21 things that only make sense to New Yorkers

Ordering diner takeout at 3:30am. Because sometimes you want a turkey club sandwich, but not under fluorescent lighting, while drunk.

Walk signs and crosswalks are pretty light-up boxes that might be public art, but we aren’t sure.

That Zen-like pause in a conversation when the express train is passing, after which you resume your sentence as though nothing had happened.

Ordering pastrami on rye bread with spicy mustard (and don’t even think about white, or DARE utter the word mayonnaise).

Instead of feeling disgusted or scared upon finding a huge, dead roach in your bathroom, you’re just glad this one's actually dead. (Or is it faking it again?)

Hearing “It’s showtime!” on the subway and immediately knowing it means you might get accidentally kicked in the face by a teenager.

Going out on the weekend is for tourists and suckers. We do our partying on weeknights!

We wait “on line” instead of “in line.” We know: It doesn’t really make sense. Where is this fictitious line that we speak of? You know what? We don’t need no steenkin’ line. We are the only people on the planet who say “on line,” making it the perfect way to suss out a true New Yorker from the Canal Street knockoff variety.

A “coffee regular” has three grams of sugar and a small reservoir of whole milk in it.

You can see someone in a Chanel suit, Jimmy Choos and a perfect coif walking next to someone in mom jeans, a baggy sweater and Chucks, with razor-straight bangs framing huge plastic glasses, and know that both are the height of fashion in their respective neighborhoods.

Folding our pizza slices before biting into them. Once you get in the habit, any other way just seems like madness.

It’s totally acceptable to go into a nice restaurant and order by saying, “Hey, lemme get…”

The New Yorker force field: an impenetrable wall of “fuck you, I have my own shit to deal with” that allows us to ignore literally every horrible thing we see in the city every day.

Hating the people who stand by or against the door on the subway, while fully understanding their desire to have a nice backrest. Note: It is perfectly acceptable, at least once a month, to yell at nobody in particular, “Hey! Move to the center of the car and make room for the rest of us!”

Switching directly from Spanglish to Yiddish mid-sentence: "That pendejo has a lot of chutzpah showing his tochis in this bodega!"

Brunch is like some kind of second career choice that you’re literally paying for.

Walking. Nobody complains about walking here, that’s how you get around. And we are goddamn experts at it.

It is socially acceptable to ask someone you have just met what his or her rent is (just so long as you wait a few minutes, for politeness).

Our need to wear a seatbelt in the car magically vanishes when that car is a cab, despite the fact the person driving it is (a) a complete stranger, (b) probably horribly sleep-deprived and (c) almost certain to break at least 18 traffic laws during your six-minute ride.

The fact that Houston is pronounced the way that it is, and not as it is in Texas.

Egg creams: milk, soda water, syrup. No egg, no cream. Egg cream.