I live in the city and think this is a good response. “New York” means “New York City” to most people (here and abroad) because the city and state have the same name and the city is heavily represented in media.
Upstate generally means above Westchester, though I sometimes call Westchester upstate as in “are you going upstate this weekend” to my boyfriend whose folks live there. It’s literally up the state. You drive “up” (North, so “map up”).
That said, there is a bunch of NY state that is generally not referred to as upstate. I’m not sure what the exact boundary is (and I’m sure it’s arguable), but upstate generally means New York metro area.
People here (myself included) LOVE to debate city and neighborhood lines. “The UWS ends at 96th!” “No, at the top of the Park!” “That’s Manhattan Valley!” “Manhattan Valley is a made up neighborhood!” And so on. It’s a fun past time. Sort of like arguing over which is the best bagel place (extra fun because you have to go try all of them to be sure).
I agree except for Chautauqua-Allegheny. Jamestown is less than 10 miles from PA yet is indisputably Chautaqua due to being on the lake and being so tied with the other communities on the lake (which isn’t to say it doesn’t have some ties with the Southern Tier in its industry and location: locations can overlap.)
Plus Salamanca and possibly Olean should stay because they get a lot of outdoorsy tourism (which isn’t to say Chautauqua has craploads of it, but who goes to Binghamton for the view?)
So Wellsville to Binghamton, yes, split it up to make its own Southern Tier region.
It is- but not all of them go there and some go directly to the prison in Queens. That was kind of my point- “upstate” has different meanings in different contexts.
SUNY, the State University of New York, has its Upstate medical school in Syracuse and its Downstate medical school in Brooklyn. So it’s official.
Lots of people in “central” and “western” NY speak of themselves as in upstate, because that is often the sensible way to make the distinction. The state legislature is divided in New York metro seats and upstate seats, who are at perpetual war with one another. Candidates for governor or senator are referred to as New Yorkers or upstaters, never as central or westerners.
Everything in New York State is New York City or not New York City. I’m sure people in other states with one big city feel the same way, but NYC just magnifies whatever they do by 100.
If you live upstate, then you can make finer distinctions within the area and those make sense. But it’s all within upstate and none are separate. Where is the Finger Lakes region? Upstate. Where is Cooperstown? Upstate. Where is Lake Placid? Upstate? Where are the Buffalo Bills? Upstate.
Why? Upstate is the leftovers from New York. Always has been, always will.
I agree with Exapno: “Upstate” New York is code for “not NYC.” Just like “downstate Illinois” is code for “Not Chicago” and “Northern California” is code for “Not Los Angeles.” The subtext is “don’t confuse me with those bastards from the big town that we hate.”
Yeah I was about to say, I’ve heard people use North Jersey and South Jersey a lot.
Really though the whole Upstate New York thing is because nobody except people in Olmsteadville cares what’s happening in Olmsteadville. Everyone else just wants to know “So, is it happening in NYC or not?” Upstate is simply a way of saying “Nope, not NYC so it doesn’t pertain to you (probably).”
Off the top of my head: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana.
The 5 counties(boroughs) of NYC plus the 2 counties of LI plus Westchester make up approximately 62% of the population of New York State, yet only make up 5% of the land area. So it make sense to distinguish “Holy fuck, how did they cram all these people in here” from the wide open spaces. BTW, I am originally from Long Island, pronounced Lawn Guy Land.
He wasn’t arguing with you, he was arguing with me and what exactly you’d put in an additional “Southern Tier” designation. It’s mostly a question of how far west you go.
I go to Binghamton because I have to when taking I-88 to I-81. Plus, it’s a good place to stop for a break after driving from Albany (especially since they’ve closed one of the two rest stops on I-88) and there’s a decent Sonic on US-11. (Never go to the Sonic in Kingston; every single time I’ve been there they’ve managed to screw up something.)
I may be biased somewhat in my thinking because we rarely go places other than the Hudson Valley, the Mohawk Valley, or the Adirondacks (and occasionally the Catskills). Although we’ve been to places like Buffalo and Niagara, it was actually before we lived here. Since we moved to New York we have yet to make it farther west than Syracuse.
Good answer, and I think the reason that many of those states don’t make distinctions like that is due to geography or size - either the states are too small, or the city is too central. In illinois, which is another one where the major city is all off on one side it is the same, downstate vs chicago. I don’t know enough about washington but if there is another state where I’d think that both the size and geography of it would make sense that would be it.
Can’t argue with you on the awkward part, but I’m just surprised that when I Googled the term when I first found out about it a couple years ago, that some people actually used it and it wasn’t entirely a nonce use by the Tourism board.
That said, I just remembered that my dad and his current wife went to Spencer for their honeymoon (and remembered a nice wildlife lake there), and that east-west valley is exactly where I’d put the dividing line between Southern Tier and Finger Lakes.
