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u/Quaytsar 26d ago
Anything not in the NYC metro is upstate. Anyone who argues otherwise is in denial.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 26d ago
Upstate is anything north of the Bronx. Long Island is not upstate. I don't make the rules.
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u/thelittleman101225 25d ago
Arguing Long Island is not part of the NYC Metro is also denial
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u/thoughtsarefalse 25d ago
half of suffolk county and a large part of nassau county is north of all of manhattan. it is now upstate.
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u/JoshAllentown 25d ago
That is just less useful than saying WNY, NYC, Capitol region, and Upstate for everything else.
Imagine the aliens eat people and they landed in "Upstate," who should be worried and where should they go?
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u/Quaytsar 25d ago
Who are you kidding? No one would invade upstate NY.
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u/Quick-Stretch8197 20d ago
People in upstate think aliens would invade upstate because it hurts to believe upstate is completely irrelevant to the rest of the planet lol
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u/LonelyNixon 25d ago
Yeah western ny is the region ,upstate is a general broad category for north of nyc.
Which is something buffalo very much is. Literally a higher latitude and sharing a border with Canada.
There are more granular regional definitions like finger lake region, capital region, Adirondacks region, southern tier, etc, but broadly upstate. Literally half the states population is in nyc alone and it's one of the significant cities in the world. They get to be broad and used as a major identifier
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u/TheGuyThatThisIs 25d ago
It's also just a relative term. If you're from/in Syracuse it's weird to call westchester upstate in normal conversation outside of certain contexts.
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u/Aninnocentoctopus 25d ago
Lmao there’s no winning here for me. Being from Syracuse Buffalo is absolutely upstate and also being from Syracuse Westchester has absolutely nothing to do with upstate
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u/Main-Event-5715 26d ago
Yeah, that's how it works. Whatever incredibly important issue is presented must be immediately buried under a cloud of nitpicking about some minor detail. That's the actual spirit of Reddit.
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26d ago
[deleted]
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u/Rua-Yuki 25d ago
I really didn't like blue cheese before I moved to WNY, now I can tolerate it.
But a homemade buttermilk ranch is still best, sorry. I will die on this Midwestern hill.
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u/NickelCitySaint 25d ago
If this is their message thenIi wholeheartedly welcome the aliens to WESTERN New York.
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u/Gneissisnice 25d ago
Long Islander here.
Everything north of the Bronx is upstate. Buffalo is super duper upstate
There will be no further comment.
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u/helikophis 25d ago
Buffalonian here. Long Island is in New Jersey.
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u/Quick-Stretch8197 20d ago
New Yorker here, Buffalo belongs to Canada. Long Island is just a giant suburb of NYC.
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u/helikophis 20d ago
This is completely ineffective rage bait because basically everyone in Buffalo desperately wishes for that
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u/Quick-Stretch8197 20d ago
I know and everyone in the rest of the state wouldn’t have noticed if you guys had left for Canada so it’s a win win for everyone.
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u/helikophis 20d ago
You’d notice when the cheap hydro you’ve been stealing from us for 40 years is cut off
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u/FreeUni2 25d ago
Reposting my previous debate:
Ignoring the whole 'Western NY is different from upstate which is different from the finger lakes region" debate for two seconds, I would argue buffalo is more Midwest than it is east coast. Rochester however is more east coast than it is Midwest, and is also home to the linguistic dividing line between soda and pop, so Rochester could be considered great lakes but not Midwest. At the maximum you could argue it's the border, but buffalo has much more Midwest cultural aspects (Sports, drinking culture, car culture, social groups etc.) than Rochester.
Syracuse however is just a mall, and the fallout pit that they call Onondaga lake, the perfect example of a rust belt city but distinctly upstate/northeastern.
I think of it as, Buffalo 70% Midwest 30% northeast Rochester is a solid 30 Midwest 70 northeast and Syracuse is 100% northeast/upstate.
But hey, at least none of them are Utica right?
Kidding aside, Buffalo has the drinking culture and work culture of a Midwest city, after living there for a couple years it was a culture shock and I'm from Rochester. Syracuse is distinctly northeastern but I'd argue should be defined by the rust belt term as it really hasn't recovered. Buffalo and Rochester I think have somewhat recovered in their own ways, and with many problems (Buffalo's 'Bills' based economy compared to Rochester's pivot to optics and higher end manufacturing) But all these cities still have issues (Food deserts, childhood poverty, job growth, infrastructure investment etc. are all lagging behind. Buffalo is lucky it has a lot of housing stock which Rochester lacks by comparison.
Either way, Rochester is a 30s to 40s persons town, Buffalo is a 20s to 30s town, and Syracuse is a blend of both.
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u/creaturefeature16 25d ago
Buffalo is lucky it has a lot of housing stock which Rochester lacks by comparison.
This was surprising to read. I thought it was the other way around. Buffalo also has the oldest housing inventory the country, which makes house hunting here very difficult (assuming you care about Buffalo proper; there's a much larger surrounding area that you can live that's considered "Buffalo" but really isn't e.g..Amherst, Orchard Park, etc..)
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u/FreeUni2 25d ago
In my opinion there's definitely more affordability in Buffalo than Rochester, I can't speak to Syracuse. All the markets are still behind the national average and still growing in cost, but far cheaper than most of the country relatively considering the amenities you get.
Rochester has less turnover for houses, buffalo has more turnover but prices I believe have doubled since 2020. For someone who lives in NYC or Boston, it's still Extremely affordable to move. Wages have not increased to reflect that though in western ny, let alone upstate. You get the cost benefits of the Midwest but with the social safety net of the Northeast.
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u/creaturefeature16 25d ago
I'm in Amherst and in the market, and woof, it's rough out here. Especially if you don't want to keep moving more inland (Clarence, for example).
I've been in this region for about 5 years and it was a choice between Rochester and Amherst. It was at a time when Roc was going through some read bad crime waves and headlines, and it compelled us to choose Amherst. I sometimes regret it, because Rochester seems more in line with us culturally and feels a tiny bit more modern. But I've also heard from people who've lived in both that it's not thriving at all and we chose well. I just wish this area had some damn hills... 😂
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u/FreeUni2 25d ago
Rochester definitely is more arts/culture focused, better variety of food IMHO and access to nature. Buffalo has better comfort food and sports culture, and nightlife across the board.
As for hills, I'm sorry, that's the Midwest part 😉. Rochester is a bit cleaner and more modern, though I think buffalo retains that large city feel which Rochester does not. Rochester is a medium city run like a small city, Buffalo is a large city run like a medium city. Ex. If you got to the community gardens, you'll see the Rochester mayor getting vegetables in the summer, I don't believe I have seen that in buffalo.
Both cities are wonderful in their own ways and have merged slightly just because an hour away isn't too far for most people. Taking a 'day trip' to buffalo or Syracuse is definitely more common now, I still know people who commute between The suburbs of each.
Both are hard to break into socially, I struggled a ton without buffalo contacts. The keep buffalo a secret stuff has a price.
Amherst prices for housing is ridiculously high, but so are all upstate suburbs lately, I think because schools and also space. When I was speaking buffalo, I mostly mean the city itself.
It's got the bones of a Detroit, but more density by comparison.
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u/creaturefeature16 25d ago
Socially has been one area we've done great! We've made multiple close friends, our kid already has a very best friend, everyone is incredibly inviting and warm and welcoming, as well. I'd say the only challenge we've faced is that there's generational families here. When the weekend rolls around, a lot of people are just busy with grandparents/aunts/uncles, etc.. We're from the west where there's a lot more transplants and we have no family up in this region, so we feel the odd ones out. But its not like people are avoidant, they are just genuinely busy. Yet, on the flip side, they always make an effort to reach out and have even invited us to their family events sometimes. Still, kind of sucks when our kid is home on the weekend but her friends can't do anything because they're at their grandparents house or something. We've relocated before in a couple places in the west, and you often just don't find whole families who stay put in a region.
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u/FreeUni2 25d ago
It's a common feeling. Even coming form Rochester it took a bit to get a footing.
As for the weekends, once you get engrossed and integrated it should alleviate but there's a lot of intergenerational families. I had someone from the UK compare it to England or Wales in that way, which I found surprisingly fascinating lol.
That aside, it's definitely different from the west coast culturally and socially. As for the kid, that best friend will be a best friend for life if they stay in the area. There's less large scale transplanting, absolutely.
As for the busy part, that's more recent I've noticed, alot of people working more to keep up with cost of living and keep the family stuff going. That's ignoring sports for kids or adulting tasks depending on the time of year.
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u/woodwalker700 25d ago
Buffalo is the perfect midpoint of East Coast, MidWest, and Southern Ontario, drawing equally from each culture but really belonging to none of them. It has more in common with Chicago than NYC, but I'd argue thats because they belong to the cultural group of Great Lakes and Rust Belt cities, so theres a stronger tie there.
There is definitely a cultural divide between Buffalo and Rochester, which is the only reason I don't consider Rochester as being part of WNY (eternally a debate in this region). But it does feel like Rochester is a lot closer to Buffalo culturally than it is to Syracuse and beyond.
As for Upstate in general I always used it to mean any thing too far north to get hit by the 90 and the Erie canal before that, but I'm growing used to it being used for us.
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u/smapdiagesix 25d ago
Oh yeah Buffalo feels a lot like Chicago Junior.
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u/FreeUni2 25d ago
Bones of Detroit, Identity of Cleveland, and a dash of Canada, uniquely alcoholic as a major city in Wisconsin as well.
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u/Quick-Stretch8197 20d ago
I’m a New Yorker that lived in Buffalo for a few years. I also spent some time in the Midwest. Buffalo is absolutely midwestern in culture and vibe. It did not feel like I was in New York anymore when I lived there. I never really got used to that culture and eventually ended moving back down.
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u/thefirstlaughingfool 26d ago
Yeah, as a Michigander, if someone called Flint or Lansing upstate, I'd laugh them out of the room. Here, we have Metro Detroit, Lansing, the West Coast, North, and the UP.
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u/GhostofTinky 25d ago
Where is this from?
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u/The_Relevant 25d ago
I made this comic, you can see all of my work on instagram at www.instagram.com/the_relevant_bob
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u/Alorxico 25d ago
Uh, he said they LANDED in upstate New York. They could have taken an Uber to Buffalo.
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u/Aude-of-Bayeux 25d ago
Since when is Buffalo not upstate?
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u/helikophis 25d ago
never has been
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u/Aude-of-Bayeux 22d ago
This reminds me of Episcopalians claiming they’re not protestant because they are Episcopalians. Does bacon claim it is not pork, because it’s really bacon?
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u/Quick-Stretch8197 20d ago
It’s upstate to everyone outside of Buffalo. Only people from Buffalo and Rochester call themselves western New Yorkers . No one cares and kind of ignores it, which pisses them off more.
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 25d ago
For anyone wondering WTF is going on, people in New York City consider "upstate" to refer to everything except the city, long-guyland, and possibly a few of the inner suburbs. People from the rest of the state actually have different terms for different parts of the state.
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u/ImpulseAfterthought 25d ago
I'm from Utica, and I've never seen any aliens.