upstate new york

[Andy]

what a beautiful place.  it seems like it might be full of weirdos, though?

[Beth]

where are you upstate,  Andy?

[Andy]

driving between albany and cooperstown. tomorrow we're going to woodstock to see Levon Helm's midnight ramble.

[Andy]

i'm upstate, right? 

[Fido]

Yep, you're upstate.  Unless you're within half an hour to an hour of the NYC city limits, you're upstate. It probably is full of weirdos, but don't let that discourage you.

What's on your travel agenda?

I'm wishing I was in the Adirondacks now.

[Beth]

You're upstate for sure.  For a minute there, I was afraid you were going to say White Plains. Har.

It is beautiful. I live 45 minutes east of Albany, at the beginning of the Adirondacks.  And yes, there are weirdos. Like me. Or the people in the trailer down the road who collect weird metal cut-outs of people, and apparently old toilets and tarps.

Have fun in Woodstock! I love it there. Such a nice area. There's a pretty lighthouse nearby, that someone turned into a bed and breakfast, but I can't for the life of me remember its name.

[Sarah]

Isn't this so-called weirdness par for the course once you get out of any metropolitan center into more rural areas?  And "weird," really?

I love the looseness of the label "upstate New York."  When my family moved to New Paltz--around ninety miles north of the city--and heard people describing the locale as "upstate," we were very puzzled:  before, we'd lived in Potsdam, which is just a couple of hours south of Montreal.

[Man Machine]

driving between albany and cooperstown. tomorrow we're going to woodstock to see Levon Helmet's midnight ramble.

Fixed

[Fido]

Sarah --  yeah, that weirdness isn't unique to the hinterlands beyond New York, by any means. In fact, it's much more striking to me in places like the Appalachians west of DC or the cornfields just west of Chicago, where you're suddenly shocked to be somewhere so different, culturally and scenically, from where you were 90 minutes ago.

I was also wondering where the dividing line is between the New York City metropolitan area and "upstate" -- I think it's gotta be somewhere south of New Paltz, but north of Westchester and Rockland. As we just learned recently, Westchester is actually one of the five boroughs of New York City. Still, New Paltz is really far south. I'm sure you thought it had a lot more in common with metro New York than with Potsdam, right?

Beth -- I envy you.  I fontasize about living where you live, whatever weirdoes might be around.

[John Junk 2.0]

Yeah, but Woodstock is filled with dirty hippie weirdos.  Kinda like Humboldt County on the West Coast.

[Fido]

Actually, JJ, I'm going to northern California next week. I have a few days to explore. Do you have any recommendations about what to see? I'm thinking more along the lines of Mount Shasta and redwoods than dirty-hippie-land, although I'm sure the coastline is spectacular.

[Andy]

also, I wish I could find a dunkin donuts up here (/sarcasm)

[Fido]

Don't forget to pay a visit to Cumberland Farms or Stewart's -- they're kind of rare and hard to find but oh-so-worth it.

[chrisfoll577]

also, I wish I could find a dunkin donuts up here (/sarcasm)

You haven't seen true Dunkin Donuts saturation until you've been to Boston.  There are at least five Dunkin Donuts within a five minute drive from both my house and work.

[yesno]

Dunkin donuts have totally infected the jersey shore, too. There's even one on the seaside boardwalk.

BUT nothing holds a candle to jersey shore pizzeria (or do you call them pizza parlor?) saturation. I told my ladyfriend to start counting them, but it was beyond computation. 5 or 6 per mile of road seems about right; in high school some friends and I tried to tally the number of pizza parlors (or is it pizzerias?) in brick nj and I believe we came up with over 30 from memory before giving up. Pizza, donuts, zeppoles: good eatin'.