Taylor Swift, New York City's new "welcome ambassador" after living here for just over a year, explains how to pronounce Houston Street correctly, declares "bodegas are our friends" and expounds the virtues of the stoop in a new promotional video for the city's tourism office.
The video is part of a tourism campaign starring Swift, who is also promoting her newest album, "1989." The 24-year-old singer has been living in Tribeca since last spring and she's paid tribute to the city with "Welcome to New York," which is also being used to score the tourism spots.
The "NYC Vocabulary" video by NYC & Company, the city's official marketing, tourism and partnership organization, has Swift explaining some "important" New York City words to visitors.
"A bodega is a corner store that is open pretty much 24 hours most of the time. You can get almost anything in a bodega. Bodegas are our friends," she explains.
Swift also notes the unique pronunciation of Houston Street.
"When you get here and you see the sign, you think, 'Oh, Houston, Texas! Houston Street!' Incorrect," she says.
Swift goes on to explain how Noho and Soho are divided, and why that space called a porch in the South "and pretty much anywhere else" is most definitely a stoop in New York City.
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In another video, Swift says she decided to move to New York because "every day I would wake up with this feeling like, 'I need to be in New York.'"
"New York kind of pulled me here like a magnet. I was intimidated by the fact that it was bright and bold and loud. Now I know that I should run toward things like that. I should run toward things that are absolutely, overwhelmingly electric," she continues.
Before "1989's" release Monday, Swift invited fans inside her homes across the country to attend secret listening sessions. One of those sessions was held at her Tribeca apartment, which one fan described to the New York Post as looking "like an Anthropologie store, but prettier."
