You know how being from a place colors your perspective of a place? A few years ago I asked friends who were not American and had lived in Tokyo, Dehli and London before moving to NYC if NYC was really odd or if it's a big city thing and they unequivocally were like no we see real weird shit here.
My outsider observation of NYC is that New Yorkers tend to think ordinary big city things are unique to New York while *also* thinking that the things that are deeply weird and idiosyncratic about the city are just everyday things experienced by all
It’s amusing
One time I sat down and explained the borough thing to a friend and she was like you know in the us most cities are located in counties not made up of them?
It doesn't help that Alaska also has boroughs and NYC does the confusing thing of having boroughs and counties that are coterminous but also don't share the same name (queens is an exception)
Yep, that was exactly it. Although the reality of NYC boroughs is all over our entertainment (I understood it before I ever went to NYC) and I was a little surprised he hadn't encountered it before.
Also, at my last job I periodically had to do searches for the org's volunteers in certain areas & the counties/boroughs part was initially VERY confusing when I was trying to search by county. I eventually figured it out.
