being a new yorker

last night tbs was showing the secks & the city episode where samantha has to plan a party for an overgrown 13-year-old nyc princess who, at age 13, was already having secks like the best of the 25-35 year-olds. carrie says that if you've lived for 10 years in new york, you can call yourself a new yorker; although the ones who were born in new york you can always spot, typified in that 13-year-old. anyway, i have lived in new york for 3 straight years now and before that i spent roughly an 8-month stint in the upper east side. that was a very nice area - there were 3 bars within a block of where i lived (a straight block, not an around-the-corner block) all distintly different from each other: cock-tails, session 73, and some other i don't remember.
since moving to new york (there is no need to append "city" - (sardonically) there is only *one* new york that matters) i have bought a tv secondhand and begun watching it - fox news, cnn, family guy, some south park, house, the daily show, and the colbert hour, discovery channel and national geographic - and have become much more knowledgeable about world and societal affairs. done a share of volunteer work, berated a crack whore, some other strangers, and co-workers; (i've always been fairly timid about voicing opinions to strangers). health and fitness: i go to the gym 2-3 times a week and take yoga and pilates classes, i stopped overeating (i define this as eating past the point at which your stomach begins to feel full) and adjusted my habits to ingest more in the morning and afternoon and less at night. i purchase organic with foods that are normally pesticide-ridden, avoid mercury in fish, shop at whole foods, and recently became a dedicated user of two lines of preservative-free skin care. i know most of the stops on the main north-south subway lines as well as the more obscure middle-manhattan ones such as the B, F, N, Q, L; and can recommend restaurants bars and clubs off the top of my head (though hardly even a novice in this, most of my friends are much more well-versed here). playing warcraft for a year really doesn't count, in fact, you could even take off a year and say i've "lived" here for 2 years.
i feel like these are distinctly new york traits - awareness of and concern with current events, fashion, health. in the middle of westchester i couldn't have cared less. new york is not a sleepy town and even the worse of us resist complacency. for me, i've just learned to spend more and more money heh in adopting material and social diversity - does this make you a new yorker? what makes you a "survivor"? this place really just forces you to explore possibilities. if you leave, at the very least you take with you awareness.