[morganf]

It doesn't compare to that coolness you just shared, but I'm from Long Island (right outside New York City) and I and everyone from my childhood town can differentiate a Long Island accent from a New Jersey accent (very similar but subtly different; a suburb on the other side of NYC) from a Queens accent (a type of NY accent from a NY neighborhood, whose most famous exemplar is The Nanny) from a Brooklyn accent (another type of NY accent, the Mel Brooks sort and how my dad speaks), etc etc. So, while, the US is nothing like Italy where every 3 miles there's a different language-or-dialect, the US accent isn't nearly as uniform as one might think, for even within cities and their suburbs, like my hometown in the above example, there is a comparable dynamic, where going not-that-far (these neighborhoods and suburbs aren't far from each other) people speak in accents that are notably different to locals, although surely people not from NY group it all together as "the NY accent" without differentiating the level-of-nasal-ness and other such contributing factors to the accent.

[umanwizard]

Sadly those Brooklyn and Queens accents are becoming rare in large parts of Brooklyn and Queens. You really have to go out to areas with few transplants (Long Island, Staten Island, or rapidly shrinking white working class parts of Bk/Queens) to hear the typical NYC-area accents being used as the main variety of the majority of the community.