4. “HASTA!”
Selling cocaine is such a normal part of the Nuyorican experience, it wasn’t unusual to go to a dealer’s apartment and see his whole family sitting there watching TV. My buddy Sharky and I would step over Granny’s legs and past the crib to the young man’s room, where he’d take the bags of coke out from underneath his karate trophies. We’d usually want two $20 bags, which were about a quarter-gram each. On the way out, the granny would give us an enthusiastic goodbye in Spanish. She knows who butters her pan.
Verdict: Instead of being drummed out of their neighborhood by the gentrifying yuppies, Nuyoricans adapt to their surroundings and turn change into dollars.

5. “THIS NIGGA’S BALLS OUT”
Sharky and I were always partial to seedy strip clubs, and one of the sleaziest was called “Foxes” out in Queens. The Puerto Rican strippers there had droopy tits from breast-feeding, and they all smoked cigarettes onstage. When I complimented one of them on the strange black socks she was wearing with her strappy stilettos she said, “They for medicinal purposes,” then spat out her gum. Sharky looks like Chris Isaak and although I am much uglier than him, I often did just as well with the dancers. “This nigga’s better-looking,” our favorite regular would say, pointing at Sharky, “but I like this nigga. He balls out,” she’d say, pointing at me. Then she’d give me a free lap dance in a small booth made of cheap particleboard in the back. New York doesn’t allow nudity, so she’d remove her neon orange G-string to reveal…another neon orange G-string. It was more comical than sexy, but when she couldn’t feel an erection in my pants she punched my chest hard and said, “Why you not hard?” I gave an apologetic smile and implied it was her own people’s fault by asking, “Cocaine?” Somehow we ended up with her number and called her that night at about five in the morning. Her mother answered the phone. She was not happy.
Verdict: Puerto Rican women demand respect and admiration.

6. “WHAT YOU LOOKING AT, CHICKEN LEGS?”
Yoshua and his thin-legged wife are close friends of mine from Mexico City. They look white to the untrained eye but are fish out of water in New York. During a recent visit, my wife and I brought them to Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, where they strained to hear a conversation some Puerto Rican teenagers were having. “It’s the sloppiest Spanish I’ve ever heard,” Yoshua confided in his funny accent. “They keep leaving out entire words and letters and blending everything together,” he added. I said that it sounds like Glaswegian or Quebecois. Then Yoshua’s wife blew it by getting a little too close and one of the girls cocked her head back and barked out the line above. We’ve called her Chicken Legs ever since.
Verdict: Young Nuyoricans’ off-the-cuff wit is indubitable.

7. “YEAH, BOMB THAT SHIT NIGGA!”
I am only very sure these kids were Puerto Rican but as I watched the towers collapse from my roof on 9/11/01, the kids across the street were on their roof hollering encouragement and jumping up and down with excitement.
Verdict: Like renowned intellectual Ward Churchill, many Puerto Rican youth saw the attacks as a much-needed wakeup call.

8. “YEAH, I’M GONNA CLEAN IT UP”
The amount of dog feces in my neighborhood is enough to make you want to set up a 24-hour-a-day stakeout to catch the perps in action. So far, I’ve only caught two, and they were both Puerto Rican females. The first was an older woman who pretended she didn’t speak English when I chastised her for leaving a huge pile of dog shit next to a school, and the second was a teenager on the phone. “You going to pick that up?” I asked the same way I had earlier asked her sister’s cousin’s aunt. She tried to ignore me but I was all up in her grille, so she sent her chubby pal to go get a bag. Eventually the poop was scooped and I was responsible for helping lower the incidence of public shitting by 0.0000003%.
Verdict: With a little encouragement, Puerto Ricans are happy to improve their community.

9. “I LOVE THIS NEIGHBORHOOD”
While picking up my daughter from her public school I overheard some Puerto Rican moms telling the teacher how much this Brooklyn enclave has changed for the better. “I love this neighborhood,” she said with a huge smile before adding, “I move to Florida because I hatey Williamsburg so much. Then four years ago. I move back. It’s a different world now. My mother worked in a factory on Kent St. and she couldn’t go to work without getting mugged. It happened like, four times. Today, it’s beautiful.”
Verdict: Puerto Ricans believe diversity is our strength.

10. “YOU NEW HERE”
Three days ago, I went to the video store and left my son’s scooter in the gated area out front because I don’t want him riding it around in the store. When I came out, it was gone. After asking the clerk and other locals if they saw anything, I was told to check out the kids on South 2nd a block away. “It’s a sketchy building where they’re all on welfare,” said an anonymous source. “Their kids are always up to something.”

Sure enough, when I got there, a five-year-old was scooting around on my kid’s toy. When I grabbed it from him he pointed to his three-year-old sister as the culprit. The mother was surrounded by other mothers on the stoop, and almost all of them were on the phone. This appears to be the Nuyorican community’s M.O. Teaching their children to be independent from them is a huge part of their child-rearing.

I go up to the mom and say, “Hey!” to get her off the phone. This is her business. “Did your kid steal my scooter?” I asked. “I dunno,” she shrugged. I tried to explain to her that leaving the kids to roam the streets at that age is a crime, and letting kids steal if you were there is also a crime, so it’s not looking good no matter where she was. She pooh-poohed me with a hand gesture while her mother came out of the building. Grandma looked me up and down before declaring, “You new here.” The logic was inescapable and I walked off. Who was I to judge?
Verdict: We have a lot to learn about Puerto Rican culture.