Not Upstate Magazine Is Back, and We Have an Editor

Not Upstate Magazine is back.

I started it earlier this year and I couldn't keep it going. That's the honest version. I was writing it, editing it, laying it out, and running five other things at the same time, and it quietly stopped. That one bothered me more than I let on, because I really do believe this place deserves a magazine written by people who actually live here.

So this time I'm not doing it alone.

Meet our editor

Cristiana Caruso is the editor of Not Upstate. She's an award winning journalist who spent years as Senior Editor at Westchester Magazine and Editor in Chief at 914INC., and she's a BCW 40 Under 40 Rising Star. She's been covering the food and the towns and the people here since before I was making content about any of it.

Getting her on this team is the most excited I've been about anything we've built. The editorial side is hers: what goes in, how it reads, what it sounds like.

What Not Upstate is

The name is the joke and the argument at the same time. Westchester and the Hudson Valley get called upstate by the city and suburbs by everyone else. It's neither. It's its own region, with its own food, its own history, and its own weird brilliant corners.

Every issue gives you one story worth your time, somewhere new to eat, and the short list of what's actually worth leaving the house for. It lands every other Tuesday, and it's free to read.

What's in issue one

Playland's century-long restoration, including how the county sources knot-free lumber for the Dragon Coaster and why nearly every original building is still standing. Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings, the Michelin-recommended Shanghainese restaurant from Flushing, opening its first Westchester location on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains. Plus what's worth doing around the county this week.

Subscribe

The first issue lands Tuesday, August 18. Subscribing is free at the914collective.beehiiv.com/subscribe.

We've been called upstate our whole lives. Let's go show people what this place actually is.