Assumptions I make about you and what you're drinking.

Beverages are big here.

I don't really even know what that means,

aside from the fact that I feel like 80% of events in the city revolve around a drinkable liquid of some sort.

So here's what people choose to drink in NYC and the judgements I make about them based upon those choices.

1. Coffee

It's huge, guys.

I mean, coffee's big everywhere. But here.... coffee's huge here.

Entire days revolve around the accessibility of coffee.

Coffee is New York. New York is coffee. Coffee, cigarettes, sex, & egos.

Coffee is the everyman's drink. Just the act of "needing" my coffee makes me feel at one with this city.

Socially, it's one of the most innocuous things to share. Very few judgments can be made based solely upon the love of coffee- if only because it's so pervasive.

Even though caramel lattes w/ skim milk, light caramel syrup, and 2.5 Splendas may be NYC's designer drugs.

- far cries from the bitter black pill that so many have learned to love to swallow-

it's still not as bad as . . .

2. Green juices/Smoothies

Usually utilized by either. . .

1. People who have enough money to make this a routine vice or

2. Perpetually hungover people who use these as "remedies"for their inability to demonstrate prior self-restraint.

I still struggle w/ the idea that this drink is not pretentious.

3. Diet Coke

Fashiony. Kind of cool, kind of judged. Especially by the folks in category 2.

Somewhat of an accessory.

Oftentimes ordering one right off the bat ensures that it's assumed you have some sort of food complex in addition to insatiable caffeine addiction.

Widely understood to cause cancer so . . . so bonus sexy sense of inevitable morbidity often implied.

4. Wine

Not as lame-looking as in Wisconsin.

Here, I can order wine on the reg without feeling the judgements that folks back home would often pass.

With so many soms, pseudo-soms, and wannabe soms, this city's overflowing with people who definitely know more than me about wine, which actually takes the pressure off and allows me to fully relinquish all embarrassment in social interactions in which I know nothing.