Disregarding the classic debate of whether non-city dwellers even count as "New Yorkers" (but honestly what else would we be called?), there are just certain things that only those from the Empire State know and understand. Here are 12 of them.
1. We are a state, not a city!
As wild and as earth-shattering of a concept it may be for non-New Yorkers, New York =/= New York City. They're really not the same, and being from the former does not mean that we're from the latter despite what many will assume and hope for. I know it's densely populated and super shiny and exciting, but the city is quite literally a speck on the map of New York; it'd be impossible for us all to be from there.
What a lot of people forget is that we also have Long Island, Westchester, the Hudson Valley, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Albany, the Finger Lakes—the list could go on and on. The point is that we have a lot to offer as a state that's not just New York City, and it would be nice if that were recognized from time to time. Even nicer if people didn't look so disappointed upon meeting a New Yorker who lives outside of the city.
2. New York is a pretty big state.
To follow up on the first point, New York is a lot bigger than people realize—even sometimes for people who live there. Did you know that it's nearly a seven-hour drive from Fredonia to Manhattan? Does that only sound absurd to me? Because I'm pretty sure that's absurd. And I realize that we have nothing on states like Texas and California, but we're also no Delaware or Rhode Island. And we're definitely not just a city.
3. "The City" vs. "NYC"
Maybe this is just where I grew up in the Hudson Valley, but we don't usually ever say "New York City." We mostly just say "the city," and we all know where we're talking about, no distinction necessary. Because if we meant Albany or Poughkeepsie, we'd just say Albany or Poughkeepsie.
And we absolutely never ever call it "the Big Apple."
4. The city has five boroughs.
While everyone raves about Manhattan, the remaining four boroughs (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island) have the tendency to be forgotten. But all five of them make up the city. I need to stop talking about the city so much, we are a STATE.
5. We don't all have the same accent.
Remember those five boroughs? They each have their own unique dialect and so do those of us from Long Island and the upstate regions. And while many of us do say "dawg" and "cawfee" and are perhaps united by those distinctive pronunciations, many of us also happen to live along the Canadian border and don't "tawk" at all like Margo Robbie's character in "Wolf of Wall Street."
6. There are three sections of New York.
Speaking of geographical regions, we generally like to split up the state into three (very uneven) sections: the city, Long Island, and upstate. "Western New York" is really only a thing to the people who live there; otherwise, it just gets lumped together with everything else above the city. And that really pisses them off.
7. We hate New Jersey.
If there's a legitimate reason for this rivalry, I don't know what it is, but New Yorkers are pretty much conditioned to hate our neighbor from birth. Which makes it all the more ironic that I ended up going to college in Jersey, but sometimes bad things happen to good people (I promise I'm mostly joking.)
8. Your favorite baseball team matters.
Whether you actually follow baseball or not, you've sworn an allegiance to a team and that team is either the Mets or the Yankees and that's it. Really. You're not allowed to like anything else—especially not the Red Sox—or you're a f*cking traitor.
9. We have the best pizza.
This isn't debatable. Sit down, Chicago.
10. Regents exams are the worst.
*Shudders* New York high schoolers have the misfortune of being required to take multiple of these state-mandated tests each year—and usually in addition to the finals that teachers give out. If you want to know what hell is like, ask someone who's gone to high school in New York.
11. We don't all walk fast.
But we should.
12. We're the best state there is.
I say this with so much New York pride: it's honestly not even a contest.
