Tawk, Gawk, and Order Cawffee Like a Native

If you’re doing it right, your search for a new home should take you through NYC neighborhoods you probably never visited before. If the very thought of the ground you’ll be covering exhausts you, just be glad you’ll be slogging your way through a city as rich in sounds and sights as New York.

Depending on the neighborhood, you’re likely to hear a wide array of accented English. Keep an ear out for the homegrown variety. You never know, you just might find your dream apartment in a neighborhood where everyone speaks the same musically lilting version of Brooklynese that Bugs Bunny made famous throughout the English-speaking world. Follow the link beneath this map that was published in amNew York for an acoustical tour of NYC neighborhoods’ dialects. Wordorigin.org offers a brief survival guide for the local lingo that's definitely worth a quick scroll through. If you're dying for caffeine, knowing how to order a "regular" coffee anywhere outside of a chain store, might just save your life.

And why not make your travels even more interesting with a scavenger hunt for public art? NYC has long been known to nurture the talents of artistic outlaws deep within its dark underbelly. Although you're unlikely to ever see them plying their trade--unless you, yourself are up to no good--shadowy graffiti artists' signature pieces can be spotted throughout the city. Sure, “artist” doesn’t apply to the vast majority of narcissistic jerks who scratch up subway windows or tag surface imaginable, but some have generated a fan base and even parlayed their property crimes into professional art careers. Gridskipper has published a field guide to some of New York’s best known guerrilla scribblers dodging the law today.