No, I have an elemental grasp of geography and I know that New York City is the capital of New York State which is one of the states in the Federal Union that makes up the US.
What I mean is:
Is the city commonly regarded by both New Yorkers and other Americans as something else again? That it is culturally, socially and politically unique and different to all the other cities in the US? Even I, a 24 year old Australian girl, knows about the infamous headline “FORD TO NEW YORK: DROP DEAD” - is this just part of the divide?
I’ve noticed that native-born New York Americans seem, well different to the rest of you, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. But I do love listening to Lou Reed’s I’m Waiting for the Man…and something about the song makes me think New York.
What do you think?
I really, really want to see the place myself ASAP, by the way.
It is definitely culturally unique. New York City is the most culturally diverse area in the country, and one of the most diverse in the entire world. Although the US as a whole is a melting pot, most other urban centers are rather homogenous by comparison. It is also the center for a huge portion of American culture. All the major broadcast networks are based in New York (whereas the film industry is based mostly in California.) New York is home to Broadway and many of the best ballets, symphonies and operas in the country. It has two of the most prestigous universities in the country (Columbia and NYU) and is the center of the entire continent’s financial power (Wall Street.) It is also home to every crazy, bizarre, weird and otherwise interesting or mundane thing you can think of. (Err, Canal Street.) So by comparison with the rest of the country, it is quite bizarre.
Jesus Christ. Trust me to drop that lead weight on my little foot.
OK, scratch my first sentence, but intuitively it feels like Brooklyn or Queens should be the capital.
Hey ,what do I know, I come from a country whose capital was artificially created because Sydney and Melbourne couldn’t stop squabbling over Who Was the Greatest. :rolleyes:
And the Washington DC swamp was chosen for much the same reasons as Australia’s capital - too much squabbling over who would get the seat of Federal goverment and no one else wanted the squishy land.
By the way, although New York City has never been the capital of New York State, for a few, brief years early in the history of the US it was the Federal capital - until DC was finished enough for the goverment to move in.
To be fair, I think every large city in this country is “something else again,” never mind all the area in between. With friends and relatives overseas, I’ve often found that they don’t quite get that (having only been exposed to the US via Hollywood) until they get here for a visit.
That said, I do think that New York City is distinctive in particular ways… but I am a native, so I might be a little biased.
You would be rather different from some other Australians I’ve met, then. My favorite comment from one woman: “Everything I know about New York, I learnt from Crocodile Dundee.”
Canada’s capital was placed in nowheresville as a political compromise, and until a few years ago there wasn’t even a freeway connecting it to the biggest city in Canada. Brazil’s capital is even further into the boondocks and is famous mostly for having a stupid name and really wide roads that nobody drives on because everyone wants to live in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero.
New World countries have a long history of creating “capitals” in pointless locations.
They’re not necessarily pointless. A former colony’s major cities are generally there because those locations were convenient for a colonial economy - seaports for shipping out natural resources on a one-way trip. For African nations, that usually included slaves. There are several examples of new-nation governments trying to make a clean break with a humiliating past by creating new cities as their capitals - Islamabad, Brasilia, Abuja.
To the OP, yes, much of the country (including the rest of the state) does see the city as somewhat alien, full of funny-talking immigrants, other “urban” people, arrogant financial people who simply suck up tax dollars, and pinko liberals. But generally not those who’ve spent any time there, which I hope you can manage someday.
NYC area is it’s own reagon, much different then the rest of NYS. This NYC ‘zone’ extends 2 to 3 counties in every direction possiable, and due to oppressivally high taxes in NJ, actually jumps all the way to the next state (PA) where taxes are a bit more manageable.
It’s a unofficial zone, but people in the area know it’s boundries and culture.
It can be played as a ‘Them’ sort of villian to other places.
There was a commercial for Pace Picante sauce. (salsa) Any way, someone would try to replace an empty jar of Pace (made in San Antonio) for something that was made in (gasp!) New York City! Get the rope!
Another ‘villian’ is Madison Ave. This is where evil advertising comes from and they make little girls feel fat and ugly and make them anorexic and generally they make everybody feel like losers because they don’t have a nice enough car, a beautiful wife, a hard enough dick and a big enough house.
Madison Ave is in NYC of course.
Then there is Wall Street. Now Wall Street is mentioned in just about every news show. “On Wall Street today…” Now most people, including myself, only have a very basic understanding of what really goes on there and the rest of the country has no idea what goes on there. Except that when Wall Street does something, the local factory closes and I lose my job thanks to those bastards on Wall Street.
So some people don’t like NYC for that reason.
So sometimes we get played as the ‘They’ role. “They” don’t want you to love Jesus. “They” don’t want you to pray in schools. “They” suck up all your tax dollars. "They are all skinny beautiful models but they all gots the aids from having no morals and having the gay sex.
As someone who grew up in the midwest - Chicago to be specific - and has lived in California but not in New York, I’d say that the opinion is that New York is a wonderful huge city, but California is more likely to be regarded as a different country. And Texas would like to be a different country.
New Yorkers would have you think so, but the rest of the US - not so much. Nobody denies New York’s importance, but people in other large metropolitan areas such as Chicago, LA, etc., don’t see New Yorkers as that much better. Los Angelenos generally think everyone is jealous of their city, etc. People in DC think of New York as a nice place for a day or weekend trip, but that’s about it.
New Yorkers tend to be more arrogant with regards to their cities than other people (sort of like Texans with regards to their state, but with less charm from the New Yorkers), mostly because they have a pandering local media that sits there and tells them how great they and their city are 24/7.
Saul Steinberg’s sketch “A View of the World from Ninth Avenue” is funny because it has so much truth in it. There is a strong degree of myopia and self-absorption in the NYC mindset, so much so that they can laugh at it themselves.
My impression, as a Midwesterner, is that it’s the native New Yorkers who think of U.S. geography as “New York” and “Everything Else.” It’s perfectly understandable, living in a city so big and with so much to offer–why worry about anything else? (except space, quiet, fresh air, affordable housing, light traffic, etc etc etc…)
As has been said earlier in this thread, California is more likely to be thought of as a completely different cultural zone.
She shouldn’t feel too bad. Hell, everything I know about Australia, I learned from the Mad Max trilogy.
So, Sarah…how’re things going down in your post-apocalyptic wasteland, anyway?
mack, how do you get that? European cities don’t have a rectangular street grid. And certainly not wide streets, either.
Seriously, NYC is the financial capital of NY state. And some claim it is the cultural center of the state, too. As an upstater, I may not always like that fact, but I can’t deny it.
And, Sarah, don’t be too upset about missing where the capitol of the state might be - the last time Mario Cuomo ran for Governor, he ran an ad that pissed off a lot of upstaters, because it showed him looking out of his office upon the Statue of Liberty.
Personally, I think it was wise for NY to set up the capitol in a place away from NYC. Contrasted with Massachusetts, where the state capitol is in the largest city in the state, NY does a better job of paying attention to all of the state’s residents, not just those that are visible to the metropolitan government types.
And NYC is well worth an extended visit. I just couldn’t stand trying to live there again. :eek: Too many people.
I live in New York state, about as far away as you can get from the city without falling in the lake. There is a huge difference in attitudes between “down state” and “up state.” Every time somebody runs for statewide office they have to almost run two campaigns without pissing off either constituency.
There is a love/hate relationship between us and the city. United in only one thing, cursing the dumb SOB’s in Albany.
I’ve visited many times and like the city but wouldn’t want to live there unless I had a silly amount of money to do it with.
