10 Things New Yorkers Are Tired of Apologizing For
New Yorkers spend half their lives explaining themselves to the rest of the country.
The other half, they spend not being sorry at all.
From Buffalo to Montauk, the apologies have officially stopped.
These are the things New Yorkers are tired of apologizing for.
1. Getting to the Point
Outsiders call it rude.
New Yorkers call it respect for your time.
When a diner waitress in Utica asks what you want, she means what do you want, not how was your weekend.
The conversation moves fast because everyone gets more done that way.
Transplants figure out within a month that blunt and unkind aren’t the same thing.
The same New Yorker who cut you off mid-sentence will also carry your groceries up three flights of stairs.
2. Pizza Opinions
Yes, New Yorkers judge other states’ pizza.
No, they won’t stop.
The fold, the thin crust, the grease line running down your wrist: that’s the standard, and everything else gets measured against it.
A New Yorker visiting the Midwest will eat the local pizza politely. Then they’ll describe it to friends back home as a casserole.
Bagels get the same treatment, and no, your city’s water doesn’t change the verdict.
3. Standing on Line
The rest of the country stands in line.
New Yorkers stand on line, and they’ve fielded jokes about it their whole lives.
The phrase runs from Long Island delis to Albany DMV counters, and linguists have puzzled over it for decades.
Nobody’s switching.
Correct a New Yorker’s grammar while they’re waiting for a bacon, egg, and cheese, and see how the rest of your morning goes.
4. Loving Wegmans Out Loud
Every state has a favorite grocery store.
New York has Wegmans, and New Yorkers will tell you about it whether you asked or not.
The chain started in Rochester more than a century ago and grew into the store upstate families plan their Saturdays around.
College kids from Syracuse bring roommates home just to walk them through the prepared foods section.
When a new Wegmans opens out of state, transplanted New Yorkers show up like it’s a class reunion.
That’s not an overstatement, and nobody’s sorry about it.
5. Bragging About the Snow
Syracuse averages around 127 inches of snow a year, more than any other big city in America.
That’s over ten feet.
Upstate cities even compete for it: The Golden Snowball goes to whichever one racks up the most each winter, and Buffalo has won the past three.
Rochester, Binghamton, and Albany chase the same trophy every year.
Outsiders hear those numbers and wince.
New Yorkers hear them and start comparing snowblowers.
Lake-effect snow is a point of pride north of I-90, and no one’s trading it for a mild December.
6. Calling Them Just Wings
Order “Buffalo wings” in Buffalo, and you’ve announced you’re from somewhere else.
They’re wings.
Teressa Bellissimo invented them at the Anchor Bar in 1964, frying leftover chicken wings and tossing them in butter and cayenne for her son’s friends.
Sixty years later, the whole country eats them by the millions every February.
New Yorkers watched that happen without collecting a dime in royalties.
The least everyone else can do is get the name right and keep the ranch away from the blue cheese.
7. Ordering the Garbage Plate
Rochester’s most famous dish is a pile of home fries, macaroni salad, and baked beans buried under burgers or hot dogs and a spicy meat sauce.
It’s called a Garbage Plate, and Nick Tahou Hots has served it for generations.
Outsiders see the name and the pile and ask questions.
New Yorkers see 2 a.m. perfection.
Half the state’s college memories sit on one of those paper plates.
Apologizing for it would insult the plate and the memories both.
8. Correcting the Map in Your Head
Tell a New Yorker you’ve “been to New York” because you saw Times Square, and watch them inhale slowly.
Most of the state is farms, forests, and lakes.
The Adirondack Park covers 6 million acres, bigger than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon national parks combined.
New York also grows more apples than any state except Washington.
So yes, New Yorkers will correct you when you assume the whole state is subway platforms.
They’ve earned the lecture.
Psst! How well do you know the Empire State? Take our quiz and see if you can score 100%.
Quiz
Empire State IQ
Answer these questions on New York history and trivia. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
9. Bills Mafia
Every fan base claims to be the most loyal.
Bills fans jumped through folding tables in freezing parking lots to prove it.
This is the fan base that sat through four straight Super Bowl losses in the early '90s and came back louder.
Bills Mafia also donates millions to charity in opposing players' names, which outsiders never seem to mention.
So the table thing stays.
Wear a Dolphins jersey to a Buffalo tailgate and try lecturing them about decorum.
10. Staying Anyway
New Yorkers carry the heaviest state and local tax load in the country, at 15.9% of income by the Tax Foundation's measure.
They know.
They complain about it at every barbecue from Batavia to Bay Shore.
But here's the part outsiders get wrong: Complaining rights belong to residents only.
A cousin who moved to Tampa doesn't get to pile on from a lawn chair.
New Yorkers pay for the seasons, the pizza, the lakes, and the right to gripe about all of it, and many of them wouldn't trade the package for anything.
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