all packed into roughly 300 square miles encompassing five boroughs.

Every year, thousands of people from all over the world move to the Big Apple looking for new jobs and excitement. Here are some steps new residents can take to fit in like a native New Yorker, according to people who know the city well.

Make sure you walk quickly on the sidewalks, said Macy Harrell, a New York City native who runs a public relations firm in Manhattan. Native New Yorkers are always on the move, and they get frustrated when people stroll along, she said.

"If you don't know where you're going, get out of the way," Harrell said.

New York City has the rare luxury of giving its residents the choice of two teams for every major sport — the Mets or Yankees for baseball, the Knicks or Nets for basketball, the Rangers or Islanders for hockey, and the Jets or Giants for football. The native New Yorker is a fan of only one of each.

"If you say you're rooting for both the Mets and the Yankees, New Yorkers aren't going to believe you," said Christopher Gorman, marketing director at the Museum of the City of New York. "Nobody really does that. You have to double down on the team you want to root for."

Native New Yorkers look down on people who switch their fandom from one team to the other, so be strategic when picking your teams: You'll be stuck with them.

Bodega and diners across New York offer a variety of breakfast dishes, but natives almost always stick to a sandwich made with bacon, egg, and cheese.

"It's a quick breakfast that's satisfying and you can customize," Harrell said. "And who doesn't like bacon?"

The traditional bacon, egg, and cheese comes on a kaiser roll with salt, pepper, and ketchup. Some New Yorkers swap the roll for a bagel, while others use hot sauce instead of ketchup. The egg is fried over hard, and the cheese is yellow American.

New Yorkers have grown to love the sandwich because it's portable, inexpensive, and the cook at the bodega who makes it — who should be referred to as "ock" — finishes the order quickly, Harrell said.

Harrell said, when you're hungry, the bacon, egg, and cheese "gets the job done."

In other parts of the country, residents use libraries to check out books and maybe other digital media. But anyone moving to the Big Apple should get a New York Public Library card because the staff there organizes book clubs, art exhibits and more.

Getting a library card in New York City is a unique experience because the branches serve as de facto community centers, Gorman said.

"The libraries are often places where people find out about other things going on in the city and neighborhood," he said. "It doesn't cost you anything to walk in, and it doesn't cost you anything to get a card."

The New York City subway is undoubtedly the fastest way to travel across the five boroughs. Someone moving to the city for the first time may not understand the signs posted at each stop.

For example, on the subway, "uptown" is northbound, and "downtown" basically means southbound. "Crosstown" means the train travels east to west or west to east. An "express" means the train will skip certain stops along its route in order to carry a large group of people to a popular destination faster, and a "local" means this train will stop at every station along the line.

Staring at a map of the subway is one thing, but "you kind of have to use it to learn it," Gorman said. "It's not like a smaller city where there's like only five lines. "In other cities, they'll say, 'Just take the Red Line,' but here there's three Red Lines — the 1, 2, and 3."

The corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue may be a huge tourist attraction, but native New Yorkers don't visit Times Square, Harrell said.

If anyone from out of town wants to fit in like a native, they should also avoid major tourist areas, she said.

That includes standing outside along Sixth Avenue in November during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and packing into Times Square for the New Year's Eve ball drop. Harrell said she and many New Yorkers she knows have never been to the ball drop.

"That's because we don't like waiting around," Harrell said. "We don't like to be around tourist traps."

New Yorkers have always been proud of the wide-sliced, thin-crust pizza served at restaurants throughout the city. Anyone moving here should visit pizzerias in all five boroughs and "do your own little pizza tour," Gorman said.

You'll find that a slice from one pizzeria will taste completely different from a bite at a different establishment, Gorman said. Despite those differences, doing a pizza tour will help transplants pinpoint their favorite pizzeria, Gorman said.

"And it's still a relatively inexpensive way to feed yourself and fuel yourself for the day," he added.

Being a New Yorker also means learning how to ignore the antics on display on the sidewalks, particularly in Times Square, Harrell said. New residents should not stop and stare at someone dressed in a costume, trying to hand you a flier, or screaming at traffic, she said.

"There are a lot of colorful people here," Harrell said. "We are a very unbothered people. Big reactions are not our thing. A native New Yorker is not going to look twice."

Native New Yorkers know about a section of the subway tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn on the Q line where the artwork looks like a movie is being projected against the wall. It's called "Masstransiscope," and artist Bill Brand installed it in the 1980s.

The mural consists of 228 hand-painted panels that run 300 feet inside the subway tunnel.

"One part of it takes the form of a rocket taking off," Gorman said.

To truly become a New Yorker, one must know about Brand's mural, Gorman said. "The artwork can be seen from Manhattan-bound B or Q subway cars departing DeKalb Avenue Station," according to the M.T.A.

"If you know about this thing and you see it, then you'll feel like you're in on a secret about how public art and transportation works in New York City," he added.

In other cities, residents call their mass transit system "the metro" or "the subway." True New Yorkers call their subway system "the train," Gorman and Harrell said. To become a New Yorker, you must say phrases like "I'll just take the train" or "I'm here now. I just got off the train."

It's OK to call it "the subway" or "metro," but doing so will show that you were not born in New York City, Harrell said. "We know what you're talking about, but that's just now what we call it."

Other examples of local pronunciations include Houston Street, which is "How-stin" — not "H-you-stun," like the Texas city. The Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village is pronounced "grin-utch" as opposed to the Connecticut's version: "gren-itch."