If I say I'm from New york what's the first thing that pops into your head?

The Ghostbusters movie.

Busy ass streets, hot dog stands, hot bitches, shady bums, fuck loads of traffic and graffiti, that Viking guy on the sidewalk who plays folk music for change.

I’m not even close, am I? I just watch too many movies, right?

Come on let’s go, I wanna go to fuckin New York, yo.

@Symbeline I can take you out to places you can’t even find a car, the only sounds are animals, and you’ll swear real life doesn’t exist. Or if you could sit on a dock at 5:00 AM and hear loons.

Rick Johansen, a guy I went to school in Denver with.

Broadwaaaaaaaaaaaaay

@Symbeline We can go to NYC, but the rules are a bit different. We’d have to be very street smart and careful. But we could do it.

@anniereborn I saw Pipen on Broadway, wow.

@Adirondackwannabe Oh yeh? Well you spelled it wrong :p

Laughs, I’m out of gas. But it was fun.

I’m from NY too, so the first thing I would wonder when hearing that is “I wonder where he’s from.”

I know when I lived in California, whenever people heard we were from NY, they thought immediately of either NYC or the Bronx.

The Adirondacks, because my eyes jumped right to your name after I read the question.

So am I.

Gloversville, NY

“City or state?”

I’ve loved the city, never seen the state

I’d think, “The city, Long Island, or upstate?”

I was just in the city a few weeks ago and in upstate this weekend.

This?

Having grown up in upstate New York, I’m all too familiar with the assumption that people tend to make that New York = city! But I know that us upstaters tend to specify upstate so I usually figure people mean the city too.

Smelly, congested streets. I visited NYC and that’s my only memory of the state. I hated it.

I have the same problem living downstate in Illinois. Mention Illinois and everyone thinks of Chicago. Illinois has much more to offer.

Cold

“City or State?” (because that will determine my next thought about you).

and if you say from the city, the next thing that pops into my head is from a Loudon Wainwright song:

“Well, like I said before you know I ramble around, I meet a whole lot people out there who put New York down. Of course half of them ain’t never been there; So some of that criticism just ain’t fair.

Sure I know New York is dirty and ugly and full of cockroaches and gonorrhea and rats and junkies and hookers and rude cab drivers. Bad air and bad vibes and unemployment and they don’t pick up the garbage.

Ahh, but it’s not boring”

Diversity and no discrimination against sexual orientation, race and religion?

And fast pace of life maybe :b

Lucky you! What a great place to live.

The first thing that pops into my head is to ask, “what part?”

I assume NYC and I think about my time there and how everyone was kinda rude.. But that seemed like a function of people being in a hurry. Not really my style. I’m used to random people at bus stops striking up long conversations while we wait.

And the pizza is horrible. Pizza shouldn’t act like a limp dick when you go to put the tip in your mouth.

@johnpowell Blasphemy! Hating NY pizza?! Unacceptable. ~

I hate Chicago pizza even more if it helps. Both are travesties.

Watertown, Fort Drum

Around here, pizza is prized for its thin crust. Thick, bready crust is not seen as good.

Lady Liberty.

Home.

Then, I want to know where in New York you mean.

@Symbeline The original ‘Moondog’ died maybe 15 or 20 years ago. Your ‘street Viking’ is just trying to steal his air.

Don’t give him a nickel….

The city – not the state, When someone says “New York” to me, my first thought is always NYC.

New York accent.

In fact, as soon as I read “I’m from New York,” I proceeded to read the rest of the post in a new york accent.

I live in northern part of Western NY near Lake Ontario. It is a different world. We have the lowest crime rate in America (according to FBI statics). People are very friendly and polite drivers. Housing prices are low and offer some of the best values in America. (Zillow) OTOH there is no denying our snow is terrible. Our property taxes are high. And we use more road salt per mile than any other county in the US so our cars do not stay pretty for long.

@Symbeline If you visit @Adirondackwanna be sure to stop by my area, too. I’m about 150 miles NW of his place. Right on the way!

Check out Zoar Valley (one of the few places on the planet that still has primal forest.) and Letchworth State Park .

I lived in NYC for years, so I guess the first thing I think of when someone tells me they’re from NY is… exactly where did/do you live and what work did/do you do.

The town takes priority in my head, because in the overwhelming majority of instances in which the words pop up, it is the city which is the topic, rarely the state.

I live about an hour away from NYC and there are horses on one side of the road and a lake on the other. I like that I can get to NYC pretty quickly if the urge strikes, but yet I leave the city I work in (not NYC) and it’s like a whole ‘nother world when I get home. In summer, especially, it’s really like being on vacation. I do most of my shopping and hanging out in CT because that’s pretty convenient to me, too.

Yankees
Bill the Butcher
King Kong

New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of LOL.

Sinefield.

…...Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Thanks for all of your answers. I couldn’t keep up with thanking you individually.

I always want to ask, ‘City or State’ because it does make a difference.

“Oh, what part?”

For you though, I have a general idea of the specific location. It reminds me of visiting the area during summer vacations as a child. The parents had friends who owned a cabin in upper NY. It was rustic, on the lake and surrounded by a forest. It had a boat house and a porch overlooking the lake. Chipmunks would climb up on our knelt legs, and one time, a shoulder, in order to collect an unhusked peanut before scampering away. The hosts broke off massive fungi from local fir trees that we used as a pallette for carving art with a horse hoof nail. One time, there were bats in the 3rd floor bedroom where we children slept that needed to be shooed out by the adults. Fond memories of a simple life immersed in nature.

Manhattan below 110th.

Possibly below 96th.

@LuckyGuy – Darn you! Making me homesick again. My dad and three buddies owned 100 acres in Zoar Valley. And you’re right about Letchworth – just beautiful.

I’m totally late to this question and I haven’t yet read the other answers. At first glance, I would definitely think of New York City, which is kind of ironic, considering where you said you’d just been. I’ve been watching this show on HGTV called Lake Front Bargain Hunt. A lot of the shows are set in the Finger Lakes area of New York State. It’s very beautiful there.

One of my friends is from Long Island, but I think of that place as being a whole separate state, like Rhode Island, even though I know that it is in New York. I’ve never been to NY City or State, so I can’t relate. I think I get most of my ideas about New York, and associating it with Manhattan and the bergs (is that what they call them?) from TV shows like NYPD Blues and The Nanny, and movies like West Side Story and The Out of Towners.

(^^^ It would be the ‘burbs, although I personally have never heard anyone say that.)

@Kardamom Are you thinking of the NYC boroughs? (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island)

@Pied_Pfeffer Yes, but I’ve also heard them referred to as Burgs. Not just towns in New York, but smaller towns and cities there and elsewhere.

@Kardamom I’ve never heard someone use burgs, although I do know what burg means. I grew up in Gaithersburg, MD and there are cities all over America that end in burg.

The burbs is short for suburbs. The boroughs are what NYC is comprised of, although when someone says NYC they often just mean Manhattan, and in fact when addressing a letter to send through the mail, Manhattan is written as New York, NY, while the other Boroughs you write Brooklyn, NY, Staten Island, NY, etc.

NYS does have hamlets, villages, towns, boroughs, and cities.

The news I get here is NYC news. I hear reference to “the 5 boroughs” and “the outer boroughs.” Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island are the outer boroughs, the five boroughs includes, of course, the biggest being Manhattan and the one people usually refer to or think of when they say “New York City.”

Most people around here don’t call these local towns “the suburbs” or “the burbs.” They are relatively suburban, but are so populated that they’re unlike suburbs anywhere else. Still, to outsiders, they’re the suburbs and they are the suburbs of NYC or what are often referred to as “bedroom communities.”

There are parts of the outer boroughs that look as suburban as the areas local to where I live. Horse farms (Van Cortlandt area of the Bronx), areas with row boats (City Island), beaches (Brooklyn), amusement parks (Coney Island Brooklyn), race tracks and world famous tennis courts and parks as suburban as any other, all in NYC which is what makes NYC so incredible and versatile.

Where I live, some who live in NYC might refer to as “upstate” although it’s not upstate, and according to the NY Times definition of “upstate” it’s definitely not, either. NY TImes refers to “upstate NY” as anywhere north of the areas served by Metro North.

I’m sad to say I would assume that you meant NYC. But I’m from the UK and I think that would be a common response from us.

I would never associate ‘New York’ with the countryside. I should visit and change my ideas

Seems to me that people from New York generally tend to designate, “NY State” or “NYC”.

NY is generally the abbreviation for NYC for the other 49 states, unless you specify otherwise. Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens.

I’d like to see a survey of people that believe the boroughs of NYC are the counties of NYS.

Everyone who isn’t familiar with NYS should watch the Aerial America NY episode on the Smithsonian Channel. I think you can watch online.

I’ll be up in the Hudson Valley just over an hour north of NYC in a few weeks and I just keep thinking I can’t wait to be up in the countryside with green all around and hopefully visit the mountains one day for a few hours.

@ibstubro I’ve never heard that before. That someone might assume boroughs are the counties of NYS? There are 5 counties of NYC. Each borough is in its own county. So, in a way it is 5 counties, but the county names are Kings County (Brooklyn) New York County (Manhattan), Bronx County (The Bronx), Richmond County (Staten Island), and Queens County (Queens). I hope that’s right. A New Yorker can correct me if I mixed something up.

I think the biggest problem is people either don’t know, or don’t remember how large NYS is. Most land masses that big have varied terrain and both rural and city.

NYC is such a small portion of the land of NYS. NYC is so densely populated that its population of Democratic voters cancels out the largely Republican upstate voting population, making NY a “blue” state. If I’m not mistaken, just off the top of my sleepy head, NYS has about 66 counties (give or take a few).

(62 counties)