Dude, all that is perfectly right and true, but most people who don't actually live in the South Bay don't know where any of those places are without pulling out a map. Everyone
everywhere
in the Bay Area knows where San Francisco is. I'm not trying to dis any of the other Bay Area cities or dis the South Bay; I'm just trying to guess how the people who did the deciding were thinking.
And, working from the tiny and biased sample of my friends and family, it's generally been my experience that Bayistas (not Buffista Bayistas, but it gives me the creeps to call them Bay Areans) know the cities they live and work in, any other local cities they may have lived and worked in, whatever cities are right adjacent to theirs, and San Francisco.
Many Bayistas are fuzzy on the distinction between Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville and Oakland. Most Contra Costans and most people from Berkely and anywhere north have zero idea of the South Bay past SFO (and I definitely include myself -- I only learned exactly where San Jose was two years ago when the Ren Faire moved to Gilroy). San Francisco isn't the biggest city in the Bay Area, but it's the one most immediately recognizable to movie-preview schedulers, and it's the one that most Bayistas have at least a vaguely decent idea of how to get to.
Cindy, I'm gonna have to squint at you. It just... it grates. It's like if I insisted on calling those Massachusetts towns WOE-burrrn and WAY-ban.
Anyway, when in the Bay area, San Francisco should be referred to as "The City."
No. "The City" is New York. When you're "going in town" you're going to Boston.
Frisco will just have to be Frisco.
Context edit
JZ - The greatest part of the Bay Area population has shifted south. And I agree with Topic!Cindy: "'The City' is New York."
"The City" is New York in the Tri-State Area. In the Bay Area, "The City" is San Francisco. I have no idea what "The City" is in Ohio or Kansas.
In Kansas, "The City" is Emerald City.
It's like Immortals: There can be only one "The City."
Mikey, I'm not arguing that the South Bay is less populous. I am arguing that most of the people I've known locally (all over the Bay Area, not just SF) know where SF is and know where the towns immediately surrounding them are, and don't know much beyond that.
I'm not saying that SF is the biggest, or the very best, or that the South Bay is shite. I'm saying that SF is immediately recognizable and possibly more easily findable to a larger number of locals than many other locations.
SF is also the easiest city to find when playing Microsoft Flight Simulator.
In Kansas, "The City" is Emerald City.
We don't have a The City. We have Town, which is Kansas City, or maybe Wichita if you live in south central Kansas.
Somehow I don't think that people in San Francisco talking about the City are talking about New York. Sorry, folks. I like New York and all, but I'm not believing it's got the rights to the term.
"The City" is San Francisco, as is clearly demonstrated by "Tales of The City".
To Sherlock Holmes, it is always
The
City.
[edit:] For what it's worth, I live halfway down the Peninsula in San Carlos, and I travel up to the city much, much more often than down to San Jose or across the Bay to Berkeley and Oakland.
