state by state speak your mind about...new york

[SwampG8r]

awww new york the big apple
well the big apple is in new york
a state with serious duality a large populous state with americas most populated city within
when you say new york you usually mean the city but it really is so much more
lets start with the city though.one of americas oldest and most definitive places and histories
bought for a robbers pittance by the dutch from natives
the natives selling rights to land of their neighbors
how much more USA does this story get? the imprint of new york city is all over this world
madison avenue homogenized us starting in the 50's and the big 3 networks finished the job via hollywood outsourcing
wall street can cripple a government half a world away over a bad sandwich at lunch
and we would be naked without new yorks garment districts (not really but models would work less and do we really need tyra banks and naiomi campbell with free time?)
and then you leave the city and there are villages and farms and mountains and rolling hills
most steeped in the gestation of this continent a historically magic tour of history
we are a better nation for new york
what a place!

[a la izquierda]

1. The Museum of Natural History is my favorite spot in the city...

but upstate New York is where the beauty is.

[rug]

2. John Bown's grave.

North Elba, New York

[UTUSN]

3. Can I do NYC or is this a state only thing? Robt CARO's The Power Broker

Somebody I know who has traveled a lot and been to NYC several times didn't even know who Robert MOSES was. When I showed her the biography's pictures of scads of buildings, bridges, parkways, and more that were all built by this despot, making him one of the top three builders in about all history, she was flabbergasted.

That said, what a horrible human specimen, personally, although his main flaw was at the core of his urban design, channeling the future from ecological sense of mass transit away to single-vehicle choked bottlenecks. He displaced hundred of thousands of lower income and minority people in favor of upper cash classes, scarring whatever natural lands were left with gorges of blight. He condemned the property of lower monied while giving the KENNEDYs (RFK & 3 sisters) millions for their property. Not even FDR could control him, until, 40 yrs later Nelson ROCKEFELLER finally put a stop to him.

(I'm halfway through CARO's new, 4th vol. of his LBJ pyramid.)

[SwampG8r]

15. you tell what you want

the city the state its your thread
flesh out new york for us
these threads are about your life and your new york

[mmonk]

4. Maybe I can get an answer in this thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002676743

[SwampG8r]

16. how about it new york duers? can you answer mmonks questions?

single payer questions
please go to the link and reply he has a good question going

[annabanana]

5. Lived in Manhattan, Queens and out on "the island"

Since 1967...

Manhattan is the very best place in the world to go for a walk.

[FarLeftFist]

6. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

[ellisonz]

7. Yankees Suck!

[Godhumor]

8. Our current governor has to be considered an early favorite for the 2016 Dem nomination

Like him or loathe him, Cuomo is going to be front and center on the national stage very soon.

[Brother Buzz]

9. New York Nippy cheese

Once upon a time, it was my benchmark in cheese.

[surrealAmerican]

10. I love that state.

On a sunny day in October (these can be scarce), there is no more beautiful place on earth than the woods in the finger lakes region. I went to school there a long time ago. I also grew up on Long Island, and couldn't wait to leave there.

[Earth_First]

11. 95% of it exists outside of Manhattan...

You'd never know it, however.

[SwampG8r]

17. sure i would

but i am not from there so i dont have personal stories about the place
if you do i hope you will share them here so we can know what new york means to you

[Retrograde]

21. And mostly rural

and (sadly) largely right-leaning. I grew up in western New York (as my sister calls it, the Upper West Side), go back there about every six months: the Appalachians extend into New York. Wyoming county, just east of Buffalo, has more cattle than people - and cattle rustlers - they steal veal calves. New York is IIRC the second largest dairy state, the second largest apple producing state, one of the bigger grape growing states (and one of the early wine producing ones). There are large Amish communities in the western counties, and the Seneca Nation is a big political power there. The Buffalo area is a large port of entry for the US (when I was growing up Canada was the place to go swimming, and to get Chinese food).

I like Manhattan, but there's a lot more to the state.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Grew up in NYC (Queens), went to NYC public schools

Arrested by NYPD. Aw yeah, kid. In the system (Central Booking, no Rikers).

Lived Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn. (Brooklyn was best, always). Also lived in Southern Tier (Binghamton) and Capital Region (Albany). Been to Plattsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester. Drinking in Ithaca. Cooperstown, Ommegang Brewery, all that. Got high in the Hamptons; drank wine on the North Fork.

NYC big shout to Adam Yauch! Our model for how to do shit correctly.

[badtoworse]

13. "bought for a robbers pittance by the dutch from natives"

If the Indians had invested the $24 at 5% it would be worth about $4 billion today. Not bad for unimproved real estate.

[SwampG8r]

18. as a native let me assure you

we will get every penny back
one quarter at a time

[Starry Messenger]

14. I just visited for the first time in my life last month.

I'm in love. I'm definitely going back for more visits. I thought I was pretty cosmopolitan from living near SF all of my life, but nothing prepared me for New York. The grand sweep of it was breathtaking. All of the old brick buildings still covered in fire escapes like Ashcan School paintings. It's beautiful.

[Luminous Animal]

23. I love to visit NYC. Growing up in Newark DE, my sister and I

went there often. But, as a San Francisco transplant of 27 years and my daughter born and raised here, we both prefer our city by the bay. As my daughter puts it, "People there are just too sad."

[Rhiannon12866]

19. I like living in a "blue state," but that means the presidential candidates never come here

And I also support both of our senators, but it's NYC that makes NY a "blue state." We could use some help in the red areas where most of the rest of us live. Most of the local elections are decided in the Republican primaries.

[Honeycombe8]

20. If you can make it there, you make it anywhere?

I've been there for work a few times. Times Square area. Went to the Metropolitan Art Museum.

What an exciting city! The lights, the movement, the smells (sometimes good, sometimes not). A capitalist mecca. An arts capital.

But I didn't go to the other areas to see what it's like, what it'd be like to live there. It still seems to me more like a place I see in movies, rather than a real place. I was flabbergasted to see Grand Central Station. As in, "You mean there really IS a Grand Central Station?" And to see the sign for "Poughkipsee" there....I never thought of it as a real place. I've just seen it in movies.

I was raised in a place far from there and as different as can be. The deep south. Hot, humid, rural, small towns, bicycles, black maids, women with peddle pushers and wavy hair and gentle southern accents. Almost no crime. Fields of rice or sugar cane or soybeans. Farms and ranches and horses and tractors. When the sun went down, the town shut down. A lot of poor people, for lack of capitalistic opportunities (if you have a store, you don't make much $ if you don't have many people to sell to).

Both areas are great in their own ways. I like both.

[Luminous Animal]

22. The Adirondacks near White Face Mountain are amazing.

Fantastic hiking. Amazing small lakes or, if you prefer, big ponds (my husband and I have a 23 year old dispute).
http://www.whitefaceregion.com/

My husbands family owned a motel there. (hahaha! I think this is the era that they owned it!)



They still owned it during the 1980 Olympics and the NBC "talent" stayed there. They were mostly rude outrageous drunks (barfing in the restaurant, peeing their pants, putting cigarettes out on the carpet...) who harassed his sisters unrelentingly.

My husband says that he could ski on White Face mountain all day for $2-$3 (or free, off trail). After the Olympics, the price quintupled and security increased to catch and arrest rogue skiers.

His dad was friends with Art Flick and they'd stock the streams together.

[2ndAmForComputers]

24. NY is awesome.

Except the Yankees. They can go pound sand.

[Tikki]

25. We finally had the chance the visit NYC and it was amazing.

The Tikkis

[phylny]

26. I grew up on Long Island,

worked in Manhattan, moved away, moved back to the Hudson Valley, and moved away again.

I loved growing up on Long Island, having the Town of Hempstead beaches a half hour away. I got a first-class education on Long Island. Working in Manhattan was fun when I was young, but if you don't live in Manhattan, the commute drains the life out of you. I worked at the World Trade Center for a few years - the buildings were designed to sway, so you could see the water in the toilets moving. There were automatic window washers, and one of them had a toy monkey on it, so we'd always look for that. Sometimes you could only tell if it was raining if you looked down and saw umbrellas.

Life in the Hudson Valley was interesting. I lived near Kiryas Joel, a Hassidic Jewish town, and there were always battles with the residents wanting more land and more water.

Our property taxes were incredibly high - $19,000. Killed us. I wasn't sorry to leave, except that my dad and brother's family still live in New York.