The Definitive Solution to the Upstate NY Question

[Harvey]

The boarders mean nothing to me

Boarders are people too!

 

[Ripitz]

Boarders are people too!

That’s debatable

 

[wonderpony]

Downstate is defined by your accent.

*I* don't have an accent. Trust me. I grew up in Ithaca and spent a year in Athens, OH when my dad was on sabbatical. When I was in HS, we spent a year in Seattle, where somebody told me that I have an accent. I am pretty sure they are wrong.

 

[Ripitz]

The upstate downstate doesn't trouble me nearly as much as the entire concept of the "Hudson Valley". I guess I get particularly irked as a New Jersey resident who can literally walk to the river and yet the Hudson Valley starts at exit 15 on the thruway with seemingly no boundary's to the east or west beyond the state boarder and maybe the Delaware County line. Personally I feel more in the Hudson Valley a short bike ride away from the Piermont Pier than I feel anyone in Sloatsburg is.

Cry me a Hudson River Valley. If it’s in the watershed and is in between two 1,000ft hills then it’s in the “Valley”. Everything else doesn’t measure up or is outside the zone

 

[Brownski]

Downstate is defined by your accent.

*I* don't have an accent. Trust me. I grew up in Ithaca and spent a year in Athens, OH when my dad was on sabbatical. When I was in HS, we spent a year in Seattle, where somebody told me that I have an accent. I am pretty sure they are wrong.

I had a similar experience when I was working in AK. I don’t have an accent either but everybody there thought I did. A coworker from Oregon couldn’t be convinced I wasn’t Italian. Go figure.

 

[Harvey]

If it’s in the watershed and is in between two 1,000ft hills then it’s in the “Valley”. Everything else doesn’t measure up or is outside the zone

Catamount?

 

[Ripitz]

Catamount?

Catamount is unequivocally Upstate in the Hudson Valley

 

[Johnny V.]

I'll throw in my .02. I was a manufacturers rep for 20+ years and our sales territory was Upstate NY. The lower boundaries were the top of Westchester and Rockland counties, so that's always been the definition to me.

As an aside, we'd get sales managers who had no idea how big the state was-"I'll fly into Buffalo and we can visit accounts in Albany in the afternoon".

 

[Low Angle Life]

Cry me a Hudson River Valley. If it’s in the watershed and is in between two 1,000ft hills then it’s in the “Valley”. Everything else doesn’t measure up or is outside the zone

You got me with your watershed logic, I'll quit my trolling, although Utica as the Hudson Valley..? What do I know, I'm not even a "Downstater".

 

[Milo Maltbie]

Utica is in the Mohawk drainage, which in turn drains to the Hudson. But real estate does not necessarily follow hydrology. In the real estate world, the Hudson Valley extends from Bear Mountain to Hudson, between the Catskills and Route 22.

The Hudson Valley is Upstate, as is the North Country and Western NY. Sing Sing is only upstate in gangster movies. the Catskills are a Downstate colony in Upstate, governed by the NYC DEP. The North Country is a tourist plantation governed by the absentee overlords of the APA.

mm