You think New Yorkers are too tough to crack jokes about ourselves? Think again. Life in this city is so absurd that you have to make fun of it or else you’ll lose your mind. There are probably as many NYC jokes as there are New Yorkers. The following are some of my personal favorites. I hope you’ll get a laugh from them.
- “New York City is the only city in the world where you can be awakened by a smell.” —Jeff Garlin
2. “I live in New York. I love this city; it’s a great city. But I hate when people go, ‘New York City: eight million people, eight million stories.’ There’s three New York stories, all right: There’s ‘I moved here,’ ‘I lived here all my life,’ and Ghostbusters.” —Mike Lawrence
3. You can always tell who’s raised in New York by how they take a compliment when they’re an adult. You know, like, ‘Hey, nice haircut.’ ‘Screw you; what’s wrong with it?’” —Colin Quinn
4. “According to the Center for Disease Control, the largest single transmission of deadly germs is a handshake. You’re lucky, because the most popular form of greeting here in New York is the middle finger.” —David Letterman
5. “Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.” —Johnny Carson
6. “The trouble with New York is that it’s so convenient to everything I can’t afford.” —Jack Barry
7. “In other parts of the country, couples try to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York, they try to work things out for the sake of the apartment.” —David Sedaris
8. “The NYC Marathon is really just a bunch of people running away from Staten Island.” —Joe Pontillo
9. “You ever sit on the train, and the conductor comes over the loudspeaker and says, ‘This train is being held at the station.’ And you just sit there, and you’re like, ‘God, I wonder what it’s like to be held?’ Because you’re so lonely.” ―Michelle Collins
10. “I’ve lived in New York City way too long. I realized this ’cause I was on the subway the other day and I heard a meow meowwww, and I’m like, ‘Oh great, here comes some frickin’ guy pretending he’s a cat.’ And I turned around, and it was a cat. In a bag. That’s what New York City’s done to me. I’m like, ‘Cat noise? Can’t be the animal that makes that noise. It’s gotta be some weird cat guy.’ Like I was gonna turn around and there was going to be some guy with, like, cat ears and a unitard and felt whiskers.” —Dan St. Germain
11. “The New York Post is my favorite newspaper. Reading the New York Post is like talking to someone who heard the news, and now they’re trying to give you the gist. It’s like, you’d get the same amount of information if you grabbed someone on the street and you were like, ‘What happened today?’ and they’re like, ‘There’s a perv in Queens!’ You’d be like, ‘All right, thank you.’ Or, rather, it’s like someone read a better newspaper, and now they’re trying to text you everything they can remember. Doesn’t have to be right, just has to be short.” —John Mulaney
12. “We resent tourists. Most of us were once tourists. We resent the fact that you can still leave.” —Andrew Steiner
I hope these NYC jokes at least made you chuckle. Which one was your favorite? And if you know any other NYC jokes, leave them in the comment section so we can all get a laugh from them.
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