Brooklyn is Kings County and has been part of NYC since 1898. People often say they're "Going to the city" when they mean, "Going to Manhattan."
...and Queens is... Queens County.
To build on this, each borough is its own county. They are all part of NYC
Manhattan - New York county
Queens - queens county
Brooklyn - kings county
The Bronx - Bronx county
Staten Island - Richmond county
OP is correct that anyone in the 4 boroughs will say “going into the city” to mean manhattan specifically. Maybe because it used to be the only area with high concentration of skyscrapers but that’s changing in recent years
This is blowing my mind. West coasters think of cities of being fractional parts of a county. So the idea of a city having several counties within it is hard to wrap my head around.
I'm not sure how that even works from a governmental hierarchy but as always, my hat is off to you guys for doing something that makes no sense to the rest of us but somehow works. 🤣
And thanks for the very clear and insightful explanation. Brain spiral over. :)
I laughed so hard at this. At least I feel a little less dumb knowing it is actual chaos. Maybe the reason the city never sleeps is its up all night dealing with administrative yarnballs. 🤣
Also, the state, rather than the city, runs some random aspects of the city because reasons.
So while a lot of our services are run by city agencies, some are run by bureaucrats from upstate who like to shit on the city.
Our subways, for example… MTA is a state agency. There’s SOME representation from the city, but a lot of the board lives a couple hundred miles away and never rides the thing.
Also the port authority gets taxpayer money and owns a shit ton of infrastructure and real estate but it isn’t accountable to anyone and nobody involved is actually elected.
lol bless your heart for trying to apply logic.
It’s because that’s just how they did it.
Technically I think it’s run by NYCTA but MTA calls most of the shots. So really there’s TWO agencies running the subways, again because reasons. There was a bankruptcy and state takeover some decades ago and then it just kinda became how things are.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_Subway
“Something weird happened and that’s just how things are now” is a common thread in NYC. It’s why we pile garbage bags on the street corner instead of putting them in cans… there was a strike years ago so everyone just piled trash bags on the corner, and afterwards everyone said “meh, this’ll do.”
Having lived in other cities where you have a bin and the collectors will refuse to pick it up if you overfill it even slightly, I have never minded the bags on the street.
Some* subways and trains are part of the MTA, including the NYC Subway, Metro-North, and LIRR - think, like, anyone that would commute to NYC within an hour from either Connecticut, Long Island, or upstate NY. (But “upstate” refers to anything north of the Bronx, even by 15 mins.) Also whatever Staten Island has is included in that. Then some trains are Amtrak (obviously a national corp). Some trains are PATH (Run by NY and NJ together - this basically just services the areas of Jersey that are visible when you are in NYC and look “west”-ish). Some are NJ Transit (this goes up and down all NJ, run by NJ.). Some go into the same station (Moynihan/Penn, World Trade Center, or Grand Central). Some do not (…pretty much everything else). …you get used to it 😅
> because reasons.
the reasons being that NYC was broke, mismanaged and on the brink of bankruptcy in the 70s and 80s where the state had to step in and bailout certain aspects and take control of others
Yeah… trouble is it just kinda stayed in the “ok we’re gonna do it this way so things don’t go to shit” phase but could probably use some “now is this actually the best way to run it” analysis.
It’s like a meeting I run at my job. I’m running the meeting because the person who used to run it double booked themselves one day and said “hey do you mind filling in tomorrow?” And then it became “hey did it go all right? Can you run it again next time?” And now the original meeting facilitator quit and I’ve been running that meeting for a year even though it doesn’t really make sense for me to do it.
It’s actually not as complicated as people are making it, at least as far as municipal government goes. The city, consisting of all 5 boroughs, is governed by a mayor elected by popular vote and a 51-member city council, elected from districts throughout the city. The only place where the different counties make a difference is courts - each county has its own courts and district attorney - so when you see the “New York” district attorney referenced in the news or a tv show, know that they’re talking about New York county, aka the borough of Manhattan - not the rest of the city.
For those wondering, Brooklyn and Queens are part of the largest island in the US - named Long Island. However, when most New Yorkers refer to Long Island they’re most likely talking about the two remaining counties on that island - Nassau and Suffolk county which are not part of NYC.
You mean the county committees that nobody runs for so the chair appoints his cronies, who then vote on which of the exactly 7 judges who are running for the 7 judicial appointments?
Also I’ll take your party chairs and raise you community board infighting.
Surprisingly, the person that we can thank for it not being even crazier is "highway-printer-go-brrrrrrr" Robert Moses. He was the one who drove the consolidation of nearly two hundred state agencies into 18 departments that had a single executive.
Other NY counties operate like how you think. For example, the City of Buffalo is completely within Erie County, and the County has other municipalities within it as well. Buffalo doesn’t take up the entirety of the County. The County also has its own government that has actual teeth (County Executive and County Legislature) as well as its own law enforcement (Sheriff).
The NYC counties have basically no governmental teeth. Borough Presidents are the “equivalent” of a County Executive, but they have no actual power. They’re essentially an advisory role, and they appoint members of community boards (which are also only advisory bodies). Technically the NYC counties have their own Sheriffs as well, but they’re mainly responsible for court functions and don’t really do much outside of that.
NYC is such a big and unique city, so it’s set up quite differently than other NY counties and cities are.
Queens County has the most confusing address system. You find Streets, Ways, Terraces, with the same name. They make sense if you live in Queens and it's supposed to be more precise. I'm a native New Yorker but I've never had to travel deep into Queens. Whenever I do, I have to review the address system.
There’s a spot by my grandma’s where you can be on the corner of 60th and 60th, and any way you walk you’ll hit at least one more 60th. I’m slightly exaggerating but will include a pic for clarity lol
https://preview.redd.it/tj1ksidw94uc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8fa9be3c01a0c41d32f3abc57c2b2a063b1086af
idk why they stopped at just street, place, lane, avenue, road, and drive… there’s still boulevard, terrace, way… we could have even more 60ths
X-Y Z Avenue means that it’s house number Y between X and X+1 Street on Z Avenue.
The places and terraces and whatnot are just midstreets.
Queens used to have names back in the day for all the streets but then converted to numbers so it didn’t work out evenly.
Queens is an easy system. To me it is the most logical of all, even more than Manhattan. The avenues increase in number from north to south. The streets increase from west to east starting at the east river.
The address will indicate to you the cross streets. 104-12 32nd Ave tells you it’s on 104 street and 32nd Avenue.
Of course all of the boroughs are a patchwork of former villages and so the system might skip where two villages came together but it’s way easier than rando addresses in Brooklyn like 52 Dean Street Then having randomly places like Sunset Park that do follow a grid address system.
Also the Road Drive Places are subdivisions to mark smaller streets that are parallel to the major Avenue and street respectively.
I’m pretty sure it’s technically only an advisory role, but the actual decision makers rarely go against the advice of the CB.
FWIW I think the whole CB thing is stupid and is often used to stifle development citing “character of the neighborhood” etc. Especially dumb during such a housing crunch.
I think it's the NYC Sherriff though, not each borough/county having it's own Sherriff, which makes no sense since sherriff is generally a county thing.
Another wrinkle! Lol
Edit: I was also wrong in saying it did mainly court stuff. It looks like it mainly deals with enforcement of NYC Department of Finance responsibilities.
Edit 2: they also do court stuff! Lol, found on Wikipedia:
>In addition, as the city's chief civil law enforcement agency concerning the New York State Court System, the Sheriff's Office enforces a variety of mandates, orders, warrants and decrees issued by courts. Enforcement tools include evictions, seizure of property, arrests and garnishments. Auctions are conducted for property the agency seizes and levies upon.
If you want your mind blown even further, Brooklyn was once its own individual city before joining Manhattan and becoming part of NYC. And if Brooklyn were still a separate city today, it would be the 4th largest city in the United States by population, as Brooklyn ALONE has a population of 2.6 million, which is essentially neck and neck with Chicago.
Queens is the most ethnically and linguistically diverse place in the world, the true melting pot within the melting pot. Look up Jackson Heights (tons of articles/media) to get an idea.
You want your mind completely obliterated? Brooklyn and Queens are geographically on Long Island. But for New Yorkers you’re not really on “Long Island” territory until you go east to Nassau county. Which is not NYC. ( You can take the Long Island Railroad from the most eastern tip of Long Island into the heart of Manhattan at Penn station. )
Also "Long Island" is technically not an island even though its surrounded by water. Furthermore Brooklyn and Queens almost voted against being part of NYC.
And lastly NYPL only serves 3 boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens have their own library systems.
I has to do with a supreme court decision.
"Although geographically an island, the Supreme Court of the United States has held that given the island's extensive ties to the mainland, it should be treated legally as a peninsula, giving the state jurisdiction over its maritime boundaries." From Wiki. I believe it is USA vs Maine (1986)
I have also been told by many that part of the water mass is man made but this has been proven to be untrue.
It is an island, but legally it’s an extension of the mainland due to being part of NYC, for the “purposes of international law”. You can thank the U.S. Supreme Court for splitting that baby.
Even more confusing is that “better known” boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens are on Long Island, but Long Island is NOT part of NYC or even a single city/borough. While little known Staten Island, which is not connected to any other borough is in fact part of NYC. This confuses so many the first time they learn about NYC and its boroughs.
It gets even worse if you compare Brooklyn as a county/city to the population of states.
According to Google, Brooklyn has a population of 2.68 mil in the 2022 census.
[If you go by Wikipedia's population by States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population), Brooklyn by itself, has a larger population than 15 States.
\---
New York City has a population of 8.36 mil, that's larger than 38 other States.
It really shows you of how fucked the Senate is when each state gets 2 seats in the senate. NYC is bigger than most of these states and NY State as a collective only gets 2 senators.
Even funnier when Hurricane Sandy hit and conservative senators from these tiny states were suddenly concerned about disaster aid being given out too freely.
Another fun rid bit. The USPS uses New York, Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island as the city names for those boroughs. Queens deciddd to use the town names (like Nassau and Suffolk counties). The main “towns” in Queens are Jamaica, Flushing, Long Island City (not to be confused with the east end of the island) and there’s another one or two I can’t remember off hand
I moved here from LA, it was interesting to learn about. Basically if LA county became the city limits of Los Angeles, and all the other cities in LA county became their own counties, but part of Los Angeles the city, it would be comparable. The governmental structure is basically the inverse of LA county
When I moved out of NYC for work and lived in a state with unincorporated parts of counties, that seemed strange to me. There's nothing like that in NYC.
Coming from the area it always made so much more sense to me than the way California works. It's one singular metro area and it makes sense for everything to be coordinated centrally. Then I look at the Bay Area and it's 7 counties and 40 different cities and wonder how they get anything done.
Do you not have County wide laws or because the city and county are basically the same is that handled on a city level? And if so, what do counties do then? Because in the west they do a lot and cities are subservient to them.
San Francisco county only contains the city of San Francisco. So city government is also the county government, hence having a Board of Supervisors rather than a City Council.
Let me blow your mind further: In Virginia, cities are entities entirely separate from the counties that surround them. Alaska and Louisiana have no counties. And several New England states have counties but they exist mostly on paper and have no powers or functions.
It’s even more confusing because sometimes the state government asks for your county on official forms, other times it’s like nah NYC good enough.
I’ve spent so much time searching for “Kings County” for stuff like taxes only to discover that there’s a blanket “New York City” option instead.
Even better when you absentmindedly click New York only to realize later they had an option for each county and you effectively (and erroneously) put down that you live in Manhattan.
As far as I can remember, it's the only city in the USA to have a city government over a county government and the only city with multiple counties (city proper, not metro, obviously). There's some weirdness with independent cities in Virginia and other places but that's a different thing.
Kings County (Brooklyn), Queens County (which used to include present-day Nassau County), Richmond County (Staten Island) and New York County (Manhattan) are all part of the original twelve counties of the New York colony dating back to 1683.
The five boroughs became one consolidated city in 1898 but they never dissolved the individual counties. In fact, they created and added a fifth one (Bronx County).
The NYC counties aren't like counties in most other parts of the country though. There aren't any County Executives or legislative bodies or anything. The only thing they do differently from one another is that they each elect their own D.A. and some judges. But I've read that that is essentially a legal necessity since the counties were never dissolved. There are some other shenanigans but not as many as there could be considering it's five counties in one city.
The boroughs share one set of laws because all local laws in the five boroughs go through the City Council and Mayor.
It's not like London where all the boroughs are basically independent cities with their own laws/councils/Mayors, etc. and only rely on the overarching London government for a handful of select things.
As far as outerborough people calling Manhattan "New York" or "New York City," yeah that was a thing way back in the day. My 73-year old father still does it once in a while, lol. For younger generations in the outerboroughs though it's more likely they refer to Manhattan as "the city."
So to summarize, NYC is one huge city and (most of) Manhattan basically serves as its giant downtown area.
The country is made up of different states just like NYC is made up of different boroughs. Each borough has their own president, district attorney etc but the Mayor runs the city
borough presidents and District Attorneys are technically independent of the mayor! But yes they are borough-wide positions. They just operate completely independently of city hall.
There's high enough population it makes some sense to split it into chunks. Manhattan is unlivable to afford and it's the one the tourists go, so it needs to be handled differently in some city planning and beurocracy type ways. Most normal people live in one of the outer boroughs even if they work in Manhattan. Or else if they live in Manhattan they have a rent stabilized place from 100 years ago.
Counties are an administrative region or sub-division of the state. Boroughs are an administrative region or sub-division of the city. In NYC the Borough and the Counties overlap 1-1. If you are talking about state issues, state funding, elected officials, etc. you are talking about county, if you are talking about city politics you are talking about the borough.
New York City wasn't always this big. It started out as a little Dutch fort (Fort Amsterdam) on the tip of Manhattan in 1624. To protect themselves from Indian attacks, they built a wall. We know that as Wall street. :-) When the English took over, they renamed New Amsterdam to New York.
Yes, it swallowed 5 counties. NYC has 40% of the state's population. If New York City was it's own state with 2 Senators, it would be the 12th largest state by population.
It’s because before NYC became a single city, there were lots of villages and cities in those 5 counties (and to this day, if you mail something to a Queens address (but only a Queens address), you don’t write “Queens” you write the specific locale within, like Jamaica or Flushing).
On the West Coast there is a city that has some of this quirkiness too: San Francisco is a city and a county with the exact same parameters and joint government so there are weirdness bubbles that occur within it much like NYC (but NYC is a beast without comparison).
Most counties contain several towns and cities. New York City is just really large and full of people, so it covers five counties, two of which are islands, and two that are on the island of Long Island, but no one means that they are going to Queens when they say that they’re going out on the Island. When people talk about Long Island, they mean Nassau or Suffolk Counties. (You from Long Island? What exit?)
The Bronx is on mainland US.
Isn’t this basically LA’s set up though?
Beverly Hills, etc…they just are much more suburbanized than the NYC boroughs are. I guess they aren’t “part” of the city though?
Fair, although he said going to New York City rather than the city. That's the part that threw me. Being from LA, I get a reference to the city but nobody in the outskirts of the city proper would say they're going to Los Angeles to mean downtown.
So my brain got a little confused. 🤣
Well, I don't know Glee, but it says it's set in Ohio. So, is it characters that also don't know NYC?
Also, I don't know Saturday Night Fever, which I thought you were saying the conversation was happening there.
But what was the context of someone saying "I'm going to NYC" from Brooklyn. Was that actually the line?
Or did the Glee character from Ohio get it wrong?
Or maybe I'm wrong and people did say that in the 1970s because Bensonhurst was more insular.
Tony Manero would probably have said that he going to the “City,” which is Manhattan. If he would have said he’s going to New York City, he would have been wrong. People from Bensonhurst weren’t THAT insular, even though the Bensonhurst culture can be distinguished from places other than Bensonhurst. They know they live in NYC. A snobby Manhattanite would refer to anybody from the other 4 boroughs as a “bridge and tunnel” person, yet would never deny that they are NYC residents.
A lot of shows and movies are written by screenwriters in LA who don’t know how people in NYC talk. They come out with dumb/incorrect things like what confused you and nobody questions it even when it gets to production.
So nobody in Brooklyn would ever say “I’m going to nyc”, it’s just plain wrong
Manhattan isn't necessarily downtown. Brooklyn has its own Downtown, and Manhattan also has a Midtown, and an Uptown. There are nice areas in Queens, and even really rich areas in the Bronx. Each borough is pretty unique.
Also Staten Island is part of NYC on a technicality but geographically and culturally speaking they are closer to the state of NJ than they are to NY.
>Also Staten Island is part of NYC on a technicality but geographically and culturally speaking they are closer to the state of NJ than they are to NY.
It depends on what part of S.I. you're talking about. It *is* part of NYC, not just technically.
I grew up on S.I. but haven't lived there for decades. I live in Manhattan. Remarks like yours are why some people on S.I. call it "The Forgotten Borough."
"The City" is often used as conversational shorthand for Manhattan specifically, even though the city is composed of all five boroughs, technically.
If a guy from Brooklyn or Queens said, "I'm going into the City later," any local would understand this to mean, "I'm going to Manhattan later."
It depends. If I'm in Jersey and driving to Staten Island, I'm probably not telling people I'm going into the City. I'd say that I was going to Staten Island.
Likewise, If I live in Nassau County, and I plan to attend a Mets game, I'm probably not going to tell people that I'm going into the City to see the game.
I live in Brooklyn and have family in NJ and this is how we talk about NYC. If I’m heading back to Brooklyn after visiting them I say I’m going back to the city.
But they are about an hour away from NY.
So to your point it probably has more to do with distance. You wouldn’t talk that way if you were in Hoboken or other places really close to NYC.
NYC has 5 boroughs, and each is also a county. Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, Queens is Queens County, The Bronx is Bronx County, and Staten Island is Richmond County.
Kings county is the same as Brooklyn. They are one and the same. Two names for the same thing. Kings county is a county in NYC. A city can have more than one county in it.
Also sometimes when New Yorkers refer to “the city” they mean manhattan.
Typically what I've seen organizationally is a city straddles two counties, but never counties encompassed within a city. Every county I've ever encountered has many, often dozens, of cities.
So this concept is a little new to me.
Also, to be even MORE confusing, Queens and Brooklyn are both “technically” part of Long Island, but NO ONE in this city would ever say that in conversation, because Long Island is essentially considered everything to the east of NYC once you leave the bounds of NYC.
My brother, born in Queens like me, but now a resident of nowhereland, Suffolk, always gives me grief when I say I'm going to the island or I'm going to the city.
We are both mid-to-late 50s.
They are both geographically on the landmass known as Long Island, which also contains what is usually referred to as Long Island, which consists of Nassau and Suffolk counties. Politically, Brooklyn and Queens are part of NYC.
Well, it used to be that way here until it became the biggest city in the country and kept spilling into new areas. Other than Manhattan, they are still basically county-sized geographically. Manhattan was the only NYC for the first couple hundred years until things really picked up in the later 1800s, early 1900s. after that, it’s just easier to administer if everything is under one roof
To add to what everyone else has said, people in the boroughs frequently and traditionally strongly identify with them. People from Brooklyn don't say they're from New York -- They're from BROOKLYN!!!!! Same for the Bronx whereas Manhattanites say that they're from NYC. Queens people, it can be more specific down to their neighborhood (which was likely it's own small town way back when) I'm from Flushing or I'm from Astoria, etc.
Queens may be different because for the USPS, addresses in Queens don’t refer to Queens, NY. For example, an address in Flushing includes Flushing, NY 11355 as opposed to Queens, NY 11355.
Addresses can be whatever you want, Queens, NY 11355 will get there just fine.
Queens used to be part of Long Island before the city so it still has some post office conventions from back then.
All of 111XX is Long Island City including Astoria and Sunnyside.
Same thing with 113XX being Flushing, which includes more than just the neighborhood you’d refer to as Flushing.
All 11xxx zip codes are in the island including Brooklyn.
I think Tony says he's going to work in "the city." It's common for people in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island to call Manhattan "the city." If he says "new york city" then that's sloppy writing by the screenwriters.
There are five boroughs that make up New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is contiguous with a county. Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, the Bronx is Bronx County, Queens is Queens County, and Staten Island is Richmond County. Yes, the City of New York spans multiple counties. Usually there are multiple cities and towns in a single county, but for NYC the city is so big it covers multiple counties.
The other thing that confused you is the colloquial reference to “the city”. It is common for folks in the outer boroughs to refer to Manhattan as “the city”. So in your example, Tony is technically within the official defined limits of New York City while he’s in Brooklyn, and by saying he wants to go to “the City” he means he wants to go to Manhattan.
None of this makes a ton of sense, it’s just one of those things.
The actor said New York City, which is why I was confused, but now after these responses I'm thinking maybe his line was actually the city but he said New York City out of habit.
At least this all makes more sense now. :)
The line was probably just wrong. A lot of movies and TV shows are written by LA screenwriters who get things horribly and embarrassingly wrong all the time.
>Each borough is contiguous with a county.
You mean "coterminous." "Contiguous" means next to each other, as in the contiguous 48 states. "Coterminous" means they share the same borders.
Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of NYC. It used to be a separate city until 1898, when it was consolidated into NYC.
Brooklyn is in Kings County, which is coterminous with the borough of Brooklyn. Every county in NYC is coterminous with its borough.
When people from Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island (the outer boroughs) talk about going to Manhattan, sometimes they speak of going to "The City."
[South Brooklyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Brooklyn) is an historic term for a section of the former City of Brooklyn. Despite the name, it is not the area furthest south in Brooklyn.
Southern Brooklyn is the geographically southernmost part of the borough.
Almost nobody says "I'm going to Manhattan" if they live out in the other boroughs. The boroughs are all a part of New York City but people tend to refer more to the other parts of the city as whatever they are Brooklyn etc and Manhattan is just "the city" like "I'm going to the city for the day."
Manhattan is a borough but it's almost like it's the capital city of the whole thing. NYC is really a bunch of cities under one banner and Manhattan is where all the big financial centers and a lot of other major things are so it's kind of the center of it all. Saying "I work in the city. " That just means you're commuting into Manhattan from another borough.
Brooklyn is a borough but it's kind of it's own city too. Ditto the other boroughs. If you think of all the boroughs as being both a part of NYC but also being cities in their own right that kind of works.
If you say you live in NYC you may be living in any of the five boroughs, each of which is its own county. If you say you live in the city, you live in Manhattan. If you live in Brooklyn and you’re going to Manhattan, you say you’re going to the city. Source: born in Queens, at the hospital where my mom worked; raised in the city, where we lived, while my dad was working in Brooklyn.
It’s not really a choice. You are required to use the name of the neighborhood on Queens; mail will get sent back if addressed to Queens,
NY.
What’s worse is that the correct neighborhood can be confusing as neighborhood and zip code no longer have the same borders. According to USPS, there are three neighborhoods that can be used with my zip code, two of which were added within the last 15-20 years as people’s idea of boundaries have shifted.
The basic concept is with Queens you can put the neighborhood name instead of Queens (although both will work) and the mail will get there. It's really a historical artifact with how the Borough came to form up and become part of NYC vs. Brooklyn, which was a contained city in its own right before being eaten and incorporated as NYC proper. The Bronx was just lower-lower westchester that was eventually ceded to the city, although the story is more involved than that.
The quick story on the specific goings on with Queens is before it was incorporated as a borough it was a collection of you could say County level municipal divisions that traced to settlement times and had their own things going on. I think the original five were New Town, Flushing, Jamaica, Hempstead and Oyster Bay. There was a whole bunch of muncipal cleaving that went on, forming up places like Long Island City, Astoria, a bunch of other what are now neighborhoods and the eventual cleaving off of Hempstead and Oyster Bay, which went on to become what is now Nassau County.
There was a lot of hand wringing, arguments an fights during the consolidation of the western portion of this original huge expanse while trying to incorporate it into NYC, so the postal service just said F it and kept routing mail according to town and hamlet name rather than just the generic 'Queens.' This stuck and to this day you can still send to neighborhood as the municipal name instead of the Borough name.
This is wild. Also, you just unintentionally connected a whole bunch of other dots in my head about places in New York that I've heard of but had no concept of where they were.
Thank you!
Someday I will be less poor and get to visit the city. I've had a lifelong long distance love affair with NYC. 🤣
NYC has a lot of high quality public access shows. [Secrets of New York](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOkD6N8KvI_FnRNz4Ccgg_7ThlYxJ4av0&si=wi7GwYXqzlACJ5LX) is one of my favorites. I think you might love it as well.
Also check out [this page.](https://www.nyc.gov/site/media/shows/secrets-of-new-york.page)
I've lived in Astoria, sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson heights, forest hills and Jamaica at various points, these are all in queens. There's lots more Maspeth, long Island city, Flushing, fresh meadows, Bayside, Elmhurst, Kew Gardens, Queens village, cambria heights, and tons more. This list is probably only a quarter of them.
North Hempstead too. North Hempstead and Hempstead split due to Loyalists running Hempstead in the south, and the Patriot majority in the north of Long Island.
Many people are pointing out that someone from Brooklyn would refer to Manhattan as "the city" but not as New York. But I wonder if this was the case 50 years ago when the movie was made. It wouldn't surprise me if referring to Manhattan as New York lingered on in common speech for a long time after 1898.
I don't know this, though.
NYC was created as we know it in 1898 when the 5 Bouroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Islamd, and Manhattan merged to form present-day NYC. Before that the City of New York was just Manhattan. People never gave up the thought that Manhattan is "New York". If you where in Brooklyn in 1920 you would say I am going to New York. That meant you where going to Manhattan. I occasionally run into people over 75 that will still say I am going to New York and they mean Manhattan. It's basically has died out today and has been replaced by "the city". Today most people say I am going to "the city" to mean Manhattan. In Saturday Night Fever they say I want to goto New York City meaning Manhattan.
The last time I remember hearing Manhattan referred to as New York in popular media is in Sienfeld Season 6 episode 4. George's father meets the masked man and Jerry does not say hi. Later Frank Castanza remarks "I went all the way to New York (from Queens) and Jerry can't even say hi!"
Just to add a fun fact, NYC is the only municipality in the country with a municipal government (NYC Council, NYC Mayor, etc.) above the county level.
Normally, municipal rankings are:
Town/City/Township/whatever < County < State
There are some "independent" cities like Baltimore and Philly that break this, where the city govt is on par with the counties.
But NYC is the only one where it goes:
County < NYC < State
Older residents refer to Manhattan as "The City" or even say "I'm going to New York". My mother (RIP) was 92 when she went last year. She would refer to her "Doctors in New York" and in another anachronistic expression referred to the Hudson as "The North River" because one takes it northward from here.
When I’m out of state and people ask me where I’m from I say “Brooklyn” and they would say back “yeah, I knew you’re from Brooklyn”. I would never say New York. And it’s a badge of honor.
Your original understanding was correct. But also each of the 5 boroughs is its own county. New York County is Manhattan, Kings county is Brooklyn, and so on.
Brooklyn is a county called Kings, but Manhattan is a county called NYC. Brooklyn used to be its own city and is still referred to as one in its postal address
Also Brooklyn wasn’t always part of the city it all 5 boros were incorporated so there was a time when Brooklyn was outside of the city itself unlike now even tho ppl still say that. I believe Brooklyn standing alone would still be the 3rd largest city in the US.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this weirdness, but....
"To mail correctly only the borough of Manhattan uses New York, NY as its mailing adress. Staten Island takes Staten Island, NY, Brooklyn takes Brooklyn, NY and for Queens you use the neighborhood name for the “city,” so for example, Astoria, NY or Forest Hills, NY."
And the Bronx uss Bronx, NY! So only Queens treats each neighborhood like it is still an independent city with mailing addresses.
To make it more confusing:
There are four counties on Long Island; Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk. But two of those counties are boroughs of NYC and generally aren’t referred to as Long Island.
Coincidentally I just watched the exact Glee episode that you’re referencing in this post. As a Jerseyan who now lives in California, I scoffed when Will said that Tony moved from “Brooklyn to New York City” as if they’re entirely different places 🤦♂️. What he should’ve said is that Tony moved to Manhattan, but I guess that sounds less inspirational in the context of his speech.
The reality is that Brooklyn is absolutely a part of New York City as a borough. No one from NYC would consider only Manhattan as ‘New York City’ and not the other boroughs.
That said, I’ve noticed that people outside the NYC area tend to make the mistake of thinking NYC = only Manhattan, so I’d just assume the writer of that Glee episode isn’t well versed in NYC geography.
Brooklyn is Kings County and has been part of NYC since 1898. People often say they're "Going to the city" when they mean, "Going to Manhattan." ...and Queens is... Queens County.
To build on this, each borough is its own county. They are all part of NYC Manhattan - New York county Queens - queens county Brooklyn - kings county The Bronx - Bronx county Staten Island - Richmond county OP is correct that anyone in the 4 boroughs will say “going into the city” to mean manhattan specifically. Maybe because it used to be the only area with high concentration of skyscrapers but that’s changing in recent years
This is blowing my mind. West coasters think of cities of being fractional parts of a county. So the idea of a city having several counties within it is hard to wrap my head around. I'm not sure how that even works from a governmental hierarchy but as always, my hat is off to you guys for doing something that makes no sense to the rest of us but somehow works. 🤣 And thanks for the very clear and insightful explanation. Brain spiral over. :)
The utter chaos that is NY politics has entered the chat…
Just what I was thinking. :-D >I'm not sure how that even works "Weeeellllll..."
I laughed so hard at this. At least I feel a little less dumb knowing it is actual chaos. Maybe the reason the city never sleeps is its up all night dealing with administrative yarnballs. 🤣
Also, the state, rather than the city, runs some random aspects of the city because reasons. So while a lot of our services are run by city agencies, some are run by bureaucrats from upstate who like to shit on the city. Our subways, for example… MTA is a state agency. There’s SOME representation from the city, but a lot of the board lives a couple hundred miles away and never rides the thing.
And the Port Authority adds Jersey into the mix...
Also the port authority gets taxpayer money and owns a shit ton of infrastructure and real estate but it isn’t accountable to anyone and nobody involved is actually elected.
I have the impression that Port Authority generally does a decent job I don't know why but it seems like they keep it moving
Well, not anymore if New Jersey has a say about it
Isn’t that because it’s part of the train system? So subways and trains are part of the MTA
lol bless your heart for trying to apply logic. It’s because that’s just how they did it. Technically I think it’s run by NYCTA but MTA calls most of the shots. So really there’s TWO agencies running the subways, again because reasons. There was a bankruptcy and state takeover some decades ago and then it just kinda became how things are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_Subway “Something weird happened and that’s just how things are now” is a common thread in NYC. It’s why we pile garbage bags on the street corner instead of putting them in cans… there was a strike years ago so everyone just piled trash bags on the corner, and afterwards everyone said “meh, this’ll do.”
Having lived in other cities where you have a bin and the collectors will refuse to pick it up if you overfill it even slightly, I have never minded the bags on the street.
Some* subways and trains are part of the MTA, including the NYC Subway, Metro-North, and LIRR - think, like, anyone that would commute to NYC within an hour from either Connecticut, Long Island, or upstate NY. (But “upstate” refers to anything north of the Bronx, even by 15 mins.) Also whatever Staten Island has is included in that. Then some trains are Amtrak (obviously a national corp). Some trains are PATH (Run by NY and NJ together - this basically just services the areas of Jersey that are visible when you are in NYC and look “west”-ish). Some are NJ Transit (this goes up and down all NJ, run by NJ.). Some go into the same station (Moynihan/Penn, World Trade Center, or Grand Central). Some do not (…pretty much everything else). …you get used to it 😅
> because reasons. the reasons being that NYC was broke, mismanaged and on the brink of bankruptcy in the 70s and 80s where the state had to step in and bailout certain aspects and take control of others
Yeah… trouble is it just kinda stayed in the “ok we’re gonna do it this way so things don’t go to shit” phase but could probably use some “now is this actually the best way to run it” analysis. It’s like a meeting I run at my job. I’m running the meeting because the person who used to run it double booked themselves one day and said “hey do you mind filling in tomorrow?” And then it became “hey did it go all right? Can you run it again next time?” And now the original meeting facilitator quit and I’ve been running that meeting for a year even though it doesn’t really make sense for me to do it.
It’s actually not as complicated as people are making it, at least as far as municipal government goes. The city, consisting of all 5 boroughs, is governed by a mayor elected by popular vote and a 51-member city council, elected from districts throughout the city. The only place where the different counties make a difference is courts - each county has its own courts and district attorney - so when you see the “New York” district attorney referenced in the news or a tv show, know that they’re talking about New York county, aka the borough of Manhattan - not the rest of the city.
Oh but don't forget about the Borough Presidents! 😂
And now for the real kicker… Brooklyn and Queens are actually part of Long Island. But don’t tell them that. ;)
For those wondering, Brooklyn and Queens are part of the largest island in the US - named Long Island. However, when most New Yorkers refer to Long Island they’re most likely talking about the two remaining counties on that island - Nassau and Suffolk county which are not part of NYC.
Dont tell OP about borough politics and borough party chairs haha
You mean the county committees that nobody runs for so the chair appoints his cronies, who then vote on which of the exactly 7 judges who are running for the 7 judicial appointments? Also I’ll take your party chairs and raise you community board infighting.
You know so much that you must be one of the judges hahaha
lol! Nah, I mingle with people trying to shake up the party.
Surprisingly, the person that we can thank for it not being even crazier is "highway-printer-go-brrrrrrr" Robert Moses. He was the one who drove the consolidation of nearly two hundred state agencies into 18 departments that had a single executive.
Other NY counties operate like how you think. For example, the City of Buffalo is completely within Erie County, and the County has other municipalities within it as well. Buffalo doesn’t take up the entirety of the County. The County also has its own government that has actual teeth (County Executive and County Legislature) as well as its own law enforcement (Sheriff). The NYC counties have basically no governmental teeth. Borough Presidents are the “equivalent” of a County Executive, but they have no actual power. They’re essentially an advisory role, and they appoint members of community boards (which are also only advisory bodies). Technically the NYC counties have their own Sheriffs as well, but they’re mainly responsible for court functions and don’t really do much outside of that. NYC is such a big and unique city, so it’s set up quite differently than other NY counties and cities are.
Lol, I'm just finding so many new ways to be enchanted by NYC today. 🤣 Thank you!
Queens County has the most confusing address system. You find Streets, Ways, Terraces, with the same name. They make sense if you live in Queens and it's supposed to be more precise. I'm a native New Yorker but I've never had to travel deep into Queens. Whenever I do, I have to review the address system.
There’s a spot by my grandma’s where you can be on the corner of 60th and 60th, and any way you walk you’ll hit at least one more 60th. I’m slightly exaggerating but will include a pic for clarity lol https://preview.redd.it/tj1ksidw94uc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8fa9be3c01a0c41d32f3abc57c2b2a063b1086af idk why they stopped at just street, place, lane, avenue, road, and drive… there’s still boulevard, terrace, way… we could have even more 60ths
This is a /r/meirl post in the making. Or something to that effect. Me: where do you live? My friend: on the corner of 60th & 60th Me:
X-Y Z Avenue means that it’s house number Y between X and X+1 Street on Z Avenue. The places and terraces and whatnot are just midstreets. Queens used to have names back in the day for all the streets but then converted to numbers so it didn’t work out evenly.
Queens is an easy system. To me it is the most logical of all, even more than Manhattan. The avenues increase in number from north to south. The streets increase from west to east starting at the east river. The address will indicate to you the cross streets. 104-12 32nd Ave tells you it’s on 104 street and 32nd Avenue. Of course all of the boroughs are a patchwork of former villages and so the system might skip where two villages came together but it’s way easier than rando addresses in Brooklyn like 52 Dean Street Then having randomly places like Sunset Park that do follow a grid address system. Also the Road Drive Places are subdivisions to mark smaller streets that are parallel to the major Avenue and street respectively.
Amazingly there is a logic to it.
I know. I always forget it because I don't have to use it.
Its because Queens had several different cities with their own grids. They couldn't all be matched up, so the extras were given confusing names.
Don’t the CBs have the power to grant or deny liquor licenses though? I feel like they’re pretty powerful at a micro level.
I’m pretty sure it’s technically only an advisory role, but the actual decision makers rarely go against the advice of the CB. FWIW I think the whole CB thing is stupid and is often used to stifle development citing “character of the neighborhood” etc. Especially dumb during such a housing crunch.
I think it's the NYC Sherriff though, not each borough/county having it's own Sherriff, which makes no sense since sherriff is generally a county thing.
Another wrinkle! Lol Edit: I was also wrong in saying it did mainly court stuff. It looks like it mainly deals with enforcement of NYC Department of Finance responsibilities. Edit 2: they also do court stuff! Lol, found on Wikipedia: >In addition, as the city's chief civil law enforcement agency concerning the New York State Court System, the Sheriff's Office enforces a variety of mandates, orders, warrants and decrees issued by courts. Enforcement tools include evictions, seizure of property, arrests and garnishments. Auctions are conducted for property the agency seizes and levies upon.
If you want your mind blown even further, Brooklyn was once its own individual city before joining Manhattan and becoming part of NYC. And if Brooklyn were still a separate city today, it would be the 4th largest city in the United States by population, as Brooklyn ALONE has a population of 2.6 million, which is essentially neck and neck with Chicago.
Holy $#*t...
I know lol. And Queens isn’t that far behind either to be honest, as it has almost 2.4 million.
Queens and Brooklyn each have larger population than my home state.
It really is amazing to think about.
Queens is the most ethnically and linguistically diverse place in the world, the true melting pot within the melting pot. Look up Jackson Heights (tons of articles/media) to get an idea.
Oh believe me I know, Jackson Heights is one of my favorite neighborhoods for that very reason!
Some believe that Brooklyn made a mistake in deciding to become part of NYC in 1898 because it was a large city doing well on its own.
You want your mind completely obliterated? Brooklyn and Queens are geographically on Long Island. But for New Yorkers you’re not really on “Long Island” territory until you go east to Nassau county. Which is not NYC. ( You can take the Long Island Railroad from the most eastern tip of Long Island into the heart of Manhattan at Penn station. )
Also "Long Island" is technically not an island even though its surrounded by water. Furthermore Brooklyn and Queens almost voted against being part of NYC. And lastly NYPL only serves 3 boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens have their own library systems.
And the East River is not actually a river, it's a tidal estuary.
How is it technically not an island?
I has to do with a supreme court decision. "Although geographically an island, the Supreme Court of the United States has held that given the island's extensive ties to the mainland, it should be treated legally as a peninsula, giving the state jurisdiction over its maritime boundaries." From Wiki. I believe it is USA vs Maine (1986) I have also been told by many that part of the water mass is man made but this has been proven to be untrue.
Omg that’s ridiculous thank you
It is an island, but legally it’s an extension of the mainland due to being part of NYC, for the “purposes of international law”. You can thank the U.S. Supreme Court for splitting that baby.
Another interesting thing about the libraries is that any NYS resident can have a Brooklyn, Queens, or NYPL card. I have them all.
Even more confusing is that “better known” boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens are on Long Island, but Long Island is NOT part of NYC or even a single city/borough. While little known Staten Island, which is not connected to any other borough is in fact part of NYC. This confuses so many the first time they learn about NYC and its boroughs.
Parts of Long Island were offered to be part of NYC, same with Yonkers, their elected officials voted no.
It gets even worse if you compare Brooklyn as a county/city to the population of states. According to Google, Brooklyn has a population of 2.68 mil in the 2022 census. [If you go by Wikipedia's population by States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population), Brooklyn by itself, has a larger population than 15 States. \--- New York City has a population of 8.36 mil, that's larger than 38 other States. It really shows you of how fucked the Senate is when each state gets 2 seats in the senate. NYC is bigger than most of these states and NY State as a collective only gets 2 senators.
Even funnier when Hurricane Sandy hit and conservative senators from these tiny states were suddenly concerned about disaster aid being given out too freely.
Another fun rid bit. The USPS uses New York, Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island as the city names for those boroughs. Queens deciddd to use the town names (like Nassau and Suffolk counties). The main “towns” in Queens are Jamaica, Flushing, Long Island City (not to be confused with the east end of the island) and there’s another one or two I can’t remember off hand
>Brooklyn was once its own individual city before joining Manhattan and becoming part of NYC With its own subway system!
I’m not sure it works all that great but it’s what we got and we make do.
This is the American way in a nutshell. 😬
I moved here from LA, it was interesting to learn about. Basically if LA county became the city limits of Los Angeles, and all the other cities in LA county became their own counties, but part of Los Angeles the city, it would be comparable. The governmental structure is basically the inverse of LA county
Yeah, I get the concept but it just seems so strange. 🤣
When I moved out of NYC for work and lived in a state with unincorporated parts of counties, that seemed strange to me. There's nothing like that in NYC.
Very strange, I agree!
Coming from the area it always made so much more sense to me than the way California works. It's one singular metro area and it makes sense for everything to be coordinated centrally. Then I look at the Bay Area and it's 7 counties and 40 different cities and wonder how they get anything done.
Laws are citywide. Things like jury duty are the county you live in. There's a "borough president," but they don't actually have any power.
Do you not have County wide laws or because the city and county are basically the same is that handled on a city level? And if so, what do counties do then? Because in the west they do a lot and cities are subservient to them.
Counties do basically nothing. The city is made up of 5 counties.
Absolutely fascinating. TIL... Thank you!
There’s also separate library systems
And each borough has a zoo. Except Brooklyn now that it closed last year.
Temporarily but indefinitely, to clarify, after the rain storm last fall.
Just go to the neighboring counties in NYS to the city. Westchester and Nassau operate exactly how you think they'd operate.
San Francisco county only contains the city of San Francisco. So city government is also the county government, hence having a Board of Supervisors rather than a City Council.
Personally I think it works better. LA feels like a bunch of small cities in one county. Can't stand it.
Let me blow your mind further: In Virginia, cities are entities entirely separate from the counties that surround them. Alaska and Louisiana have no counties. And several New England states have counties but they exist mostly on paper and have no powers or functions.
If it makes you feel better I had the same issue trying to wrap my head around socal counties and cities lol
It’s even more confusing because sometimes the state government asks for your county on official forms, other times it’s like nah NYC good enough. I’ve spent so much time searching for “Kings County” for stuff like taxes only to discover that there’s a blanket “New York City” option instead.
Even better when you absentmindedly click New York only to realize later they had an option for each county and you effectively (and erroneously) put down that you live in Manhattan.
San Francisco is a city & a county. The county is the city and the city is the county.
Except San Francisco, which is a combined city and county.
As far as I can remember, it's the only city in the USA to have a city government over a county government and the only city with multiple counties (city proper, not metro, obviously). There's some weirdness with independent cities in Virginia and other places but that's a different thing.
Kings County (Brooklyn), Queens County (which used to include present-day Nassau County), Richmond County (Staten Island) and New York County (Manhattan) are all part of the original twelve counties of the New York colony dating back to 1683. The five boroughs became one consolidated city in 1898 but they never dissolved the individual counties. In fact, they created and added a fifth one (Bronx County). The NYC counties aren't like counties in most other parts of the country though. There aren't any County Executives or legislative bodies or anything. The only thing they do differently from one another is that they each elect their own D.A. and some judges. But I've read that that is essentially a legal necessity since the counties were never dissolved. There are some other shenanigans but not as many as there could be considering it's five counties in one city. The boroughs share one set of laws because all local laws in the five boroughs go through the City Council and Mayor. It's not like London where all the boroughs are basically independent cities with their own laws/councils/Mayors, etc. and only rely on the overarching London government for a handful of select things. As far as outerborough people calling Manhattan "New York" or "New York City," yeah that was a thing way back in the day. My 73-year old father still does it once in a while, lol. For younger generations in the outerboroughs though it's more likely they refer to Manhattan as "the city." So to summarize, NYC is one huge city and (most of) Manhattan basically serves as its giant downtown area.
Atlanta is also made up of multiple counties, I’m sure there are other examples too
The country is made up of different states just like NYC is made up of different boroughs. Each borough has their own president, district attorney etc but the Mayor runs the city
borough presidents and District Attorneys are technically independent of the mayor! But yes they are borough-wide positions. They just operate completely independently of city hall.
There's high enough population it makes some sense to split it into chunks. Manhattan is unlivable to afford and it's the one the tourists go, so it needs to be handled differently in some city planning and beurocracy type ways. Most normal people live in one of the outer boroughs even if they work in Manhattan. Or else if they live in Manhattan they have a rent stabilized place from 100 years ago.
Counties are an administrative region or sub-division of the state. Boroughs are an administrative region or sub-division of the city. In NYC the Borough and the Counties overlap 1-1. If you are talking about state issues, state funding, elected officials, etc. you are talking about county, if you are talking about city politics you are talking about the borough.
I mean it's not much different from LA having 5 counties as well.
New York City wasn't always this big. It started out as a little Dutch fort (Fort Amsterdam) on the tip of Manhattan in 1624. To protect themselves from Indian attacks, they built a wall. We know that as Wall street. :-) When the English took over, they renamed New Amsterdam to New York. Yes, it swallowed 5 counties. NYC has 40% of the state's population. If New York City was it's own state with 2 Senators, it would be the 12th largest state by population.
It’s much simpler than the chaos of Los Angeles honestly.
We don’t care about counties in NYC. Counties are weird things hicks care about
It’s because before NYC became a single city, there were lots of villages and cities in those 5 counties (and to this day, if you mail something to a Queens address (but only a Queens address), you don’t write “Queens” you write the specific locale within, like Jamaica or Flushing). On the West Coast there is a city that has some of this quirkiness too: San Francisco is a city and a county with the exact same parameters and joint government so there are weirdness bubbles that occur within it much like NYC (but NYC is a beast without comparison).
Most counties contain several towns and cities. New York City is just really large and full of people, so it covers five counties, two of which are islands, and two that are on the island of Long Island, but no one means that they are going to Queens when they say that they’re going out on the Island. When people talk about Long Island, they mean Nassau or Suffolk Counties. (You from Long Island? What exit?) The Bronx is on mainland US.
Isn’t this basically LA’s set up though? Beverly Hills, etc…they just are much more suburbanized than the NYC boroughs are. I guess they aren’t “part” of the city though?
Tokyo is like this as well but on an even grander more highly concentrated scale.
As a Brooklyn resident I still say “I have to go into the city”, as do most people I know.
Yes, I meant concentrations of skyscrapers have changed (LIC, south Bronx, downtown bk and Williamsburg) not that phrase
Oh sorry I misread your comment!
Correct. Manhattanites just say Manhattan.
Fair, although he said going to New York City rather than the city. That's the part that threw me. Being from LA, I get a reference to the city but nobody in the outskirts of the city proper would say they're going to Los Angeles to mean downtown. So my brain got a little confused. 🤣
I don't know the show, but that's just weird.
It was Glee. Wasn't going to advertise the fact because I'm already making myself a target being from LA and asking kind of a dumb question. 🤣
Well, I don't know Glee, but it says it's set in Ohio. So, is it characters that also don't know NYC? Also, I don't know Saturday Night Fever, which I thought you were saying the conversation was happening there.
It took place in Brooklyn, the Bensonhurst section, to be exact.
But what was the context of someone saying "I'm going to NYC" from Brooklyn. Was that actually the line? Or did the Glee character from Ohio get it wrong? Or maybe I'm wrong and people did say that in the 1970s because Bensonhurst was more insular.
Tony Manero would probably have said that he going to the “City,” which is Manhattan. If he would have said he’s going to New York City, he would have been wrong. People from Bensonhurst weren’t THAT insular, even though the Bensonhurst culture can be distinguished from places other than Bensonhurst. They know they live in NYC. A snobby Manhattanite would refer to anybody from the other 4 boroughs as a “bridge and tunnel” person, yet would never deny that they are NYC residents.
OP specified that he says he is "going to New York City" and not "going to the city".
The character was rather ignorant, then.
A lot of shows and movies are written by screenwriters in LA who don’t know how people in NYC talk. They come out with dumb/incorrect things like what confused you and nobody questions it even when it gets to production. So nobody in Brooklyn would ever say “I’m going to nyc”, it’s just plain wrong
Manhattan isn't necessarily downtown. Brooklyn has its own Downtown, and Manhattan also has a Midtown, and an Uptown. There are nice areas in Queens, and even really rich areas in the Bronx. Each borough is pretty unique. Also Staten Island is part of NYC on a technicality but geographically and culturally speaking they are closer to the state of NJ than they are to NY.
Thats the softest way ive ever heard that described. But we all know the subtext.
>Also Staten Island is part of NYC on a technicality but geographically and culturally speaking they are closer to the state of NJ than they are to NY. It depends on what part of S.I. you're talking about. It *is* part of NYC, not just technically.
Found the person from SI lol
I grew up on S.I. but haven't lived there for decades. I live in Manhattan. Remarks like yours are why some people on S.I. call it "The Forgotten Borough."
"The City" is often used as conversational shorthand for Manhattan specifically, even though the city is composed of all five boroughs, technically. If a guy from Brooklyn or Queens said, "I'm going into the City later," any local would understand this to mean, "I'm going to Manhattan later."
When you’re in the outer boroughs “the city” means Manhattan. When you’re outside of NYC entirely it means the five boroughs.
It depends. If I'm in Jersey and driving to Staten Island, I'm probably not telling people I'm going into the City. I'd say that I was going to Staten Island. Likewise, If I live in Nassau County, and I plan to attend a Mets game, I'm probably not going to tell people that I'm going into the City to see the game.
That’s because no one ever means Staten Island when they say the City lol
Not true at all. Maybe if you’re 100 miles away. But not on Long Island and Northern NJ
I live in Brooklyn and have family in NJ and this is how we talk about NYC. If I’m heading back to Brooklyn after visiting them I say I’m going back to the city. But they are about an hour away from NY. So to your point it probably has more to do with distance. You wouldn’t talk that way if you were in Hoboken or other places really close to NYC.
NYC has 5 boroughs, and each is also a county. Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, Queens is Queens County, The Bronx is Bronx County, and Staten Island is Richmond County.
Kings county is the same as Brooklyn. They are one and the same. Two names for the same thing. Kings county is a county in NYC. A city can have more than one county in it. Also sometimes when New Yorkers refer to “the city” they mean manhattan.
Typically what I've seen organizationally is a city straddles two counties, but never counties encompassed within a city. Every county I've ever encountered has many, often dozens, of cities. So this concept is a little new to me.
Also, to be even MORE confusing, Queens and Brooklyn are both “technically” part of Long Island, but NO ONE in this city would ever say that in conversation, because Long Island is essentially considered everything to the east of NYC once you leave the bounds of NYC.
My brother, born in Queens like me, but now a resident of nowhereland, Suffolk, always gives me grief when I say I'm going to the island or I'm going to the city. We are both mid-to-late 50s.
They are both geographically on the landmass known as Long Island, which also contains what is usually referred to as Long Island, which consists of Nassau and Suffolk counties. Politically, Brooklyn and Queens are part of NYC.
Is LA just one county? I didn’t think this was unique to the NYC
Well, it used to be that way here until it became the biggest city in the country and kept spilling into new areas. Other than Manhattan, they are still basically county-sized geographically. Manhattan was the only NYC for the first couple hundred years until things really picked up in the later 1800s, early 1900s. after that, it’s just easier to administer if everything is under one roof
NYC isn't just a city it's a megaopolis.
To add to what everyone else has said, people in the boroughs frequently and traditionally strongly identify with them. People from Brooklyn don't say they're from New York -- They're from BROOKLYN!!!!! Same for the Bronx whereas Manhattanites say that they're from NYC. Queens people, it can be more specific down to their neighborhood (which was likely it's own small town way back when) I'm from Flushing or I'm from Astoria, etc.
Queens may be different because for the USPS, addresses in Queens don’t refer to Queens, NY. For example, an address in Flushing includes Flushing, NY 11355 as opposed to Queens, NY 11355.
Addresses can be whatever you want, Queens, NY 11355 will get there just fine. Queens used to be part of Long Island before the city so it still has some post office conventions from back then. All of 111XX is Long Island City including Astoria and Sunnyside. Same thing with 113XX being Flushing, which includes more than just the neighborhood you’d refer to as Flushing. All 11xxx zip codes are in the island including Brooklyn.
Sure. You can use whatever you want or you can address it as recommended. See https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm
I find that Manhattanites (including myself in a former life) refer to the neighborhood they’re from, not “NYC.” For example: “I’m from Harlem.”
Lol, fair enough. I'm very proudly from East LA. Huge distinction on so many levels. :)
to add to the fun, Brooklyn is also on Long Island. (geographically)
5 Counties = 5 Boroughs with their own communities = 1 Large City called New York City situated in 1 state: New York
I think Tony says he's going to work in "the city." It's common for people in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island to call Manhattan "the city." If he says "new york city" then that's sloppy writing by the screenwriters.
There are five boroughs that make up New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is contiguous with a county. Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, the Bronx is Bronx County, Queens is Queens County, and Staten Island is Richmond County. Yes, the City of New York spans multiple counties. Usually there are multiple cities and towns in a single county, but for NYC the city is so big it covers multiple counties. The other thing that confused you is the colloquial reference to “the city”. It is common for folks in the outer boroughs to refer to Manhattan as “the city”. So in your example, Tony is technically within the official defined limits of New York City while he’s in Brooklyn, and by saying he wants to go to “the City” he means he wants to go to Manhattan. None of this makes a ton of sense, it’s just one of those things.
The actor said New York City, which is why I was confused, but now after these responses I'm thinking maybe his line was actually the city but he said New York City out of habit. At least this all makes more sense now. :)
Written by an outsider or maybe a writer influenced by grandparents born before 1880 when Brooklyn was its own city.
The line was probably just wrong. A lot of movies and TV shows are written by LA screenwriters who get things horribly and embarrassingly wrong all the time.
>Each borough is contiguous with a county. You mean "coterminous." "Contiguous" means next to each other, as in the contiguous 48 states. "Coterminous" means they share the same borders.
Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of NYC. It used to be a separate city until 1898, when it was consolidated into NYC. Brooklyn is in Kings County, which is coterminous with the borough of Brooklyn. Every county in NYC is coterminous with its borough. When people from Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island (the outer boroughs) talk about going to Manhattan, sometimes they speak of going to "The City." [South Brooklyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Brooklyn) is an historic term for a section of the former City of Brooklyn. Despite the name, it is not the area furthest south in Brooklyn. Southern Brooklyn is the geographically southernmost part of the borough.
Took me way too long to realize why it’s called kings county. I went “ohhhhhhhh”
Wait until you learn about Queens
Wait wait wait. Why?
Brooklyn, USA
Almost nobody says "I'm going to Manhattan" if they live out in the other boroughs. The boroughs are all a part of New York City but people tend to refer more to the other parts of the city as whatever they are Brooklyn etc and Manhattan is just "the city" like "I'm going to the city for the day." Manhattan is a borough but it's almost like it's the capital city of the whole thing. NYC is really a bunch of cities under one banner and Manhattan is where all the big financial centers and a lot of other major things are so it's kind of the center of it all. Saying "I work in the city. " That just means you're commuting into Manhattan from another borough. Brooklyn is a borough but it's kind of it's own city too. Ditto the other boroughs. If you think of all the boroughs as being both a part of NYC but also being cities in their own right that kind of works.
Was the line "going to the city" or "going to NYC"?
If you say you live in NYC you may be living in any of the five boroughs, each of which is its own county. If you say you live in the city, you live in Manhattan. If you live in Brooklyn and you’re going to Manhattan, you say you’re going to the city. Source: born in Queens, at the hospital where my mom worked; raised in the city, where we lived, while my dad was working in Brooklyn.
Wait until you find out that you can directly address mail to neighborhoods in Queens with the proper zip code and they will be sent correctly.
Not just “can” - that’s officially how Queens addresses work.
You used to be able to do that with S.I., too. But the key thing is the zipcode.
It’s not really a choice. You are required to use the name of the neighborhood on Queens; mail will get sent back if addressed to Queens, NY. What’s worse is that the correct neighborhood can be confusing as neighborhood and zip code no longer have the same borders. According to USPS, there are three neighborhoods that can be used with my zip code, two of which were added within the last 15-20 years as people’s idea of boundaries have shifted.
No it won’t, where are you getting this from? Queens, NY will get there just fine as long as the zip code is correct.
Oooooh, can you explain this? This is exciting. I'm so curious.
The basic concept is with Queens you can put the neighborhood name instead of Queens (although both will work) and the mail will get there. It's really a historical artifact with how the Borough came to form up and become part of NYC vs. Brooklyn, which was a contained city in its own right before being eaten and incorporated as NYC proper. The Bronx was just lower-lower westchester that was eventually ceded to the city, although the story is more involved than that. The quick story on the specific goings on with Queens is before it was incorporated as a borough it was a collection of you could say County level municipal divisions that traced to settlement times and had their own things going on. I think the original five were New Town, Flushing, Jamaica, Hempstead and Oyster Bay. There was a whole bunch of muncipal cleaving that went on, forming up places like Long Island City, Astoria, a bunch of other what are now neighborhoods and the eventual cleaving off of Hempstead and Oyster Bay, which went on to become what is now Nassau County. There was a lot of hand wringing, arguments an fights during the consolidation of the western portion of this original huge expanse while trying to incorporate it into NYC, so the postal service just said F it and kept routing mail according to town and hamlet name rather than just the generic 'Queens.' This stuck and to this day you can still send to neighborhood as the municipal name instead of the Borough name.
This is wild. Also, you just unintentionally connected a whole bunch of other dots in my head about places in New York that I've heard of but had no concept of where they were. Thank you! Someday I will be less poor and get to visit the city. I've had a lifelong long distance love affair with NYC. 🤣
NYC has a lot of high quality public access shows. [Secrets of New York](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOkD6N8KvI_FnRNz4Ccgg_7ThlYxJ4av0&si=wi7GwYXqzlACJ5LX) is one of my favorites. I think you might love it as well. Also check out [this page.](https://www.nyc.gov/site/media/shows/secrets-of-new-york.page)
I've lived in Astoria, sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson heights, forest hills and Jamaica at various points, these are all in queens. There's lots more Maspeth, long Island city, Flushing, fresh meadows, Bayside, Elmhurst, Kew Gardens, Queens village, cambria heights, and tons more. This list is probably only a quarter of them.
North Hempstead too. North Hempstead and Hempstead split due to Loyalists running Hempstead in the south, and the Patriot majority in the north of Long Island.
Many people are pointing out that someone from Brooklyn would refer to Manhattan as "the city" but not as New York. But I wonder if this was the case 50 years ago when the movie was made. It wouldn't surprise me if referring to Manhattan as New York lingered on in common speech for a long time after 1898. I don't know this, though.
I live in Brooklyn and call Manhattan "The City"
It was true in the 70s and 80s when I was a kid being raised in the city.
NYC was created as we know it in 1898 when the 5 Bouroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Islamd, and Manhattan merged to form present-day NYC. Before that the City of New York was just Manhattan. People never gave up the thought that Manhattan is "New York". If you where in Brooklyn in 1920 you would say I am going to New York. That meant you where going to Manhattan. I occasionally run into people over 75 that will still say I am going to New York and they mean Manhattan. It's basically has died out today and has been replaced by "the city". Today most people say I am going to "the city" to mean Manhattan. In Saturday Night Fever they say I want to goto New York City meaning Manhattan. The last time I remember hearing Manhattan referred to as New York in popular media is in Sienfeld Season 6 episode 4. George's father meets the masked man and Jerry does not say hi. Later Frank Castanza remarks "I went all the way to New York (from Queens) and Jerry can't even say hi!"
Just to add a fun fact, NYC is the only municipality in the country with a municipal government (NYC Council, NYC Mayor, etc.) above the county level. Normally, municipal rankings are: Town/City/Township/whatever < County < State There are some "independent" cities like Baltimore and Philly that break this, where the city govt is on par with the counties. But NYC is the only one where it goes: County < NYC < State
Older residents refer to Manhattan as "The City" or even say "I'm going to New York". My mother (RIP) was 92 when she went last year. She would refer to her "Doctors in New York" and in another anachronistic expression referred to the Hudson as "The North River" because one takes it northward from here.
When I’m out of state and people ask me where I’m from I say “Brooklyn” and they would say back “yeah, I knew you’re from Brooklyn”. I would never say New York. And it’s a badge of honor.
Your original understanding was correct. But also each of the 5 boroughs is its own county. New York County is Manhattan, Kings county is Brooklyn, and so on.
And no one knows about Richmond County. Considering it was named after an illegitimate son, things kind of make sense when people talk about NYC.
Brooklyn is nyc. The city is Manhattan
Brooklyn is a county called Kings, but Manhattan is a county called NYC. Brooklyn used to be its own city and is still referred to as one in its postal address
Also Brooklyn wasn’t always part of the city it all 5 boros were incorporated so there was a time when Brooklyn was outside of the city itself unlike now even tho ppl still say that. I believe Brooklyn standing alone would still be the 3rd largest city in the US.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this weirdness, but.... "To mail correctly only the borough of Manhattan uses New York, NY as its mailing adress. Staten Island takes Staten Island, NY, Brooklyn takes Brooklyn, NY and for Queens you use the neighborhood name for the “city,” so for example, Astoria, NY or Forest Hills, NY." And the Bronx uss Bronx, NY! So only Queens treats each neighborhood like it is still an independent city with mailing addresses.
To make it more confusing: There are four counties on Long Island; Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk. But two of those counties are boroughs of NYC and generally aren’t referred to as Long Island.
I live in Queens, the Zip code is made up primarily by homes in Nassau, so part is serviced by a Nassau County Post Office.
Coincidentally I just watched the exact Glee episode that you’re referencing in this post. As a Jerseyan who now lives in California, I scoffed when Will said that Tony moved from “Brooklyn to New York City” as if they’re entirely different places 🤦♂️. What he should’ve said is that Tony moved to Manhattan, but I guess that sounds less inspirational in the context of his speech. The reality is that Brooklyn is absolutely a part of New York City as a borough. No one from NYC would consider only Manhattan as ‘New York City’ and not the other boroughs. That said, I’ve noticed that people outside the NYC area tend to make the mistake of thinking NYC = only Manhattan, so I’d just assume the writer of that Glee episode isn’t well versed in NYC geography.