New Yorkers Don't Know New York

There are stupid people everywhere. We have our share, I guess.

A huge percentage of native-born New Yorkers I've met are smug and perfectly satisfied with their provincialism. They know absolutely nothing of the rest of the country (or world, for that matter) and don't care to.

But then, this piece was about them not even knowing New York. Doubly pathetic.

"When you're from Brooklyn, everything else is Tokyo"

-Larry King

Because there not real New Yorkers .

The fact that they didn't ask "who has the best pizza?" delegitimizes that questionnaire.

"In many cases, our tourists seem to know more about our city than we do." Not acceptable!

what business to legit new yorkers have visiting sites that are really intended for outsiders? do tourist attractions constitute what there is to know about new york?

if you think that this kind of thing is "not acceptable," then i guess i can understand where most of your posts are coming from. you're not a new yorker, and you never will be.

gothamist is getting more irrelevant by the day. where's my mid-morning jersey shore update?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/science/29tier.html?scp=1&sq=carpe%20diem&st=cse

I have an issue with the second question on the survey, Which of the following two museums face each other directly across Central Park? Last time I checked both museums main entrances face east. Don't see how that's facing each other.

It is a fact that knowing new york = knowing what the crown of the statue of liberty represents. Stone cold fact. It's like knowing hip-hop = listening to vanilla ice.

I've lived in New York since 1965 and I have never been to the top of the Empire State Building or went to the Metropolitan Opera or took the boat trip around Manhattan, or visited the Queens Museum or bought a knock off Gucci bag on Canal street or rode the Cyclone, or drank at a bar on the lower East Side.

Still I feel like I am a New Yorker.

I am married to a native New Yorker and we have done all the things on your list in the past year, except the ESB (not happening) and purchasing knock offs (also not happening). The QMA of art is wonderful, and if you're into opera (which I'm guessing you're not) you really should check out the Met. Taking in what the city has to offer does not make you seem like a tourist.

Fondling sleeping girls on the subway doesn't make you a new yorker.

I know native-born New Yorkers who never rode the Cyclone nor walked the Brooklyn Bridge.

The question wasn't what borough the World's Fair was in in 1939; it was about what museum is located there. The difference? The question you pretend was asked is easy knowledge, and the one they actually asked stumped me. And it's literally my job to know what museums are in Queens. (I did, coincidentally, narrow it down to the QMA, the Queens Zoo, and some sort of tennis museum my brain completely fabricated.)

new yorkers work too much.

Does anyone here know who was buried in Grant's Tomb.

and while we're being nitpicky, nobody's actually buried in there -- they're entombed.

right. they are in sarcophagi, so technically they aren't buried.

That is, at the very least, a real trick question. The answer isn't Grant; it's the Grants.

did the survey mention the Circle Line photo shakedown?

I did all these things on field trips in elementary school.

It was the RCA building then and Jeopardy was taped in nyc.

I am not surprised, it has always been this way. Natives and long time residents of the city never seem to want to leave their borough.

So it's quite common to see a BK resident who has never been to Queens or the Bronx etc.

I call it the "borough' mentality because these people are so stuck their own bubble.

This points up one of the most underrated things about being a New Yorker: Visitors.

One of my fondest memories is my last visit to the Observation Deck of the WTC. I had gotten a call from out of the blue from a friend who was moving to San Francisco and said one of her best memories was a field trip there when she was in High School, and she wanted to do it one more time before she left for the west coast. As a New Yorker, I would have never gone alone, but the "Urban Sherpa" in me couldn't resist. It was my last time there too.

(postscript, she now lives in DC, and made a similar request to come up and see the tree at Rockefeller Center the Saturday before Christmas, but that obviously didn't happen!)

Calling 300 people simply with NYC addresses means nothing to me. You're not a "New Yorker" unless you've been born & raised here or at least lived the better half of your life here.

"41% think that the Top of the Rock is on top of the Empire State Building! This statistic is only made more alarming by the fact that the name of the attraction might as well be its address. People, it's on top of the Rock!"

The correct answer was the General Electric Building. So the name "Top of the Rock" didn't offer any clue.

Where are these survey's being sent? Williamsburg?

It was a telephone survey, with the only qualification being that they currently reside in NYC. So, no way of knowing how many lifelong New Yorkers were involved as compared to people who arrived in the past year or so.

You didn't read to the end. 300 people were surveyed, at least 29 percent of whom said they were lifelong NYers. Not a precise answer but better than nothing.

You're right, hadn't gotten that far. Actually probably more than that, assuming accurate answers. That was a "volunteered" response, not one of the multiple choice answers, so some of the 50% who said "16 years or more" were probably lifelong.

It would have been interesting to see the responses broken out that way.

If you read the results of their survey on their website, on page 6 they use the initials "MOMA" to refer to the The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

So in other words, New York Pass doesn't know shit either.

Heh. And the worst part of that is that the actual MOMA was included as one of the possible choices.

who the hell cares what building a tourist trap is in?

Lots of people who are brought up in the 5 boroughs only know their neighborhood. For people who are looked at as very worldly, a lot of natives are very sheltered, and they rarely venture beyond a several-block radius of their home.

Lots of people who are brought up in the 5 boroughs only know their neighborhood. For people who are looked at as very worldly, a lot of natives are very sheltered, and they rarely venture beyond a several-block radius of their home.

Yeah! Stupid Statue of Liberty!

Elitists and their trivia...

Like an episode from The Odd Couple.

but really, I could give a rat's ass about the Statue of Liberty question, same if it had an Ellis island question.

A NYer may not know the price of the ferry to Liberty Island, but there's no tourist that knows as much about finding good pizza in Queens. It all depends on what's important to you.

This survey is pretty extensive and has lots of information.

This post has motivated me to visit somewhere I haven't been tonight.

Thanks!

This doesn't surprise me in the least. Some of the worst offenders, at least based on my experiences, are the New Yorkers who have spent their ENTIRE life here. I can't even believe how many people I've met from Brooklyn who've never been to Queens, and vice versa, for example. The worst part is that most of these people actually seem proud to have never left their borough. Sad.

That's cuz the G train doesn't work too well (re: bkln and qns).

The sad thing is a lot of people who move to NYC don't bother exploring the city. I've met people who lived in the city for 5-10 years especially in Manhattan and never leave their neighborhood besides for work. They've never been to Brooklyn or Queens. You guys should have stayed in the suburbs!

But NYC is Manhattan ONLY. Queens is so not NYC. It has no spirit.

God, I hope that was a joke. If not, what a stupid thing to say. Queens embodies the "spirit" of New York more than Manhattan could ever hope to. The diversity alone is so symbolic of what many of us love about New York. Manhattan jumped the shark in many ways a long time ago.

Silver, it's exactly people like you who account for the appalling lack of knowledge about the city among people who call themselves "New Yorkers." Residents who never leave Manhattan are like tourists who never leave Times Square--just too lazy and uncreative to get off their bar stools in Nohosotribecalita and see the real New York.

On second thought, my sarcasm meter may be no the fritz. But my reply still stands for anyone who actually things that Queens has no soul!

You want to meet mid-span on the Queensboro, buddy, this Queens girl will be more than happy to show you some spirit.

Give a second to put my wraps on...

ummm, spirit? oh you mean outrageously priced rent, gentrified neighborhoods and over priced clubs filled with european tourists. yeah totally, the other borough's have no "spirit." GET REAL. these days manhattan is full of a bunch of rich midwestern transplants anyway, not "real" new yorkers.

"18% knew that the seven points on the Statue of Liberty's crown stand for the Seven Seas and Continents"

I stopped reading after that was revealed as being one of the questions.

Lucky you did. A subsequent question gave a completely wrong answer.

"In what borough is the last section of original forest that covered the city before the arrival of the Europeans?"

These twits claimed "The Bronx @ the BBG". Perhaps, but a more famous stand of tulip trees exists in Inwood Hill Park at 215th Street.

Kevin Walsh's blog confirms this, claiming 196 acres of primordial acres there.

And what does knowing what the crown of Liberty represents have to do with knowing your city? That sounds like an art history exam.

That's like being out down for not knowing the names of the two lions in front of the Bryant Park Public Library.