Ahh, New York City. The rich man's Boston, the poor man's Paris, the regular person's Everest. Home to perverted writers, Bodega cats, starving artists with trust funds, and Taylor Swift, New York is the greatest city in the world and you should let everybody know this fact in the least obtrusive way possible. And our pin-pushing peeps at Pintrill have found a way to boast your NYC pride while bypassing the attached stigma of, well, relentlessly talking about New York City.
The NYC Pack features five pins that delineate the city's vibe with style and simplicity; they each possess that much sought after trait that rappers refer to as "street cred" and deserves a spot on your jacket now. Right now.
"Pin"nacle
We all know New York City is rife with famous architecture—but its most iconic building is, undoubtedly, the Empire State Building. At only one inch tall, this guy is about 1/1,400th the size of the real deal, but instantly recognizable as it chills on the lapel of your new favorite blazer.
Pin Hydrant
By simultaneously paying tribute to both the FDNY and those hot summer days you spent running through open hydrants in Bushwick, the Pin Hydrant symbolizes freedom to the core. Freedom to escape the summer sun and the lesser-acknowledged freedom to remain un-burnt from a stray grease fire. Hell, that's America through and through!
Pin Not So Perfect Apple
First cool fact about this pin: it's made from black nickel, which apparently is a thing. Second cool thing: it's colored a deep blood red to symbolize the adversity our far-off relatives faced when they first arrived in NYC; it wasn't always coffee shops and Cronuts. Third cool thing: there are only 50 of these available, which makes the Not So Perfect Apple Pin an instant collector's item. Sort of like the opposite of Beanie Babies or Pokemon cards. Actually, Pokemon cards are still the bomb.
Pin Off Duty
Unless Uber successfully kills off the cab, Taxis will always be the number one transit choice for those partied-out people who simply cannot wait twenty minutes for the subway. Of course, to counter the instant gratification of being driven home, an off-duty cab is a bigger buzzkill on a Friday night than realizing you left your friggin' card at that bar in Canarsie that turns back into an auto body shop in the morning.
The Pin "Token"
If you're an NYC transplant—and you are—then you probably don't remember when subways took tokens instead of Metro cards. For a long time, having a pocket full of these guys meant you could go anywhere...just as long as it wasn't uptown. This recreation of the 1960s NYC subway token pays homage to the golden days of the city, when a slice of pizza cost 15 cents and "hipster" just meant someone who liked jazz.
Fun fact: the cost of a slice of pizza has always directly correlated with the price of a single ride on the subway in NYC. Actually, that fact isn't especially fun. Buy each pin for $15 or the whole set for $55.
Jeremy Glass is the Vice editor for Supercompressor and his favorite thing about New York City is, hands down, Starbucks.
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