So, you reach a point when you just live in a city and some of the glamour wears off. Laundry, grocery shopping, and the need to be lazy, not leave the apartment and have breakfast, lunch and dinner delivered right to your door, sorta gets in the way of the red carpets, 5 am club outings and celebrity spotting.

Now I have happened upon a couple of celebs (had dinner next to Rosanna Arquette and some euro-trash dude, grocery shopped with Jennifer Garner in WholeFoods and ran into Wallace Shawn – the ‘Inconceivable’ dude from Princess Bride – a couple of times.) but other than that, you just become a NYer, put your head down, your hand out in front of you, Heisman trophy style, and plunge through sidewalk traffic as best you can. It all comes down to just getting there.

But, there are those experiences that are so uniquely NY that a visitor, sadly, may never get to experience. I spent Saturday morning on my roof, having a beer, chatting on the phone and absorbing the sun along with the culture that roams the streets past my apartment. When I got a hankerin for some nash, I hit up my bodega. On the weekends they sell homemade tamales for a buck. Can’t beat that. It was a perfect afternoon.

This afternoon I’m going to visit an ex co-worker of mine whose mother just passed. She’s sitting shiva for the next few days and I’ve been scouring the internet for info on shiva sitting so I don’t make an ass out of myself when I show up.

There’s another side to this city to see if you come to town. Take the time to absorb some of the true culture, not just the overpriced touristy crap. Hit up a pub. Make some friends and find out what we really do here. That way, the next time a steam pipe explodes under the street, you won’t simply have the tourist inclination to pack your bags and scamper home, leaving us to deal with our problems. Instead, you’ll be more emotionally invested in us, fear with us, and that will make you a NYer, not just a person who treads our streets for a few days.

For now, I have to watch the rest of Corky Romano so I can go finish up that laundry. Tune in next time for some subway stories. You wouldn’t believe what goes on there…