What makes a New Yorker?

peterwknox:

Excerpt from Peter W. Knox, The New York Magazine Interview 

What makes someone a New Yorker?
This question pisses me off. No one can choose to have been born in New York any more than any one can choose their gender or skin color. I’m glad I was raised where and how I was and wouldn’t change those experiences for anything. But when I was ready, and I took a chance, I moved here on my own with no friends, contacts, or prospects and have thrived. I’ve always felt New York was a ‘Go Big or Go Home’ sort of situation and have done my best to make this my new home instead. Some people claim you have to be a native or live here an X amount of years.

I guess you’re finally a New Yorker when you don’t care about being labeled a New Yorker. And I guess I’m not there yet. 

I think once you live here, no matter where you are from, and you know that there is no other place you’d rather be, then you are a New Yorker. Even if you eventually move away, you’ll always have it in the back of your mind that you want to go back. There’s something about NY that no other place has, whether it’s the people, the excitement, or just the fact that everyone and everything moves faster than anywhere in the world I’ve ever been.  New York City is the one place in the world that no matter where you came from, once you live here, you become a New Yorker.