Is it shocking how few people know about the boroughs of NYC? (New York: real estate, school districts)

[UpstaterInBklyn]

Originally Posted by SilkCity0416

I know about the East River being a strait, but the Hudson is a fjord? How is that? Please, tell me.

The Hudson River from Troy, NY to the NYC harbor is actually a tidal estuary. The water is a mixture of ocean salt water and fresh water, and it actually flows north or south depending on the tide.

The reason it can be called a fjord is because it is a valley that was carved by glaciers when the seas were lower than they are today. As the glaciers melted, the sea level rose and flooded the valley.

Here is some information from the NYS DEC:
Hudson River Estuary - NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation

And if you are interested in ice-age prehistory, here is way too much information:
NYC Regional Geology

[Viralmd]

Originally Posted by SilkCity0416

I know about the East River being a strait, but the Hudson is a fjord? How is that? Please, tell me.

All you have to do is look at the west bank of the Hudson: JUST like a fjord!!! The east bank north of Manhattan is also typical of fjords.

[TheJickler]

Originally Posted by Fred314X

^^^Oops! In that case, The Bronx being connected to the mainland isn't a factoid, but an actual, verifiable fact.

I guess I was misusing the word; I took it to be a small, insignificant fact. A trivial item. Oh, well, as Lewis Carroll had Humpty Dumpty say, "When I use a word, it means exactly what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less!"

Cool - my stepdad is from the Bronx and he always says that the Bronx is the only borough that counts because it's connected to the mainland. Anyway, cool thread!

[Stone28]

Years ago and friend and I went on vacation to Europe. While in London we were asked where we were from and replied "Brooklyn". To which the other party replied "Never heard of it". My friend tried to explaine it was a "rough and tough" part of NYC (Even though we were from Bay Ridge...lol) and the other party said "You'd never know that from the name. Brooklyn sounds like a girls name".....I stilll laugh at that one.

[Fred314X]

Originally Posted by Stone28

Years ago and friend and I went on vacation to Europe. While in London we were asked where we were from and replied "Brooklyn". To which the other party replied "Never heard of it". My friend tried to explaine it was a "rough and tough" part of NYC (Even though we were from Bay Ridge...lol) and the other party said "You'd never know that from the name. Brooklyn sounds like a girls name".....I stilll laugh at that one.

This reminds me about something else a lot of people aren't aware of, concerning the boroughs of New York. Having been founded by the Dutch, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the street maps of the boroughs are pretty well saturated with that language. Brooklyn comes straight from the little Dutch town of Breuckelen--where, as it turned out, the majority of the original colonists came from. The Bronx is, of course, a slight corruption of Jonas Bronck's name. Once upon a time, he was a major landowner there.

When the British took over from the Dutch midway through the 17th century, they found a lot of the place names incomprehensible, and so they anglicized them. That's how 't Vlacke Bos (the Wooded Plain) became Flatbush, Boswijk (Town of the Woods) turned into Bushwick, and Vlissingen, named for another Dutch town that was home to many original colonists, got turned into Flushing. It's all right there on the map--you just have to know what you're looking for!

I could go on and on about this, but just at the moment my fingers are getting tired.

[Cabe09]

As a person who lives out in the country, with my nearest neightbor about 1/2 mile away, this IS very confusing! Is there a map that shows all the boroughs and counties of NYC? I think it would be helpful to visualize it. Thanks!

[Viralmd]

Originally Posted by Cabe09

As a person who lives out in the country, with my nearest neightbor about 1/2 mile away, this IS very confusing! Is there a map that shows all the boroughs and counties of NYC? I think it would be helpful to visualize it. Thanks!

All you have to do is google "NYC map:" Manhattan Map, New York City Map - NYC Map by NYCTourist.com, your Official source for New York City and Manhattan information

[sean sean sean sean]

Originally Posted by Cabe09

As a person who lives out in the country, with my nearest neightbor about 1/2 mile away, this IS very confusing! Is there a map that shows all the boroughs and counties of NYC? I think it would be helpful to visualize it. Thanks!

WikiMapia - New York City Metropolitan Area

I've been working on mapping every neighborhood in the five boroughs, and every town/city/village/etc. in the surrounding areas for over a year and still haven't really made a dent, but Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens are almost 100% complete.

You need to zoom in quite a bit to see most neighborhoods. Roll your mouse over a box and click on it and an entry with some basic information and pictures will come up.

Here's some of the better entries:
Forest Hills Gardens (Queens)
Dutch Kills (Queens)
Lower East Side (Manhattan)
Coney Island (Brooklyn)
St. George (Staten Island)
Brooklyn Heights (Brooklyn)
Woodlawn (The Bronx)
New Rochelle (Westchester)
Floral Park (Nassau)
Northport (Suffolk)
Jersey City (New Jersey)

....and so on and so forth.

Not to sidetrack the thread too much, but can anyone recommend a book or website that gives very detailed, generally accepted boundaries for NYC neighborhoods? I have this book which I use for Brooklyn, but the others are touch and go really. I don't know anything about Staten Island...

[Cabe09]

Thank you for the links, they were very helpful!

[Fred314X]

Originally Posted by Cabe09

As a person who lives out in the country, with my nearest neightbor about 1/2 mile away, this IS very confusing! Is there a map that shows all the boroughs and counties of NYC? I think it would be helpful to visualize it. Thanks!

If you want something you can hold in your hands, instead of peering at a computer screen and destroying your eyes, I've always felt that the single best map source for New York City is the Colorprint Atlas, published by the American Map Company (they're based in Queens!) It shows every street in the city, as well as transit lines. And it's easy to read, too.