Downstate - anyplace within the NYC sphere of influence: print and broadcast media, culture, accents and so on. Includes NYC and Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties.
Upstate - everyplace outside of the NYC sphere of influence: lackluster economy, NYC not considered the nearest “big city”, more of a New England-ish or Midwestern feel, no NYC accent (strong nasal Chicago/Detroit-like accent in the Buffalo and Rochester area).
As Billdo said, Upstate can be divided into various regions and subregions, which may or may not overlap. For instance:
Town of Amherst < Northtowns < Niagara Frontier < Western New York < Upstate
Village of East Aurora < Southtowns < Niagara Frontier < Western New York < Upstate
Perinton < Rochester Eastern Suburbs < Finger Lakes < Western New York < Upstate
Jamestown < Southern Tier < Western New York < Upstate
Yep. And now they have a website. Wow. Taking the virtual tour really takes me back. Clicking on various pictures brings back memories of smells, oddly enough. The mold of the cabins, the chlorine of the pool, the yeast of the main lodge.
I grew up in Kingston, two hours north of NYC, on the Hudson. I consider that upstate since the NYTimes would list movies in our area as upstate. But the conversation usually goes
Where are you from?
Upstate New York.
Oh, anywhere near Rochester/Syracuse/Schenectady…?
So I changed it to
Where are you from?
I think of the split as the Raritan River, then we have Central Jersey and then Southern Jersey. Elizabeth is a little too far North as the Tip of Staten Island is opposite Perth Amboy. If you like you can shift all of Middlesex to Central Jersey and us Rahway as the southern most town of North Jersey.
Central Jersey is tricky as it would be part or all of Middlesex country, all of Monmouth County, Mercer County and Part of Ocean County. Somerset could be North or Central depending on point of view. To me it is North Jersey.
In can be argued that Central Jersey grows towards the south as Suburban sprawl creeps south and the North Jersey expands southward as Middlesex urbanizes.
For me it means anything North of NYC. Not everything except NYC, since that would imply that Long Island is upstate which is silly. This is in fact correct, despite protestations from the OP. However, I must point out that those poor deluded fools who believe that Queens is not part of Long Island are in fact, wrong. There is no magical River separating Queens from Nassau County, sorry.
I’ll agree with this, rather than jackmanni’s assertion. Elizabeth is way too far north to define the boundary of "Southern Jersey. But the Raritan isn’t the natural dividing line – Route 1 and the Jersey Turnpike arguably are.
But Central Jersey (where I grew up) has a distinctively different feel from the hilly and high-income North as well as from the Pine Barren-and_Ocean South. It’s the land of orchards, dairy farms, Rutgers, Princeton, and pre-Revolutionary War stuff.
As a non-New Yorker, that boundary was about the way I understood it too. I seem to remember conversations in college where the (implied) boundary was closer to the Tappan Zee bridge, though! I never quite understood it, though…for me, north of Albany would make sense as “upstate,” maybe as far west as Syracuse.
C’mon, it’s less populated than Suffolk County, is just barely larger than Buffalo’s largest suburb, Amherst, and liberally borrows from Buffalo and Syracuse to complement it’s anemic identity. It’s a sprawling suburb in need of a city to take it in. And I’m talking about something other than Rochester’s own “downtown”. Both blocks of it.
I happen to know a retired Geography professor, 30 years in the SUNY system – just emailed for his definition, he agrees with Billdo’s ‘bilateral division’:
I’ll buy that. I had several Rochester area classmates at the U of Michigan who were just about indistinguishable from native Michiganders in speech, dress, tolerance for wintry conditions, etc.
The Downstate students there were a tighter and actually less diverse group. UofM was a fallback school for children of status-seeking New Yorkers. Probably still is.
I’m from Queens, so anything north of Yonkers was upstate to me. I never really put Buffalo in that category, though, so I don’t think I would have considered it and Rochester upstate.
I knew a grad student at Rochester who said he used to stand at the corner of Main and Clinton and ask people Where Downtown Was. And this was before Sibley closed its downtown store.
But, as much as I love to put Rochester down, I have to defend on this point – its downtown is longer than two blocks. Buffalo’s downtown is the one that’s only two blocks long.
Sorry, but I have to correct you. Downtown Buffalo is about 20 blocks long. It’s two blocks wide. It’s one of North America’s most linear central business districts.
When I was briefly looking for jobs in the Rochester area I had to walk a couple block from where I parked to the convention center. Then I had to walk a couple blocks in another direction to meet my Dad. I couldn’t have coincidentally walked across the entire scope of Rochester!
Now, for downtowns that really are two blocks square – Ithaca NY comes to mind. And Orlando has a tiny-seeming downtown versus metropolitan area population even though it would probably be one of the larger downtowns if it were in the Rust Belt. But Rochester never seemed to have a very small downtown versus suburban size. In fact, just looking at a map, it seems like the least remarkable settlement pattern possible: a decent but not big section of tall buildings downtown, a decent but not big section of urban area that is not tall buildings, a decent but not big section of suburbs, gradually fading into sparsely populated rural places.
It’s been a long time since I was there, but I swear that we drove through it in two blocks. And I’m sure it wasn’t crosswise. Maybe it’s filled out some since.
Rochester definitely has more downtown than two blocks. Especially if you count Monroe Avenue, and the Eastman School, and the University Art Museum, and the Margaret Strong Museum, and the Rochester Museum and Science Center/Strasenburg Planetarium. No way would I consider that stuff “suburbs”
Dammit, you’ve got me defending Rochester! And I hate the place!