History UsefulNotes / NewYorkState

* '''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 is ''not'' upstate, and everything north of you is.[[/note]] 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 by Metro-North Railroad.[[note]]For reference, the other happy, friendly, middle class families in the area are in New Jersey, and commute to The City by UsefulNotes/NewJerseyTransit. [[/note]]\\

** '''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 in ''July''. Dirt and debris had gathered on top, which not only insulated it from the summer heat, but even allowed ''grass'' to grow on it. The only reason it didn't last into August was because [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/31/humorless-buffalo-destroys-its-famous-snow-pile/ the city had it bulldozed]]. The city is also home to two sports teams: the Buffalo Bills in the UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague (who are also the only team to play ''in'' the state of New York) and the Buffalo Sabres in the UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague. However, neither team has ever [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut won a championship]] and lost a combined ''seven'' throughout their histories. Buffalo is also home to SUNY[[note]]State University of New York[[/note]] Buffalo (AKA the University ''[[InsistentTerminology at]]'' Buffalo), whose athletic team competes in the [[UsefulNotes/GroupOfFiveConferences Mid-American Conference]].\\

** '''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 the [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks United States Military Academy]] (and their [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballConferences Army Black Knights]]) at West Point.

* '''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 the ''[[UsefulNotes/AmericanNewspapers Post]]'' or the ''Daily News'' (as in "those f--kers in Albany are wasting my tax dollars"). Nearby Schenectady is the old home of General Electric, the part-owners (and former full owners) of Creator/{{NBC}} and [[Creator/{{Universal}} Universal 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 of [[{{Joisey}} New Jersey]]. (They're gonna clean it up sometime. We swear.) It's also home to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRGB one of the world's first television stations]] (where TV cooking-show host Creator/RachaelRay started her career) and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGY_(AM) America'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 in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution. 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 in UsefulNotes/{{California}} are older).\\

** '''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 in ''July''. Dirt and debris had gathered on top, which not only insulated it from the summer heat, but even allowed ''grass'' to grow on it. The only reason it didn't last into August was because [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/31/humorless-buffalo-destroys-its-famous-snow-pile/ the city had it bulldozed]]. The city is also home to two sports teams: the Buffalo Bills in the UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague (who are also the only team to play ''in'' the state of New York) and the Buffalo Sabres in the UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague. However, neither team has ever [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut won a championship]] and lost a combined ''seven'' throughout their history. Buffalo is also home to SUNY[[note]]State University of New York[[/note]] Buffalo (AKA the University ''[[InsistentTerminology at]]'' Buffalo), whose athletic team competes in the [[UsefulNotes/GroupOfFiveConferences Mid-American Conference]].\\

The main road going through here is the Long Island Expressway, or [[FunWithAcronyms the 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.[[/note]] The first planned suburb in the United States, Levittown,[[note]]Alongside the town in UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} with the same name, just northeast of Philadelphia[[/note]] 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.[[labelnote: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.[[/labelnote]] The western, more urbanized part of the North Shore has historically been known as the "Gold Coast" due to the massive amount of both [[BlueBlood old money]] and [[TheGildedAge Gilded 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; ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'' was set here 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 to UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} 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[[/note]]) is occupied by Montauk, a small town that wouldn't look out of place in [[HollywoodNewEngland New England]] -- and judging by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montauk_Project tales]] that [[GovernmentConspiracy the government once conducted freaky experiments there]], wouldn't be out of place in LovecraftCountry either.

* '''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 the [[UsefulNotes/PowerFiveConferences Atlantic 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 National UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} Hall of Fame and Museum, is in the hilly country in between the rivers.

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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 in ''July''. Dirt and debris had gathered on top, which not only insulated it from the summer heat, but even allowed ''grass'' to grow on it. The only reason it didn't last into August was because [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/31/humorless-buffalo-destroys-its-famous-snow-pile/ the city had it bulldozed]]. The city is also home to two sports teams: the Buffalo Bills in the UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague (who are also the only team to play ''in'' the state of New York) and the Buffalo Sabres in the UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague. However, neither team has ever [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut won a championship]] and lost a combined ''seven'' throughout their history. Buffalo is also home to SUNY[[note]]State University of New York[[/note]] Buffalo (AKA the University ''[[InsistentTerminology at]]'' Buffalo), whose athletic team competes in the [[UsefulNotes/GroupOfFiveConferences Mid-American Conference]].\\
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UsefulNotes/{{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 were [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} the Mormons]], the Millerites,[[note]]from which the Seventh-Day Adventists trace their roots[[/note]] the Shakers, the Oneida Community,[[note]]Who were originally a free-love Christian commune -- basically Jesus Freaks ''avant 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.[[/note]] and the spiritualist movement, making it something of a 19th century version of UsefulNotes/{{California}} 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. Once [[TechnologyMarchesOn digital 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.