I’m prepared to concede that if you were born in New York and lived here all your life, then you’re a New Yorker. But what about the rest of us wannabees!?
You ask around and there are lots of opinions — that’s New York for ya! If you want the numbers, then some say it’s 7 years, some 8, some 10… and on! After that, you start dealing with the subtleties and you get things like: “you know not to get on an empty subway car on a rush-hour train” or “you have your MetroCard ready when you get to the turnstile” or “never acknowledge a celebrity on the subway.” Hmmm…. there’s a theme there, straphangers!
Well, we’ve discovered a way of categorically proving whether you are a New Yorker (or not), take the Subway Station quiz and find out. If you’ve been spending your New York life wondering whether it’s best to take Uber or Lyft, then you might not make the grade.
Back in 2015, digital designer Mike Solomon published this quiz to check how much of a New Yorker you really are by counting how many subway stations you have visited (not ones you’ve just ridden through). It’s suddenly started to pick up in popularity again, and that might entice us back to the subway!
Your New Yorker scores are categorized as:
NYC Outsider (the uber Uber user)
First Time Rider ( the one-hit-wonder)
Tourist (you tried when you were in town)
Rich Tourist (you tried when you came to town often)
Junior Commuter (you live here)
Official Resident (surely that’s a New Yorker)
NYC Lifer (me and those who explored or lived in the Boros)
Urban Explorer (you just like trains)
MTA Worker (thank you, essential worker)
I took the test and got a score of 145 (NYC Lifer). I’ve been here for just 8 years. Clicking through all those stations in the quiz — and looking at the map — I just want to visit even more subway destinations.
I checked, and the New York City subway has 472 stations and 27 subway lines — more than any other system on the planet. If you picked up all the tracks and put them in a straight line they would reach from NYC to Chicago.
With a report this week that there is no link between COVID and public transportation, let’s RIDE!
What about you? What was your score? Do you want to explore more too?