9 Things Downstate New Yorkers Say About Upstate That Locals Are Sick Of

A family from Long Island checks into a bed-and-breakfast near Cornell University and asks the owner how far away the nearest college town sits.

The owner just blinks.

Cornell has stood in Ithaca since 1865, and half the shops on the block exist because of it.

These are the things downstate New Yorkers say about upstate that locals are sick of hearing.

1. So Westchester Counts as Upstate?

Ask somebody from Rockland or Putnam County where upstate New York begins, and plenty point at their own town line.

New York’s own governor didn’t do upstate any favors either.

In 2025, Kathy Hochul told reporters the line sits north of Westchester, one county removed from Manhattan.

That’s it.

Someone in Plattsburgh, five hours from the city by car, doesn’t feel much in common with a Metro-North suburb that reaches Grand Central Terminal in under an hour.

That’s not upstate.

Upstate New Yorkers draw the line much farther out, closer to the Capital Region or the Southern Tier, and the closer a downstater’s hometown sits to Manhattan, the harder downstaters push back on that line.

2. Basically Canada up There?

Buffalo sits close enough to Canada that the border practically counts as a commute.

The Peace Bridge puts downtown Buffalo a short drive from Fort Erie, Ontario.

Downstaters treat that proximity as proof the whole city runs on poutine and hockey jokes.

It doesn’t.

Buffalonians built their own identity around the Bills, wing joints on every block, and a grain elevator skyline that has nothing to do with Toronto.

Being close to a country isn’t the same as being that country, and Western New Yorkers never stop explaining the difference.

3. Bet Your Taxes Are Lower?

Binghamton posted the highest effective tax rate of any metro area in the country in 2025, at 2.27%.

Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo all landed in the top ten too.

Ouch.

Manhattan’s own median effective rate sits closer to 0.44%, per the most detailed borough breakdown available, a 2018 analysis of fiscal year 2019 bills.

Property taxes are the exception downstaters never see coming.

Nobody upstate is getting a discount.

4. Don’t Need a Car There?

New York City runs on trains.

Downstate New Yorkers picture the whole state following the same rules.

More than half of New York City households, 55% as of 2019, don’t own a car, and Manhattan pushes that number even higher.

Upstate New Yorkers live by the opposite rule.

Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse each run a bus system, but nothing close to subway coverage, and small towns between them often have no public transit at all.

A grocery run, a doctor’s appointment, and a kid’s hockey practice all mean the same thing upstate.

Get in the car.

5. Just Cows and Cornfields?

New York ranks fifth nationally in dairy production, with roughly 2,800 farms producing more than 16 billion pounds of milk a year.

So yes, there are cows.

But Buffalo’s metro area alone holds close to 895,000 people, and Rochester’s tops 760,000.

Add Syracuse and Albany, and upstate holds several cities with skylines, universities, and rush-hour traffic of their own.

Downstaters who picture one long dirt road between Yonkers and Niagara Falls have never driven it.

6. Best Food Is All Downstate?

Ask a downstate New Yorker to name an upstate dish, and many come up empty.

Teressa Bellissimo invented the Buffalo wing at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo in 1964, tossing fried wings in hot sauce because that’s what she had on hand.

Nick Tahou Hots opened in Rochester in 1918, though the restaurant’s garbage plate, hot dogs or hamburger piled on home fries, macaroni salad, and meat sauce, took shape decades later and didn’t get its name until the 1980s.

Syracuse has salt potatoes, a byproduct of the salt industry that once supplied 90% of the nation’s salt.

Binghamton has the spiedie, marinated meat on a skewer that Italian immigrants brought to the Southern Tier in the 1930s.

Try finding that on Broadway.

Downstate diners don’t get a vote on any of it.

7. How Do You Survive Winter?

Downstaters hear about upstate winters and reach for pity first.

Syracuse averages 114 inches of snow a year, more than almost any other mid-size city in the country, with Buffalo and Rochester close behind at 92 and 89 inches.

Upstate New Yorkers don’t want the sympathy.

Ski towns from the Adirondacks to the Catskills plan entire winters around that snow, and the Tug Hill Plateau east of Lake Ontario turns it into hundreds of miles of snowmobile trail.

The pity is misplaced.

8. Nothing Cultured up There?

Downstaters act like culture stops the moment the skyline disappears from the rearview mirror.

The Finger Lakes region just won Wine Enthusiast’s American Wine Region of the Year for 2025, a title that goes to one region in the whole country each year.

That’s not a small nod.

The Erie Canal opened in 1825, 363 hand-dug miles that carried the nation’s trade decades before a highway ever crossed the state.

Upstate New Yorkers built plenty worth bragging about long before downstate showed up to visit.

9. Always Running Down to New York City?

How often does an upstate New Yorker make it down to Manhattan?

Not as often as downstaters guess.

The distance is the reason.

The Thruway’s mainline runs 426 miles from Buffalo to New York City on I-90 and I-87, a six-hour drive on a good day and longer once traffic backs up near the city.