>>What does "upstate" mean? Specificly "upstate New York"? I used to think it meant "north" but now I am thinking "out of metro New York".
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>As Jim says, it's an individual thing depending on where you are in the state.
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>Growing up in NYC I got the feeling the state was divided into four areas. The City, The Island (the parts of Long Island which were not Brooklyn or Queens), Westchester (the county due north of the city), and Upstate.
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>Going to college in Binghamton (just north of the PA border) the definition of upstate tended to match Jim's description. The counties to the south of that line were sort of lumped together into "Downstate" - which did NOT include the city.

Okay, I managed to bring up a New York map on the web. I hadn't realized that the city was down in the south on a finger of land. The majority of the state is up north.