What wrong with "San Fran" and "Cali" anyway? (Los Angeles: movies, shop)

[04kL4nD]

Originally Posted by muffincake

I have lived all over the country. Every other city and state I have lived in, people embraced various nicknames. But then I move here and everyone wants to chastise the use "Cali" and "San Fran." It's so pretentious and douchey. What's the deal?

1) It labels you as a tourist/outsider
2) San Fran grates on the nerves/eardrums. Frisco never bothered me, but I'm not 60+
3) It's pretty douchey/pretentious of yourself to care if locals correct you since they don't like the nickname

*note: I've never ACTUALLY corrected a stranger of this in real life. Just on the internet.

[Oakformonday]

I've never understood this objection. Who cares. Come on, is it really a big deal. I perceive this area as a colony that is still trying to find itself. People confident in their beliefs would not fight about such silly things.

[Bonez765]

outsiders and tourists use San Fran and Cali.

Natives don't. I use Frisco but people always know I am a Bay Area native.

[saibot]

Maybe it's just me, but when people from other states say or write the cutesy nickname "Cali," it seems patronizing and presumptuous.

Natives write CA and say California. It's just a tiny bit offensive for non-locals to decide our nickname should be something else.

I'm not from San Francisco, but that's what I call it. It's only four syllables, not that demanding!

[muffincake]

Originally Posted by LoriBee62

There's nothing wrong with it. Using it just lets folks know that you are new to the area.

As for folks getting their panties in a knot over it, you would get that in every big city, if you perpetually called it by a term no one used. If I tried to call Portland "Port-town", locals would laugh. Call St. Louis "Louie" or New York "Yorkie". You'd get the exact same reaction from the locals. So I don't buy the "elitist" nonsense.

But no one calls those city those names. The example would need real nick names and abbreviations to be relevant. People say "Chi Town" for Chicago, for instance. I can think of tons of examples and no natives are douches about it except for in San Francisco and California.

[muffincake]

Originally Posted by saibot

Maybe it's just me, but when people from other states say or write the cutesy nickname "Cali," it seems patronizing and presumptuous.

Natives write CA and say California. It's just a tiny bit offensive for non-locals to decide our nickname should be something else.

I'm not from San Francisco, but that's what I call it. It's only four syllables, not that demanding!

CA is an abbreviation for Canada sometimes, like USA.

People shortening California to Cali is deciding your nickname? I bet your name is Michael and you get fuming mad if someone calls you Mike. How dare they!

[nightlysparrow]

Originally Posted by muffincake

People say "Chi Town" for Chicago

Really? Just try confirming that on the Chicago forum here.

[muffincake]

Originally Posted by nightlysparrow

Really? Just try confirming that on the Chicago forum here.

Better yet, I lived there.

[saibot]

Originally Posted by muffincake

CA is an abbreviation for Canada sometimes, like USA.

People shortening California to Cali is deciding your nickname? I bet your name is Michael and you get fuming mad if someone calls you Mike. How dare they!

I am female. But as a matter of fact, I do think it is rude for people to call others by a unwanted nickname. As an example, my sister always introduces herself as Pamela. Quite often the other party spontaneously decides to call her "Pam." In the larger scheme of things it is unimportant, but it irritates her, and it is rude.

[LunaticVillage]

"San Fran" is an outsider/tourist term, period. "Frisco" is NOT. "Frisco" is a term used primarily by the native residents of the historically poorer city neighborhoods with high black and or Latino populations (i.e. Hunter's Point, Lakeview, Sunnydale, Fillmore, the Mission etc.). However, it is often considered very disrespectful by city natives to call SF "Frisco" if you aren't a native yourself. Where I'm from in Lakeview, we always referred to the city as "Frisco". Local legendary rappers I.M.P. from San Francisco's Lakeview district made this ghetto platinum song celebrating the darker side of the city by the Bay called, wait for it, "Frisco" back in 1993:



A big part of it is because poorer San Francisco natives from the inner city neighborhoods rightfully often feel no connection to the rest of the city. San Francisco and "Frisco" are like two different cities that are a world apart in terms of quality of life, income, demographics and crime/safety. San Francisco is what you have heard about it the media with its large gay population, hippies, large Chinese population and snobby white people. "Frisco" is very diverse but ranges from middle class to dirt poor and has sizable black and Latino populations as is marked by the presence of gangs like Nortenos and Surenos as well as homegrown "mobs" and turfs that specialize in the same urban ghetto violence that exists in every major American city. The "Frisco" side of SF is not ever advertised in the mainstream national media because that would take away from international tourism. Much like how "Washington" and "DC" often connote two completely different worlds in the same city. Washington being a world of wealthy whites who travel the world and DC being a place of generational black poverty, hopelessness, addiction and crime. However, all DC area residents refer to Washington as DC much like how a huge percentage of Bay Area residents simply refer to San Francisco as "the city".

"Cali" is an acceptable term used by the same people who call the city "Frisco". Once again, it usually boils down to a class and or cultural issue. The Bay Area has been one of the biggest contributors to urban slang worldwide for decades. I remember people from my old neighborhood calling the Golden State "Cali" way before it became a part of the American lexicon worldwide in the very early 90's. People from Lakeview and other hoods across the Bay Area and California, as a whole, would take it a step further and call California "Killa Cali" and "Killafornia".