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It has five boroughs, eight-and-a-half million people and is the center of the world.

Oh, you were talking about thatother New York? Well, then...

New York isn't called the EmpireState for nothing. Of the state's estimated 19.5 million people, only 8.5 million live inNew York City, leaving eleven million to be accounted for. The state is well and truly vast, being the fifth-largest by area east of the Mississippi,^note AfterMichigan,Florida,Wisconsin,Georgia, and Illinois; if you exclude water area—which we aren't—New York admittedly drops down to seventh (with Alabama andNorth Carolina nudging ahead). and the second-largest by area of the original 13 states, behind only the state ofGeorgia.^note Prior to about 1800, New York was larger than Georgia, but smaller thanVirginia. Georgia gained a bunch of territory in about 1800 after some legal disputes were tidied up, and Virginia lost a bunch of territory when West Virginiaseceded from Virginia when Virginia seceded from the Union during theCivil War. Also, New York is notable for its unusually high amount of public land, especially for an eastern state. While less than 0.3% of the state is owned by the federal government, thestate owns more than 36%—the highest percentage of state-owned land in the country, including the Westand even Alaska. New York borders the states ofNew Jersey,Pennsylvania,Vermont,Massachusetts, and Connecticut; it also borders theCanadian Provinces of Ontario andQuebec. While the NYC suburbs within the state reach well up the Hudson River and nearly all the way down Long Island, the other 90% of the state (often known as "upstate") is culturally and geographically distinct from the city, and often resents the association. There have been several attempts by upstaters to split off into the 51st state, and just as many attempts by downstaters (NYC and its suburbs) to do likewise; such attempts usually flounder on who gets to keep the name "New York". Or even where "upstate" begins; people throughout the Hudson Valley especially tend to place the boundary one Thruway exit north of where they live. The state officially treats the counties from Dutchess southwards as part of the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District; basically upstate begins with the Adirondacks and Catskills.

Just asNew Jersey is oftenstereotyped by NYC-based writers, so are the parts of New York State that aren't theBig Applesauce. To them, Long Island (or "Lawn Guyland") is inhabited predominantly by the vapid East Coast cousins of theValley Girl, while upstate New York (meaning "everything north of theTappan Zee Bridge"^note its official name istechnically the "Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge" as of 2017, but nobody actually calls it that), to the extent that it's even acknowledged to exist, might just as well be a colder version ofAlabama^note Like so mixed with everydepressed Rust Belt town in existence—unless it's a ski resort or campground. Either that, or it's an extension ofLovecraft Country to the east, filled withheadless horsemen in Sleepy Hollow,time travel experiments in Montauk, and people in Buffalo and Rochester who talk to spirits. And then they wonder why upstaters want to secede so badly.

Politically, the non-NYC parts of New York State, outside of the urban areas (where labor issues are at the forefront), have trended more conservative than the city, although Long Island has recently become more of a Democratic safe zone. New York's conservatism, however, has often been of the more libertarian, business-oriented "Rockefeller Republican"^note So named for Nelson Rockefeller, who was governor of the state for nearly a decade and a half (1959-73) before he became Vice President underGerald Ford, and was famous for being one of the most high-profile moderate voices in the Republican Party. or "Wall Street Journal Republican" variety; while the region is not entirely immune to culture-war appeals, attempts by the Republican Party to use the same religious rhetoric that worked so well in the Bible Belt are typically met with ridicule by upstaters.^note We're looking atyou, Mr. Carl Paladino. In 1970, it was an upstate legislator who cast the deciding vote to legalize abortion in the state of New York, and in 2011, same-sex marriage was legalized on the votes of four upstate Republicans breaking with the party line to vote in favor of the bill.

New York is one of seven states that permitsfusion voting, or cross-endorsement, in its elections, allowing candidates to win the endorsement and backing of multiple political parties and show up under each of their ballot lines, and is by far the largest of those states^note the others are South Carolina, Delaware, Mississippi, Connecticut, Vermont and Oregon. This was a product of 19th century social reform movements designed to give more power to minor parties and break up the two-party duopoly, and while it was eventually rolled back by the major parties elsewhere, it stuck around in New York despite efforts by the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine to get rid of it. As such, New York has a slew of third parties that actually play a major role in state politics, mainly by serving as pressure groups on the major parties to support their platform. The largest among them are the Conservative Party^note Founded inThe '60s by conservative Republicans who thought that the state GOP establishment was too moderate, it works mainly to pull Republican candidates to the right, the Independence Party^note A generically non-partisan centrist party that rose to prominence after H. Ross Perot's independent Presidential run in 1992, becoming the New York affiliate of Perot's Reform Party and far outlasting the national organization. Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York City on the Independence Party line despite not having the support of either the Democrats or the Republicans, though his campaign was largely self-funded. It also gets a lot of accidental support from people who try to register as "independent", i.e. not a member of a political party, and the Working Families Party.^note A left-wing labor party that works mainly to pull Democratic candidates to the left

Also of note, the state is pretty much controlled in terms of telecom services by Charter/Spectrum, which recently inheritedTime Warner Cable's system when they acquired them in 2016. TWC/Spectrum has systems in pretty much every major area of the state, including the city; the only exception is Long Island, where Cablevision/Optimum^note which used to be in a lot more places before slimming down to the NYC metro region around 2000; they also similarly divested various cable networks over the years, includingAMC,Bravo {prior to theirNetwork Decay}, many of theFox Sports regional networks and several others. They'd also been involved in various non-cable ventures, including owning NYC-area cineplexes and electronic stores {the famousNobody Beats the Wiz} and owned the famous Madison Square Garden, including its' teams, the associated MSG networks and operation of Radio City Music Hall; the MSG stuff is still owned by Cablevision's founding Dolan family (soon to be rebranded under the name of current parent, French telecom firm Altice) is dominant, and the two fight over portions of the city (except Manhattan, where Optimum is absent) and New Jersey (with Comcast taking the rest of NJ that isn't served by either of them). As a result, they run a system of 24-hour news channels (dubbedSpectrum News) that essentially cover every area of the state, withNY1 being a separate operation. There are some smaller providers (as well as Verizon'sFiOS service), but they're few and far between.

Brazilians, compare the relationship between the city ofSão Paulo and the surrounding state of the same name.

A brief rundown:

• Long Island: The easternsuburbs, home to happy, friendly, middle-class white (mostly Italian, Jewish, or Irish) families who commute to The City by theLong Island Rail Road. And we do mean white;a study (from back in 2002, admittedly) found it to be the mostde facto segregated suburban area in the US. Affectionately known as "Lawn Guyland" after the local pronunciation, or "Strong Island". Shaped like a fish with the "tails" called the North Fork and South Fork. The North Shore of Long Island is rather hilly, while the South Shore has long barrier islands with sandy beaches. The western third of Long Island is actually occupied by the New York City Boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, but you will never get denizens of either of those boroughs to call themselves Long Islanders (except for Long Island City, the Queens neighborhood where the LIRR originally terminated). When we talk about Long Island, we talk about Nassau and Suffolk Counties east of the boroughs.
  
  The main road going through here is the Long Island Expressway, orthe L.I.E. — and yes, the jokes have already been made.^note There's also a road called the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, aka the S.O.B. Well-known speed trap. The first planned suburb in the United States, Levittown,^note Alongside the town inPennsylvania with the same name, just northeast of Philadelphia is in southeast Nassau County. Generally, the further east you go, the more rural and spread out the towns get, with the North Fork home to many orchards, wineries, and through most of the 20th century, duck farms.^{Yes, duck farms.} Around 2010, a combination of EPA regulations regarding environmental contamination and chronic problems with disease resulted in the closure of most of the farms on Long Island; by 2014, only one major duck farm remained in operation. At its height, the Long Island duck industry had produced 65% of the duck consumed in the US. The western, more urbanized part of the North Shore has historically been known as the "Gold Coast" due to the massive amount of bothold money andGilded Age wealth that existed (and still exists) in the area, with names like Vanderbilt, Roosevelt, Pratt, Whitney, Astor, Morgan, and Hearst owning massive estates in the region;The Great Gatsby was set in an expy of bougie towns like Manhasset, Port Washington, and Great Neck for a reason. Located on the South Fork facing the Atlantic are the Hamptons, a collection of super-rich resort towns that you may have seen in TV shows and movies. The far eastern tip (which is closer in geography in a straight line toBoston than Manhattan^note due to its proximity to Block Island, the New York-Rhode Island state line is one of three state lines to be entirely within the states' water area, the other two being Michigan-Illinois and Michigan-Minnesota) is occupied by Montauk, a small town that wouldn't look out of place inNew England — and judging bytales thatthe government once conducted freaky experiments there, wouldn't be out of place inLovecraft Country either.
• Hudson Valley: The area immediately north of the city. Popular definition holds that "upstate New York" begins somewhere in this area — exactly where depends on where in the Valley you live.^note It's often said that people in the city think upstate starts at Yonkers, people in Yonkers think it starts at White Plains, people in White Plains think it starts at Stony Point, people in Stony Point think it starts at Newburgh, people in Newburgh think it starts at Poughkeepsie, people in Poughkeepsie think it starts at Kingston, and people in Kingston think it starts at Albany. Basically, unless you're sitting just south of Canada, wherever you live isnot upstate, and everything north of you is. When most people talk about the Hudson Valley, they're usually speaking of Westchester and Rockland Counties (and sometimes Putnam County), the three counties closest to the city, and the most suburbanized, home to happy, friendly, middle-class white families who commute to The City byMetro-North Railroad.^note For reference, the other happy, friendly, middle class families in the area are in New Jersey, and commute to The City byNew Jersey Transit.
  
  Some notable places in the Hudson Valley include...
  • Yonkers: The fourth-largest city in the state. Known forLady Gaga, pro wrestling'sTommy Dreamer andEddie Kingston,Hello, Dolly!,Lost in Yonkers, and a long and sordid history of racial tensions that lasted well intoThe '90s (they even made a racially-tinged fight over affordable housing in Yonkers into aDavid Simon-helmedHBO miniseries,Show Me a Hero). It followed the trend of many old industrial cities, though it never fell apart like they did. In addition to the usual Irish/Italian mix of the New York City area, it also has large Arab Christian and Eastern European communities.
  • The Palisades: A long line of scenic cliffs on the west bank of the Hudson River, running from Bergen County,New Jersey in the south to Rockland County in the north. The Tappan Zee Bridge (the only Hudson River crossing between The City and Bear Mountain) has its western terminus at Nyack, a town known for being home to a) a lot of rich Jews, and b) the Palisades Center, the eighth-largest shopping mall in America.^NoteEighth by total square footage. It's the sixth largest by total leasable space. (The fact that it's not the largest, or even second largest,in the state of New York^note Number one is Destiny USA in Syracuse, and number two is Roosevelt Field in Garden City on Long Island. The Palisades Center is number three in the state. probably says something, but we don't know what.)
  • Sleepy Hollow: The town made famous byWashington Irving inThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was actually known as North Tarrytown until 1996, when they finally changed the name to what everybody was already calling the place by that point. Just like Salem, Massachusetts, the town is a popular tourist destination around theHalloween season, with several events celebrating both the holiday and Irving's story.
  • Hudson Highlands: A small chain of mountains that are part of the greater New York-New Jersey Highlands. It marks one of the most agreed-upon borders between upstate and downstate, or at least between the Upper and Lower Hudson Valleys, in terms of both geography (nothing like a big wall of mountains to do that) and culture (the suburban sprawl of Westchester and Rockland Counties halts almost entirely). Lots of state parks here, such as Harriman, Bear Mountain, and Clarence Fahnestock, as well as theUnited States Military Academy (and theBlack Knights of the Hudson) at West Point.
  • New Paltz: A small college town in Ulster County that would've otherwise escaped notice if it hadn'tbriefly entered the news in 2004, when its mayor (representing the Green Party) conducted same-sex marriages years before the state legalized them.
  • Ossining: Actually a fairly nice place by most accounts, but you'd never guess that going by what it's most famous for —the maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility. This is the prison that "sent up the river" originally referred to. The aforementioned Hudson Line splits the prison in two, so yes, the nice suburban commuter station at Ossining is literally in between two halves of a major penitentiary.
  • Poughkeepsie (pronounced "puh-KIP-see"): Home to Vassar College, which was the United States' most prestigious women's college (at least outside of Massachusetts) for over a century before it went co-ed in 1969. The state Department of Transportation considers it to be the furthest edge of "downstate", along with Orange County west of the Hudson, due to it being the northern terminus of the Hudson Line.
• Catskill Mountains: The source of the Delaware River, from which New York City gets its water.^note AlsoPhiladelphia, which is actuallyon the freakin' Delaware, but consistently loses to NYC over water rights (it's not a huge deal, since Philly's on the Lower Delaware where there's more water, but the Northeastern PA cities that get their water from near the state line always have Philly's support). Most of the area is kept as a forest preserve/state park, which serves the dual purpose of protecting the city's water supply^note Contrary to popular belief, New York's water is some of the cleanest in the nation. It's only the Hudson River that's toxic. and providing New Yorkers with easily accessible nature. Consequently, the area is home to some of the closest ski resorts, hiking trails, and summer camps to the city — and unlikeNew Jersey, our campgrounds aren't stalked bymasked, machete-wielding slashers. Located on the eastern edge of the region, the town of Woodstock, the namesake (but not the site) of therock festival, has a reputation as a center for art and music stretching back for more than a century. In the mid-20th century, beforecivil rights and the rise of cheap air travel, this area was home to theBorscht Belt, a collection of summer resorts and campgrounds that welcomed New York's Jews when most other resorts discriminated against them. The stand-up comics who performed here soon became famous for their trademark "Jewish humor".
• Capital District: As the name suggests, this area is home to Albany, the capital of the state of New York and a name that is often spoken in angry tones, accompanied by profanity, and likely in the pages of thePost or theDaily News (as in "those f—kers in Albany are wasting my tax dollars"). Nearby Schenectady (which some may know fromSynecdoche, New York) is the old home of General Electric, the part-owners (and former full owners) ofNBC andUniversal Studios; they've since moved their headquarters to Connecticut, but they still have a ton of facilities in Schenectady and along the Hudson River, some of which are the reason why the Hudson has its reputation for being an extension ofNew Jersey. (They're gonna clean it up sometime. We swear.) It's also home toone of the world's first television stations (where TV cooking-show hostRachael Ray started her career) andAmerica's second commercial radio station, which should be handy for trivia night. Less than an hour to the north at the foothills of the Adirondacks is Saratoga Springs, site of the Battles of Saratoga, a major turning point inThe American Revolution. It was once a prosperous resort town famed for its mineral springs (one of its restaurants is held by popular tradition to be the original home of the potato chip), and while it's since transitioned to high-tech manufacturing, it still has its famous racetrack, the third-oldest extant racetrack in the US (Freehold Raceway in New Jersey and Pleasanton Fairgrounds inCalifornia are older).
  
  The area sits at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, and is the eastern point on the Erie Canal. This allowed it to grow into a major industrial center in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it also allowed many New Yorkers and New Englanders to settle in the Great Lakes region. Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, and northernOhio, Indiana, and Illinois were historically known as being more traditionally Northeastern/"Yankee" than the actual Northeast for this very reason; a disproportionate number of settlements in these states, and particularly Michigan, are named after Upstate New York cities.^note Seriously. They namedtheir capital aftera tiny town in Tompkins County. The rise of the more convenient St. Lawrence Seaway through Canada greatly reduced the old canal's relevance, and was a huge blow to the region's prospects (and those of upstate New York in general — rest assured that this won't be the last time the Erie Canal is mentioned), but it is still the wealthiest part of upstate, home to over 1.1 million people. It has managed to weather the recession better than most places, thanks partly to its large sea of high-tech manufacturing jobs and companies (including the aforementioned GE) — the "Tech Valley" would likely be considered the East Coast's Silicon Valley if it weren't forBoston being a rival for that title.
• Adirondack Mountains: New York's other mountain range. Larger and more remote than the Catskills, the Adirondacks aren't actually a part of the Appalachian Range, but rather, are an extension of the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, which are themselves part of the Canadian Shield, geologically some of the oldest land in the world. Culturally, they're more an extension ofnorthern New England than anything else, sharing a media market with most of Vermont — and with nearbyMontreal, which dwarfs both areas in population. (Stations in the area often carry advertising for Canadian businesses.) The old Fort Ticonderoga is located along Lake Champlain at the edge of the mountains. The Adirondack region boasts a large collection of lakes, summer camps, and ski resorts (the most famous being two-time winter Olympic host Lake Placid). This is the Upstate New York that New Yorkers not from the City mean when they say Upstate New York. The proximity to Quebec means that a lot of the signage in the Adirondacks is bilingual, written in both English and French — which makes the state of New York better at accommodating French-Canadians than Alberta despite not being bound by Canadian language laws. Weird, eh?
• North Country: North of the Adirondacks lies this vast rural area, lying between the Adirondack foothills, the St. Lawrence River, the 45th parallel border with Quebec and the northwestern shores of Lake Champlain, where Plattsburgh, the region's only city, is located. The area is very sparsely populated, with Plattsburgh being a very small city indeed, and the region is in the orbit of Montreal as much as anything else (the most notable industry in the area is a factory that makes railcars and other railroad equipment for the Montreal-based transportation firm Bombardier).
• Central New York: Like many of upstate New York's urban centers, this area lived and died on the Erie Canal. Today, as one might guess, it is an economically depressed area, with cities like Syracuse, Oswego, Utica, and Rome all symbolizing the declining Rust Belt. Syracuse has a college (Syracuse University) which, due to its good journalism program and (arguably) better basketball program (who play in theAtlantic Coast Conference), often gets name-dropped in the news far more often than it probably deserves, and is also known for the Destiny USA mall. The eastern part of the region, formerly known as the Leatherstocking Country, is carved by the Mohawk and Susquehanna Rivers, and used to be the heart of the Iroquois Confederacy. It was of major strategic importance during the French and Indian War, as it was one of the main routes into the North American interior (which is why the Erie Canal is there) — the British and French could easily attack the hearts of the other side's respective colonial empires through the Mohawk Valley. Syracuse also has the distinction of being the largest city in America to get the most snow, due in part to the lake effect off of Lake Ontario, and in part due to the Nor'easters that come up the coast. Cooperstown, best known for the NationalBaseball Hall of Fame and Museum,^note It's located there since amade-up legend saysAmerican Civil War general Abner Doubleday invented the sport there in 1839. is in the hilly country in between the rivers.
• Western New York: This area is the site of the cities of Buffalo andRochester, and acts as the western end of the Erie Canal — which means it got screwed economically when the Canadians dredged the St. Lawrence. This is the part of upstate that most people have heard of. Culturally, the area is more Midwestern than East Coast, which shows in the accent and a few expressions ("pop").Niagara Falls is located out here, but everybody knows that the view is better on the Canadian side of the river, which means that the New York side hasn't really benefited all that much from tourism.^note The Canadian side, however, has benefited from favorable exchange rates and a heavy push towards tourism to basically become the CanadianAtlantic City... which drains even more tourists from the American side of the falls. Most of the Lake Ontario shore is sparsely populated.
  
  • Buffalo is notorious for getting blizzards that are gigantic even by the tough standards of upstate New York (though still not as large as the ones in Syracuse). The city made headlines in 2015 when a pile of plowed and shoveled snow from a massive blizzard the previous November was still there inJuly. Dirt and debris had gathered on top, which not only insulated it from the summer heat, but even allowedgrass to grow on it. The only reason it didn't last into August was becausethe city had it bulldozed. The city is also home to two sports teams: the Buffalo Bills in theNational Football League (who are also the only NFL team to playin the state of New York) and the Buffalo Sabres in theNational Hockey League. However, neither team has everwon a championship and lost a combinedsix throughout their histories. Buffalo is also home to SUNY^note State University of New York Buffalo (AKA the Universityat Buffalo), whose athletic team competes in theMid-American Conference.
    
  • Rochester, meanwhile, was once a major hub of both the abolitionist and women's rights movements. In the early 19th century, the area, together with Central New York, was called the "burned-over district" due to all the religious revivals in the area — it was so heavily evangelized that there was no "fuel" (people) left to "burn" (convert). Among the religious movements that emerged here werethe Mormons, the Millerites,^note from which the Seventh-Day Adventists trace their roots the Shakers, the Oneida Community,^note Who were originally a free-love Christian commune — basically Jesus Freaksavant le lettre — who eventually turned to making silverware as a means to support the community. The community fizzled by 1880, but the silverware company remains — it's now known as Oneida Limited, it's one of the largest cutlery and tableware companies in the world, and it's still based in upstate New York. If you live in North America, you probably have Oneida flatware and tableware in your house. and the spiritualist movement, making it something of a 19th century version ofCalifornia in terms of being a hub for new religious groups. In more recent times, they were home to the Eastman Kodak Company — yes,that Kodak. Oncedigital cameras and cell phone cameras decimated Kodak's business, that left a lot of their employees in the lurch when they began downsizing (with other companies based in the area, like Xerox and Bausch & Lomb, following suit). All these technically-inclined unemployed people led to an influx of tech startups, so the city's economy has recovered from Kodak's faltering. Rochester is also home base of the regionally-beloved Wegmans, a chain of grocery stores with a significant following thanks to their sheer size/scope (though many of the ones in this area are their older, not as absurdly huge stores), commitment to quality product, and legendary customer service; you can find them as far south as Virginia these days.
• Finger Lakes: South ofRochester and southwest of Syracuse, the Finger Lakes are a series of long, narrow, finger-like lakes in the west-central part of the state. All these lakes drain north towards the Erie Canal. The region is New York's wine country, and a major summertime tourist destination. At the southern end of Cayuga Lake, one of the two largest, is Ithaca, site of two major colleges (Ithaca College andCornell University) and the North American seat of the Dalai Lama, and one of the few places in upstate New York that still has a healthy economy. The town of Seneca Falls is notable for having been the birthplace of the women's rights movement. The region is also the seat of three of the Six Nations of the Iroquois peoples (Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga).
• Southern Tier: Yeah, as you can gather, we're really not all that creative naming parts of upstate New York. (That's because all the creative types in the city don't care about upstate New York.) This area is located along the border between New York andPennsylvania west of the Catskills. Most of the area is hilly and sparsely populated, though there are a few pockets of industrial development in the river valleys (which include the upper reaches of the Susquehanna and Allegheny rivers). Binghamton, Elmira and Jamestown are the only sizable cities. Binghamton is the site of a large state university that often gets name-dropped in New York-based media, and the city recently entered the news after a guy went ona shooting spree at an immigration center^note And then in 2022 an 18 year old man from nearby Conklin killed 10 people in a mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket. The FBI is considering it a racially motivated terrorist attack. He pled guilty to all state charges and was sentenced to 10 concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole in February 2023, federal charges are still pending. Not far from Binghamton is Apalachin, a small town that became very notorious for hosting aCriminal Convention of theAmerican Mafia's higher-ups in late 1957. As one can guess, it's a rather depressing place. The western part of the region also contains Allegheny State Park and Lake Chautauqua. Sits opposite the border from Pennsylvania's Northern Tier, with the combinedTwin Tiers area being more of an item in local identity than which state you're in.

In fiction:

Alternative Title(s):Upstate New York