Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Native New Yorkers… And Have Probably Asked, Too

Interviews with those who grew up in a place where people come to start their lives.

Photo by Sophie Butcher

Have you ever had a stranger openly question your upbringing?

We have. A lot.

It’s a sensitive subject. Despite the hard-line attitude often associated with “real” New Yorkers, the truth is that no one likes hearing their hometown is the wrong place to raise a child, and that it was probably a mistake for their parents to attempt it. That tugs at heartstrings you didn’t even know you had.

The questions native New Yorkers field from people who didn’t grow up here are enough to throw the staunchest city dweller into a full-blown existential crisis. Did we really miss out on a real childhood as kids in the concrete jungle? Would we be more wholesome people had we grown up in an idyllic suburban landscape of houses and trees and backyards? If our parents had moved us there, would we be less cynical? Less jaded? Less New York?

We’ve known each other for twenty years. We met for the first time in a Manhattan nursery school, where we shared nap time on the floor of a mid-n…