"Who cares who you were or what you were doing before you moved here? Your New Yorkiversary is the day you really arrived — figuratively as well as literally." (New York Post)
And in a separate piece, Danica Lo explores the topic some more...:
In this great city we call home, there are two kinds of residents: New Yorkers and people who've just lived here a while.
Sorry, kids.
It doesn't matter how much you feel like a New Yorker, how fast you walk, how many slices of pizza you've gobbled or how much vitriol you seethe at tourists. Forking over income tax to the city doesn't get you a NY-er badge.
Students, your tuition and living costs at NYU and Columbia may be steep, but they don't buy you native status. And if you grew up out of state, moved to the city after college and have worked here for 10 years? Sorry, you're still a transplant.
As a native — I grew up in Queens, went to preschool in Bayside, PS 31, MS 158 and Stuyvesant High School (with all the other Asians) and have worked here all my professional life — my tenuous and negotiable definition is that you're a New Yorker if you completed the majority of your formative years' pre-college education — elementary, middle, junior and high school — somewhere in the five boroughs.
May I at least get a merit badge for using a pitchfork to fight off three intruders who were climbing in my back window while thugs were up front, shooting my neighbor? I'd call that hellish time period pretty damn formative...
ReplyDeleteHmm, owning a pitchfork gets high marks in my book.
ReplyDeleteBut if would be better had you got to nursery school here.
Yes. Where will the celbration taking place? At Superdive or Aces and Eights? If so, are Superdive and Aces & Eights giving away NY and "journalistic" merit badge as a prize for winning a beer pong tournament?
ReplyDelete(I'm also stealing this post, if you don't mind)
The pitchfork actually came with the apartment (no, I didn't cart it with me from the pig farm). The landlord actually said, "Oh, you'll need that," when he showed me the place.
ReplyDeleteBut, yeah, growing up here would have meant likely having a family with a home and support system nearby so I wouldn't have had to earn my way.
This is what people that just happened by chance to have been born here say when they have nothing else they've really accomplished. People that move to NY are every bit a new yorker than someone born here through no action of their own. In fact, one can argue that people that choose to move here are even more NY than someone born here.
ReplyDeleteThat's just a pig headed comment. Are naturalized citizens not American? As a people we are generally accepting of people from all walks of life that's what makes this city great. The so called "new yorkers" need to get over themselves as I'm sure all those immigrants that came through Ellis island who made the city what is in the first place would agree.
This is just the sort of xenophobic, nativist article I'd expect from the NY Post. What would NYC be without all the different languages, accents, cuisines? Boring! What is NYC but a polyglot of elsewheres? If all someone wants is to hang out with their elementary school friends for the rest of their life, there are plenty of other tiny villages in the Pyrenees where they can do so.
ReplyDeleteSome of my native Missouri tribespeople say that I am no longer a Missourian because I've been gone too long. And some native NYC hillbillies say I'm not a New Yorker because I wasn't born here. Whatever. As far as I'm concerned I'm a Missourian-New Yorker, but I'm not so insecure that I give a rat's ass what anyone else thinks. To quote Salman Rushdie, "It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity." (Especially relevant here, since NYC itself changes every generation.)
ReplyDeleteI think you are a native when you say "I'm going home" and you don't mean to your parent's house somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteNew Yorkers DO NOT walk fast.
ReplyDeleteYou are a New Yorker if you have no place else to go.
ReplyDeleteWell put Prodigal son
ReplyDelete