Talk:Yonkers, New York
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Nricardo, is Cross County a neighborhood in Yonkers? I always figured that to be part of the Dunwoodie community.
- I guess it's a personal call. I don't really see Dunwoodie crossing the Thruway, but I could be wrong. As you put in your edits to the article, people in Yonkers don.t have a strong neighborhood identity. Nelson Ricardo 02:20, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
- I found a listing of neighborhoods (http://www.yonkerschamber.com/geninfo.html). I was born and raised in Yonkers and spent the first 25ish years of my life there, but I've never heard of many of these. Nelson Ricardo 02:24, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
Dunwoodie Baptist Church is on Yonkers Ave east of the Thruway, that's what made me think of it. Also, that area is very Italian just like the areas west of the Thruway/Central Ave. In terms of neighborhood identity, it seems Yonkers takes after the Bronx, preferring street names to neighborhood names - like "Gun Hill Road" instead of "Norwood" or "Williamsbridge" or "South Broadway" rather than "Ludlow Park". In Queens it seems to be the exact opposite, where people will say they are from Flushing more often than they say they are from Queens. Kind of interesting.
There are some neighborhoods in Yonkers that definitely exist and are in common usage, like Crestwood near where I live. However I think Greystone and Glenwood are more train stations than neighborhoods, would you agree? One person I knew from the "Glenwood" area identified as living by Lake Avenue.
- Sounds about right. I was born and raised on Willow Street (it's just two blocks long), and I have no idea what the name of the neighborhood is. I think many Yonkersans (Yonkerites?) are the same way. Nelson Ricardo 16:52, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
It took me a while to realize this, but McLean Avenue is just McLean Avenue and Bronx River Road is just Bronx River Road. The City of Yonkers should start a campaign to instill neighborhood names into its residents, but putting up signs or something. Probably wouldn't work that well, but it would probably only distinguish residents from tourists. By the street neighborhood system Cross County would be a neighborhood.
Actually I think they already did put together a neighborhood map of Yonkers with 38 neighborhoods (does it really need that many?) However I don't think anyone really identifies with Seminary Heights.
- I added a neighborhood map of Yonkers. Tell me if you agree with it. I color coded the neighborhoods by region of Yonkers (NE, NW, SE, SW). Feedback from residents would be great...just tell me if you think my designations are wrong. I know I can't be 100% correct. Yes, I know the map is a little crude, I just made it on Paint today, it will be improving and streets will eventually be labelled.
I made some minor changes to the "History" section. "Jonkheer" was a nickname, not an official title. It was never spelled "Yonker," and much of the in-between etymology is apocryphal. There never was a family of "Phillipsberg;" the writer is thinking of the Manor of Philipsburgh which was the official name of Philipse's estate. The un-Anglicized version of Philipse's name has not been clearly established (Edward Hagaman Hall uses "Flipsen," but I believe "Felypsen" is more common). Once Philipse had arrived in the New World, the name was quite consitently spelled with one "l" and an "e" at the end. At any rate, those two paragraphs had some quirky sentence structure and syntax that needed cleaning up. Dyfsunctional 14:39, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I also clarified the fact that it was Frederick Philipse III who was the Loyalist; Philipse I was born about 100 years too early! Dyfsunctional 14:43, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Removed the phrase "somewhat tacky" (NPOV). 4.237.205.224 14:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] If it aint broke don't fix it
I'm from Yonkers too and I've never heard people say I'm from such and such neighborhood. Everyone usually refers to the name of the street where they reside or hang around with their friends. Being that Yonkers is a pretty large city, in my opinion there is no need to start worrying about the name of the neighborhoods. I don't think that it will make any difference.
I don't know about the statistics but Yonkers is just as bad as any other borough. I wish that it was a borough instead of Staten Island.
When people hear that it's in Westchester County they usually think that it's suburbia, until they come to the southern part and see exactly what it's like.
This sounds like a suburban inferiority complex to me. I think it would be pretty lame for me to try to compare my hometown of Eastchester to East New York or compare Bronxville to Brownsville. I don't know why Yonkers considers itself an exception. Yonkers does have some impoverished areas, but that doesn't make it a "borough", simply by virtue of lying outside NY city limits. Also, there are rich areas INSIDE city limits, so your logic makes no sense. Nobody ever sat down and said, "Lets gather up all the dirty, poor ghettoes and make them part of the city, and put all the rich suburban areas outside the city, and adjust the city line as demographics change." Wizard1022 03:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Neighborhood Nonsense
The whole neighborhoods thing for Yonkers is pretty pointless considering how little currency most of the names actually have. Thus, people in Yonkers do rely on street names for identifying a specific location, not "So-and-So Heights" or "So-and-So Park." Neighborhoods technically exist everywhere, but what varies is the extent to which they have names that are commonly used. Aside from Crestwood, there really are "no neighborhoods" in Yonkers. Wizard1022 03:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Italians
I realize that the American government classifies Italians as "whites," but do you need to constantly refer to them as white? Socially, they have never really been seen as "whites" to Americans. They have dark, olive skin, dark complexions, and very different facial features from the "whites" of America. (I realize that not all Italians look like this. However, the Mediterranean race that has come to be known as Italians indeed looks somewhat like what I have described.) The biggest mass lynching in American history was performed on eleven Italians, simply because of their race. Malcolm X himself stated that he did not see Italians as "white." As an Italian-American, I personally feel that the Italian race should not be bunched together in a group known as "whites," when Italian-Americans have not always had, and in many cases, still do not have, the same priviledged "white" lifestyle as the real whites in America.
- First, please sign your posts. Second, I doubt that you are actually an Italian American. You are probably just some troll. Italians, despite having last names that end ina a vowel, are very much in the mainstream of American life. More so than any other group except WASPs and Irish Americans. --Nelson Ricardo 04:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry that I didn't sign my post, sir. I didn't know you were the sole proprietor of this website. Next time I'll go through you first. I'm not trying to start anything or aggravate anyone, and if you were offended by what I said before, I'm sorry. But I don't see how it could have been offensive since I merely stated some personal observations and facts. I don't want this to turn into a battle, and I'm not going to say anything again after this. But I do disagree with you greatly over how "mainstream" Italians are in American culture. I find there are very few Italian characters in American comic books, tv shows, and movies, and the few Italian American characters that do exist are either stereotypes or criminals. And personally, having my own Italian culture, I don't quite fit in with WASPs, Irish Americans, or any other culture you consider "mainstream" in American. It seems to me looking different and having a vowel at the end of your name does in fact make a difference, and you would know this if you were ever called a racial slur right to your face. Don't dismiss my complaints because you feel my minority group isn't as discriminated against as others. Because I have news for you: Legally, no one is "discriminated" against anymore. But that law doesn't really help in social situations, does it? Signed: I'm Here
- I would have to agree with the above. The way the ethnic makeup of southeast Yonkers is described in the article makes it sound like the area is populated by assimilated white Americans, which is patently false. Italians, Irishmen, Slavs, Jews, and so on are usually considered to be "ethnic" whites, which is a very different grouping from the WASPs most people envision when they hear the term white. And yes, members of all of these groups have faced prejudice not so far in the past. Furthermore, many of the residents of this section of Yonkers are recent immigrants. You'll hear lots of accents on McLean Avenue, and even among those who were born in the US, there is usually a strong tendency to identify with one's ethnic community in Yonkers. It's not a coincidence that the Irish watering holes in the neighborhood are primarily patronized by the Irish-Americans of the area. (Incidentally, I spent the first 17 years of my life living off McLean Avenue right by the intersection where the character of the street starts to shift from Italian to Irish (although I am neither). I would say most of my neighbors were ethnic whites. In recent years, though, the neighborhood has been seeing more and more houses being sold to black, south Asian, and Latino families.) -E.J.G.
[edit] Image
In my opinion, this section is a POV nightmare. Let me point out some passages:
Yonkers currently deals with a famously negative image. It is believed by most citizens of Westchester County, New York to have the worst crime rate in Southern Westchester
- Beyond the dependence on WP:WEASEL, this supposed perception is never contrasted with reality (i.e. actual statistic) and is therefore meaningless.
Several native rappers such as DMX and Jadakiss help contribute to the criminal mystique of Yonkers. The most dangerous neighborhoods are considered Getty Square and Nodine Hill, both havens for illegal gambling and drug activity. Gangs in Yonkers range from Italian Mafia groups such as The Tanglewood Boys, which is a recruiting body for the Lucchese Family, to Puerto Rican gangs, to African-American chapters of the New York Crips and Bloods.
- The bit about the rappers is probably overstated, and the rest needs a source.
In fact, Yonkers has the lowest crime rate of any city of its size in the United States. This low rate is undoubtedly helped by the proximity to New York City. Much of the petty crime that one would expect to find in a large city is effectively "outsourced" to the Bronx or Upper Manhattan; the high-crime neighborhoods of Washington Heights and the South Bronx are only ten minutes' drive away. Also, in recent years, New York City itself has had one of the lowest crime rates of major U.S. cities, and this "spillover" effect of reduced crime has lowered neighboring Yonkers' crime rate as well.
- If the first sentence is true, I shouldn't have any trouble finding statistics to back it up. As for the rest of the paragraph, it claims that high crime rates in NYC are to blame for the low ones in Yonkers, then claims that low crime rates in NYC cause the same phenomenon.
The final paragraph is probably fine, although it'd be better with a source. I'm going to look for some statistics to solidify this section, but I suspect a lot of it is going to have to go. What say you? --djrobgordon 22:22, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
