Center of the world

[beetiger]

You can take the New Yorker out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the New Yorker, it seems.

When I was an undergraduate at a liberal arts institution in New Haven, sometimes my friends and I used to take the Metro-North train into The City. Other people, originally from other parts of the country, would be somewhere between confused and offended by our terminology. "We *are* in a city!", they'd complain.

We may have been self-centered and boorish. But, apparently, we weren't alone.

Comments

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Kind of amusing that there's a big cluster of 'other' right around San Francisco, which isn't even on the list!

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

As another self-center and boorish native New Yawkah (born in Brooklyn), I'm glad I'm not alone.

On the phone a few days ago, I was describing some locations in the Dutchess/Rockland/etc counties in NY as "upstate" to a friend of mine who was raised not far from those areas, and he attempted to correct my geography. He forgot that I was a native New Yawkah, and when I reminded him, he gave up with exasperation in his voice. As you said, you can't take the city of the New Yawkah. :-)

[freeko.livejournal.com]

Yeah same here, I feel as if I am still New Yawker at heart and my NY ways have a way of clashing with more reserved types, leading to misunderstandings!

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Even if I weren't born in New York, the fact remains that it's the nearest city where you can really get around on the subway, and its commuter rail takes in a substantially larger area than the state I'm currently living in. But then, there's only a handful of places in the US I'd call a city: Boston is marginal (more a cluster of towns linked by a desultory public transit system), Providence is a college town with a couple of skyscrapers, Hartford is a concrete zit, Santa Fe and Albuquerque are giant suburbs without an urb... besides New York, I think only Seattle and San Francisco count as city-cities in my mind.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Odd, I would have expected LA to come in a close second, but that's likely because I spent 4 years living in LA and have merely visited NYC for a few days.

City?

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

What city? There's supposed to be a city somewhere amidst all these sprawling subdivisions? Is it where the newest mall is? Hm. Maybe I should spend an afternoon and find the city. An old relic, with crumbling skyscrapers and not a single person around! (Okay, Tampa isn't quite /that/ bad.)

[lapis-lazuli.livejournal.com]

When I was growing up in northern VA, D.C. was "the City". When I moved to NJ, New York became "the City".

But, when I lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Miami was never "the City".