Photo: Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer

This is Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland is a special place, a city unlike any other in the country. Like other towns with a long history, we've got our own identity, idiosyncrasies and insecurities.

Newcomers, whether they're visitors or new residents, may have trouble initially understanding and appreciating the nuance of what it means to be a Clevelander.

We're here to help. Here are 25 things we know about Cleveland that newbies may not quite understand... yet.

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Photo: Cleveland Memory Project

Cleveland was once the fifth largest U.S. city and one of the wealthiest

The Cleveland of today is a midsize city with a small town feel, but it used to be a bustling metropolis in the early part of the 20th century, a leader in manufacturing, home to captains of industry like John D. Rockefeller and with a population greater than Los Angeles.

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Photo: Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer

We're not like the rest of Ohio

Cleveland is a patch of blue in a sea of red: an urban Democratic metropolis in an otherwise largely Republican and rural state.

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Photo: Allison Carey, The Plain Dealer

We're friendly because it's in our DNA

Clevelanders aren't rude like New Yorkers or fake nice like people in L.A. We say "Good morning," "excuse me," "please" and "thank you." We'll also happily wave you in when merging into traffic because that's the way we were brought up.

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Photo: Cleveland Memory Project

Burning river jokes are still not funny

The old wounds of all those easy, lazy jokes comedians made about Cleveland over the last 50 years still cut pretty deep. And who came up with "Mistake on the Lake" anyway? It's lame too.

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Photo: John Kuntz, cleveland.com

Traffic isn't that bad

While commuters in New York City spend an average of 35 minutes in traffic, it only takes Clevelanders about 23 minutes on average to get to work, according to Census data analyzed by Trulia.com.

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Photo: Brynne Shaw, The Plain Dealer

We won't cross to the other side of town unless it's absolutely necessary

I've lived here my whole life, and I still get lost on the East Side.

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Photo: John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer

Football was meant to be played in the snow

Watching an NFL game in a domed stadium is for sissies.

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Photo: Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer

Cleveland is more than the Rock Hall

While national coverage of Cleveland tends to focus on the Rock Hall, LeBron James and the East 4th Street district, there's so much more to the city. The area is home to world-class institutions like the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Orchestra and Playhouse Square. There are cool, hip events like the Cleveland Flea, Edgewater Live and Night Market Cleveland. Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals are two of the finest healthcare facilities in the country, perhaps the world.

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Photo: Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer

LeBron means more to the city than you'll ever know

LeBron James is more than a great basketball player and walking economic stimulus package. He's one of us, a superstar favorite son who returned home and delivered on his promise to bring a championship to the city, lifting the 52-year curse and making us proud once again to be from here.

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Photo: Rich Exner, cleveland.com

Yes, it snows in May

Our winter coats don't go into storage until June, at the earliest.

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Photo: Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer

We consider 50 degrees shorts weather

We easily get tired of wearing pants and will put on the shorts as early as the first nice day in January. Heck, we'll even ski in shorts at Brandywine or surf on Lake Erie on an unseasonably warm day.

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Photo: Cleveland Memory Project

Cleveland has been a foodie town for awhile

While celebrity chefs such as Michael Symon and Jonathon Sawyer have put Cleveland on the map in the Food Network era, we've been enjoying great restaurants such as Pier W, Johnny's Bar and Sokolowski's University Inn for decades. The West Side Market has been in business for over 100 years.

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Photo: Allison Carey, The Plain Dealer

French fries slathered in barbecue sauce is a perfectly reasonable hot dog topping

Philly has its cheesesteak. In Chicago, it's deep dish pizza. The quintessential Cleveland dish is the Polish Boy: kielbasa in a hot dog bun topped with coleslaw, fries and barbecue sauce.

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Photo: Joe Noga, cleveland.com

But yellow mustard isn't

Don't even think about putting icky, regular 'ol yellow mustard on your hot dog. There are only two correct options: Bertman Ball Park Mustard or Stadium Mustard. Period. No exceptions.

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Photo: Joey Morona, cleveland.com

Mr. Hero is, in fact, the bomb

People who've left the area know all too well, when it comes to Roman Burgers and Hot Buttered Cheesesteaks, you don't know what you got until it's gone.

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Photo: Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer

The Browns were actually quite good once upon a time

The Browns were not always the losing, bumbling, quarterback-challenged team they are today. Under Paul Brown, the team won four straight AAFC championships in the 1940s and three NFL titles in the '50s. Jim Brown, aka the G.O.A.T., led the team to another championship in 1964. In the '80s, they might have very well gone to 3 Super Bowls if not for one John Elway.

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Photo: Dale Omori, The Plain Dealer

We'll never stop hating Art Modell

No matter what the apologists or revisionist history say about the man who took our beloved Cleveland Browns away from us, Modell will never be forgiven even in death.

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Photo: John Kuntz, cleveland.com

You can't like the Browns AND the Steelers

It's impossible. Pick a side. Now.

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Photo: Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer

It'll always be Jacobs Field

Don't ask us why we still refer to Progressive Field by its original name, yet we never ever call Quicken Loans Arena "Gund Arena." Some habits die hard and, for some reason, this is one of them.

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Photo: Jo Ellen Corrigan, The Plain Dealer

High school football is just as big here as it is in Texas

The Friday night lights shine as bright here as they do in the Lonestar state.

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Photo: David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com

It's not the holiday season until the Christmas Ale has been tapped

Clevelanders love their craft beer, none more perhaps than Great Lakes Brewery's Christmas Ale.

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Photo: John Kuntz, cleveland.com

We've had a ton of movies filmed here

Cleveland has been a favorite spot of Hollywood long before recent blockbusters "The Avengers," "Captain America: Civil War" and "The Fate of the Furious" set up shop here. Movies that were filmed in the city include Billy Wilder's "The Fortune Cookie" in 1966, the Oscar-winning "Deer Hunter" in 1978 and the holiday favorite "A Christmas Story" in 1983.

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Cleveland doesn't just mean Cleveland

We all identify ourselves as Clevelanders and refer to the region as Cleveland. But we're also Lakewood. And Parma, too. Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. Strongsville. Rocky River, Bay Village and Westlake. Beachwood and Lyndhurst, etc.,

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Photo: David I. Andersen, The Plain Dealer

New York's the Big Apple, but Cleveland's a Plum

You might have seen this slogan on a T-shirt and wondered what it means. The phrase was coined by The Plain Dealer in 1981 to promote the city. While outsiders may question the effectiveness of a slogan that unfavorably compares us to another city, we take being called a plum as a compliment, one that portrays Cleveland as a diamond in the rough or a shiny piece of coal, if you will.

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Photo: Joey Morona, cleveland.com

We wear that chip on our shoulder on our sleeves, literally

The economic struggles, the jokes, and the losing by our sports teams of the past have a left an indelible mark on our collective psyche. It's an inexplicable thing that binds us all together, makes us staunch defenders of our city to anyone who'll listen and drives us to wear countless locally-made T-shirts that let the world know, "Yeah, I'm from Cleveland."

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What did we forget?

This list is just a starting point. We haven't even gotten into politics or talked about the Cleveland accent or lingo. So, tell us in the comments what you think should be added to our list of things that longtime Clevelanders know that newbies don't quite get.

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