To anyone travelling to SF

[BaileyMan]

In another thread, I recently got on my "Local's" soapbox about nick names for The City By The Bay. For other reasons I stumbled across this great little article about nicknames for Fog City and thought I'd share. I've since learned that getting on this particular soapbox is uncool. I'm sharing this not from atop a soapbox, but because I want you to feel like you can fit in with the locals for the full-on SF (spelled by the long-time locals as EssEff - Thanks Herb Caen!) experience.

Don’t Call It Frisco: The History of San Francisco’s Nicknames

Pleas take this in the lighthearted spirit that's intended.

 

[Oddly]

I'm planning on a visit next year.
To be honest, I can't recall ever having to refer to a city while actually visiting it.
Neighborhoods, sure, but not the whole city.
I reckon I'd use 'The City' if the need arose.

 

[HaphAsSard]

...be sure to wear some flowers in your hair?

Anyway, apropos posts from a recent thread, quod vide:

I live in the city. Some people hear us calling it that and get offended. We are not claiming is the only or best city we are just too lazy to say San Francisco all the time. Saying "I live in the city" is just easier to say than "I live in San Francisco." We only use that locally. If I was in another part of the country and I said I live in the city I am sure it would mean somewhere else.
Sometimes we call it s f. If someone calls it Frisco we know they are not from around here.

Yeah, even for me growing up 45 minutes away, we pretty much always called San Francisco The City, or possibly SF.

Many to us here in Sacramento used to listen to San Francisco-based Top 40 AM radio station KFRC back in the '70s, and the DJs often referred to San Francisco as The City.

“I'm looking out over that Golden Gate bridge on another gorgeous sunny Saturday not seeing that bumper-to-bumper traffic it's your favorite radio station in your favorite radio city the City by the Bay the city that rocks the city that NEVER sleeps”
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EDIT - help a brother from another mother tongue:

Herb Caen, the Pulitzer Prize–winning San Francisco Chronicle columnist, was adamant that no one call his fair city by such a sliced-up moniker. Instead, “Caress each Spanish syllable, salute our Italian saint. Don’t say Frisco and don’t say San-Fran-Cis-Co,” he advised. “That’s the way Easterners, like Larry King, pronounce it. It’s more like SanfranSISco.”

Umm, huh? What Which two different pronunciations are these two spellings supposed to translate respectively? A more slurred "-fran-" in the second one perhaps? But why the "Sis, not Cis" part?
(Sorry, I've no clue how Larry King says "San Francisco" and I'm not going to comb who knows how many YouTube videos of his show until he introduces a call by someone from SF... Especially if that's the wrong pronunciation anyway.)

 

[Rev J]

i just call it "The City".

C/S,
Rev J

 

[Funky Ghost]

Been living within 100 miles of it for 40 years. Its always been called SanFran or simply The Bay by friends and family here in Sacramento.

I've never heard it called Fog City; Ever and Frisco infrequently and always by out of state folk.

 

[kartiste]

When I lived there in the '70's, Richard Gossett on KSAN used to call it "Sanny Franny".

 

[callofcthulhu]

Been living within 100 miles of it for 40 years. Its always been called SanFran or simply The Bay by friends and family here in Sacramento.

I've never heard it called Fog City; Ever and Frisco infrequently and always by out of state folk.

I've noticed that people who live in California but not in the inner Bay Area do tend to call it San Fran. But no one who's ever lived in the city limits would ever say that (except mockingly).

Umm, huh? What two different pronunciations are these two spellings supposed to translate respectively? A more slurred "-fran-" in the second one perhaps? But why the "Sis, not Cis" part?
(Sorry, I've no clue how Larry King says "San Francisco" and I'm not going to comb who knows how many YouTube videos of his show until he introduces a call by someone from SF... Especially if that's the wrong pronunciation anyway.)

You're on the right track. The idea is to give the word as few syllables as possible. To approximate it another way, try saying "sanfinssc" out loud.

 

[monsterthompson]

I've always heard it referred to as "the city" and that SanFran or Frisco are considered poor form.

 

[bass4more]

Frisco has a long history of usage by San Franciscans, but back in the day was used mostly by the working class and was frowned upon by the Nob Hill set. Caen hated the term Frisco, for sure. San Fran is generally disfavored. I don't really care one way or the other, but I usually call it the City or San Francisco. I find that most people who take offense to Frisco or San Fran haven't lived here that long.

I Call It Frisco.

 

[pacojas]

i’ve heard the term, “the Gay Area”, in the distance past.

 

[BaileyMan]

Umm, huh? What two different pronunciations are these two spellings supposed to translate respectively? A more slurred "-fran-" in the second one perhaps? But why the "Sis, not Cis" part?

In my head it sounds like the difference between a white person saying it, with each syllable very distinct and paced compared to the way it flows when spoken in it's native Spanish

Frisco has a long history of usage by San Franciscans, but back in the day was used mostly by the working class and was frowned upon by the Nob Hill set. Caen hated the term Frisco, for sure. San Fran is generally disfavored. I don't really care one way or the other, but I usually call it the City or San Francisco. I find that most people who take offense to Frisco or San Fran haven't lived here that long.

I Call It Frisco.

Great read! Thanks for sharing that link. I stand corrected. Frisco it is, if you're part of the right population. I'm too privileged middle class to get away calling it Frisco. I guess I'll only be uptight about Frisco if it's coming from a newly implanted techie hipster or is it hipster techie???

 

[bass4more]

I guess I'll only be uptight about Frisco if it's coming from a newly implanted techie hipster or is it hipster techie???

Best to just let it slide, especially if you run into this crew...

 

[elgecko]

Meh...I still call it Yerba Buena!

 

[skwee]

Frisco is a sandwich, or a place where your businessman uncle visits on behalf of a multi-national corporation. SänFrään is what your friends back at home call it when they vacation there.

For the seven years I lived there, we just called it The City.

 

[Fender_Bender]

SAN FerDoo?.

 

[Plutonium244]

That was an interesting link thanks for that, I did enjoy reading it.

But, contrary to what that author says, often the point of a "nickname" is not to aptly and cleverly summarize the quintessential quality of a place (get over yourself, San Fransisco), but to be a shorthand form. Period. We don't call someone named Robert "Bob" because "Bob" aptly and cleverly sums up the personality and je ne sais quois of the person given the Christian name Robert by their parents; it's because it is shorter and quicker to say.

So, San Fran, if you're too hoity-toity to have your name abbreviated for the convenience of speakers mentioning the city, but instead insist on some kind of complimentary appellation commensurately hip with how you perceive yourself, well, FU SF. In that case, though my given name is Benjamin, don't call me Ben; call me The Right Honorable Sir Groovimus Maximus, as that better sums up my essence, to my perception, than plain old insulting "Ben."

 

[Plutonium244]

Frisco is a sandwich, or a place where your businessman uncle visits on behalf of a multi-national corporation. SänFrään is what your friends back at home call it when they vacation there.

For the seven years I lived there, we just called it The City.

If you live there, by all means, call it The City if you want. For people who don't live there-- the ones that San Fransiscans seem to be concerned about-- to think we should all call it "The" City is a bit pompous, IMO. Believe it or not, there are other cities.

As for me, if I only have to say the name once or twice, then its "San Fransisco". If I have to say it repeatedly, I don't say "Frisco" becasue it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue; I call it San Fran (deal with it), because that does roll of the tongue easily and is shorter by half than the full name.

 

[kesslari]

Meh...I still call it Yerba Buena!

Yerba Buena mostly comes from Humboldt these days.

 

[Ric5]

San-Fran-Side-Show

 

[micguy]

Shaky Town is my favorite nickname for it, shough the locals probably just talk about "downtown". Across the bay is, of course, the People's Republic of Berkeley. Which is even more hippie-fied than downtown.