Rarebit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit

My accent, like my looks, speaks strongly to my unique ethnic references, marginalized and ignored as they are, or (just as often) mocked behind my back. It's not exactly straight-up New York like an ignorant uneducated "guido", nor falsely pompous like a pseudo-Brit, or posh like a wanna-be WASP. It's Acadian, and it's Métis, and it's the Northeastern United States and the Maritime Provinces of Canada all wrapped up into one. It pre-dates other localized accents, like the land of Acadia did before the divides that bind us, as they currently exist.

Weirder still, it may be your exact kind of "suthin'" accent, Cajun, and that freaks out the down-home black folks even more: yo speakin' my accent, boy, and I mean that in the nicest way possible, because you are my heritage and ancestry, you just didn't know it, yet. Well, today you do. You mine, kid. In fact, all you Joneses and McNulty's are kin, too, whateva flava or color, because this mama don't care 'bout none of that, ya hear? You're alive to me. That's it. That's what counts.

But it's confusing, because it can't be easily mocked on a .t.v show by some bitch of an actress who "steals" from authentic people artistically, and that's a nice way to put it. It can't be deconstructed obsessively to pour into some flat-rate Hollywood starlet, either. They just ain't old enough as a culture to have it down right. You gots to be me! It changes on you, just when you think you have it down pat, because if you ain't me and my peeps, then you definitely don't have it. Sometimes it's New Brit, or Balmoral, or Brooklyn, or deep in da bayou...because that's all the flavor put in there just so.

It didn't really click together for me as a solid linguistic history told in words, stories, music, and cadence until I put my Scottish-British boyfriend back together with his native born folk and then BAM! His "mam" spoke of "movin' the cahr", just like they do is Bah-stin (that's Boston, in local-speak). Oh! Right! I'm from a place called "New Scotland". I would find that pleasant. My folk were easier to place, because my Brooklyn-born grandfather spoke like a character right out of "The Bowery Boys"*, an old entertainment bit done first on Vaudeville, and then in "the talkies". It fit. My mutha and her sistas speak with a dreadfully sharp and very unpleasant Bronx accent that's about as sexy as listening to a power drill whine loudly. Ugh.

The last piece of the puzzle came sharply into focus for me when I finally heard Welsh actor Christian Bale speak in his normal accent on a press junket for his fight movie, which must have knocked it right outta him. Aha! It was tough, street, and kinda foreign at the same time. Yeah! Like that! That's what we got: hard, rough, real lives told in an accent that puts us in the same company that can keep up. 

Out west, folks didn't quite know what to make of me, just like my voice. I was well-educated, but not forced about it. I was hip, but not some ghetto-ass "wigga". I was strong, but not full of arrogant bravado. I was lyrical, without being a pretend la-la land Disney character. I was deep, without being one drama class or Shakespeare reading away from a total drama queen doing Off-Broadway poorly. I was like Christian Bale in this here New World: an ethnic minority that spawned generations over time, space, and vast distances. Yeah, that's it. I'm real. Like a punch to the face. Deal with it. I know do.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bowery_Boys
 

Fudgie the Whale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvel_%28restaurant%29

New York kids grew up with Carvel ice cream cakes. It's what we wanted for every birthday, and so did our friends, because our parents would never buy that for just any old day. They were specially ordered through a storefront here in New City, and they were customized, but only so much. You could choose the ice cream flavors, that toothpaste shit passing for icing, and some of the colors, but that was about it, because (and here's the funny part), Carvel was so 'round-the-way "flavid", that they were broke-ass like only a really successful tri-state chain would be: one mold, five different kinds of cakes.

And that was the really fun part: guessing the mold's origin in the latest homemade commercial, because "Fudgie the Whale" was also "Cookie Puss" (a weird alien-like creature with a bizarre helium voice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooky_Puss), or (given the holiday), that banged up-looking cornucopia NOW ON SALE FOR THANKSGIVING!!! It was designed to hide the mold pan's original intent: capture the imagination of every area kid on the block by turning that one mold a bunch of different ways, aided and assisted by the creative use of icing.

They were sometimes rough looking and dumb. but I defy you to find brown cookie crunch crumble shit that's bettah. You won't homeboy. It's that good. "Yeah, gimme some more with that toothpaste crap. Hit me with it, bro!" It won't last forevah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_Puss.

"Hi! I'm 'Cookie Puss!', and I'm out of this world!'" Wha the...?

Enjoy the summer, friends.

 
Special shout-out to Howard Stern and the rest of crew for representing our interests and the insanely wacky New Yawk lifestyle, because it ain't funny if it ain't done in "that accent"*. You know the one! Enjoy The Hamptons, yo. "After 40 years of hard work you're a real success!" (Thanks, Cashflow.)

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_English

Rockland County Redneck

Tits, guns, cows, and lots of red meat. Fuck you, city folk!

Believe it or not, we have serious hicks in New York. It's hard for outsiders to acknowledge that, because they see these crime dramas on t.v. about city people, but truth is, we have an enormous amount of wilderness here; a state so vast up north, driving in that direction will take you to Canada.

I need fake books, hot wings, and beer to be American!

And so, we have certain pockets that stand out in stark contrast to the neurotic, uptight, therapy-case Manhattanite who's originally from "Lawnguyland", or "Long Island", as it's referred to in English. Upstaters chafe at "The City", citing Albany as the state capital and all them types that frequent urban areas as being different and threatening to them and their culture, and they aren't exactly wrong about that.

Spelling and punctuation sucks! If you do it right, you're a pinko liberal.

Truth be told, an upstate accent sounds much more like a Wisconsin "donchaknow" type of folksy backwoods talk than a "Nuyorican" (a New Yorker of Puerto Rican ancestry) who's lived on one city block for his entire life. Provincialism exists everywhere on the globe, and we are no exception in that regard, either.

Mah huntin' dog gets me through deer season. Fuck you! Go hump a tree.

But ideally, genuine native New York culture is actually one that incorporates town and country, like the magazine of the same name. Urbane, sophisticated people typically have a home at the beach or in the woods, and an apartment in the city, switching up locales on the weekends and holidays. It's a harder lifestyle because it necessitates a certain level of income, but also a flexible and adaptable mentality to go along with the life, too.

I needs guns to express myself, asshole. Get a job!

It's something me and my group of friends have always had that marks us as not quite fitting into rigid categories of "city", "country", or "beachcomber", which some people trade on and off like a set of clothes. We do it all because we love it all: the beach, the mountains, the woods, the waterfalls, the wild untamed forests, the parks, the culture, the food, the weather, the changing landscapes with their exceptionally beautiful vistas, and most importantly, our fair Gotham.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker

To know us well is to know and appreciate those things, too, with all their individual facets, and if you can't do that, then we don't have much to talk to you about, so bounce, muthafucka, because that's how we roll. Keep up, will ya?