Becoming a New Yorker

Sometimes you have to leave home to find out where you’re from

For most of my life I never fully understood what it meant to be from New York. I knew New York City was special but not from personal experience. It had a mythical quality born from the stories I would overhear supplemented by endless TV and Hollywood narratives. But growing up 90 minutes north of the city in Poughkeepsie I also knew that New York State was much…