4 ms·
I've always found that cringe to be a strange shibboleth. AFAICT everyone has to summarize with the bay area instead, which I find even more comic having grown
by jabberwhookie 11mo ago
I've always found that cringe to be a strange shibboleth. AFAICT everyone has to summarize with the bay area instead, which I find even more comic having grown up on a coast, aka a bay area.
- adastra22 11mo agoThe bay area is more than SF. If you mean San Francisco and don't want to say the whole name, you use either 'SF' or 'the city.' I'm not sure why it's a strange shibboleth? Not every name has to be shortened, and if you are going to shorten names, not every short form is acceptable. I don't know where "San Fran" came from, any more than "Cali", neither of which are used by locals, but it just doesn't feel respectable. It's not the name of the city.
- gerdesj 11mo ago"SF ... It's not the name of the city." Your words ... 8)
- clhodapp 11mo agoI think it honesty just boils down to: It sounds bad.
- snypher 10mo agoThe fact it rhymes is probably why it exists.
- adastra22 11mo agoYou've never met an Alexander that despises being called "Alex"?
- mkoubaa 11mo agoNo but they all seem upset when I call them Alexa
- gerdesj 11mo agoNo. Why would you "despise" being referred to? My first name is Jonathan, I generally get referred to as (int al) Jon, Jonny, Jo, or John (bloody silent letters). As it turns out, until I was 20 I thought my name was spelt Jonathon. I got a copy of my birth cert to get a student loan and discovered the "truth" - even my passport was wrong and my parents had to sort out the first few of those and they should have known better! I was born in 1970 and no one noticed that I misspelt my own first name for 20 years.
- gghffguhvc 11mo agoWhen I lived in SF I walked past this street art a couple of times a week and got a smile. https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/eugenia-avenue-prospect-avenue-to-winfield-street/210718-114836.jpg https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/eugenia-avenue-prospec...
- adastra22 11mo agoHa, that’s great!
- chaboud 11mo agoWell, this is THE Bay Area, where we live in THE city, drive on THE 101, and eat in THE Chinatown.... wait... Funny enough, though, it wasn't until I moved here 15+ years ago that it struck me how odd it is to call it "the Bay Area" and expect people to know what that means. Nonetheless, sportscasters do it. Musicians do it. All other bay areas are just areas around bays...
- ucarion 11mo agoEddie Izzard was joking in 1998 about the "The" and the prohibited names for The City (https://youtu.be/QRB_GhLXCds?si=R4kYkodzvYDxe33H&t=276 https://youtu.be/QRB_GhLXCds?si=R4kYkodzvYDxe33H&t=276), so it's probably been like this for many decades thence!
- slater 11mo ago> drive on THE 101 excuuuuuuse you? It's "drive on 101" in NorCal :P
- ternaryoperator 11mo agoin fact, use of the article before the highway number is a giveaway that the person is from elsewhere.
- stevage 11mo agolike "the tristate"
- jes5199 11mo agoride the BART
- nvader 11mo agoMy theory for why "San Fran" is looked down upon is that the person saying it is perceived as making a claim to status: 'I am so cool and hip that I am on familiar terms with "San Fran".' But shortening San Francisco to San Fran is both very obvious, and betrays a cheap attempt at sophistication that the soul of SF rejects. SF feels like a transitory city as multiple successive waves of people drift in and out. That also contribute to why a shibboleth like this gets a lot of airtime. The episode probably recurs weekly in bars all over the city as someone who's just moved here calls it "San Fran", only to be corrected by someone who's been here for just a little longer.