CommuteCommando

I like to say Cali is;
A. A city in Colombia.
B. A mythical land of communist, tree hugging, drug crazed *****exuals.

La La Land has been used derisively referring the stereotype listed as “B”. This is the land, remember, that elected as governor, Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, and Ahhnold Schwa. . . what ever his name is.

CommuteCommando

Actually, I use SoCal. Interesting that one bothers me, and the other doesn't. It may have to do with the fact I herd it here first/

rooftest

Well said. It's like people who say "Frisco:" the mark of a chump.

calamarichris

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.


"Ze best in life is to crush yoah enemies, see them driven befoah you, and heah the lamentation of ze zzzzzzzzzz....."

Seriously though, being Governor of this state must be hard on a body.

bitingduck

Don't eat waffles at the beach then...

lilpoindexter

Cali kicks ass no matter what you called it...I'm LA native that lived in Detroit for 10 years, then I moved back...I love it...I'll never live anywhere else again....

Biker395 

I used to travel occasionally to Minneapolis. People asked me how I liked it, compared to Los Angeles.

Well, Minneapolis began life as a craphole. I mean really now ... it's a frozen tundra much of the year, a humid, buggy hot house most of the rest. It has no mountains and no desert, and there are good reasons why the locals joke about the mosquito being the state bird.

But human improvements have made it a nice city. Downtown is great. You can walk all over the place without even going outside if you don't want to. They have great bars and restaurants. And some of the nicest, most hardworking and friendly people you'll ever meet. Minneapolis rocks.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, began life as a virtual paradise. Soaring mountains. Deserts. Beautiful beaches. All right next to one another. Mediterranean climate, with oodles of room. It literally had it all.

But the human "improvements" have made it a craphole. Ridiculous traffic. Asphalt/concrete jungle. Lots of areas with smog and high crime, and a lot of people with no work ethic whatsoever. I mean ... I'd rather live in an abandoned trailer in Pahrump than a lot of neighborhoods in LA, and no, I'm not kidding.

So it is with California. We had it all. And for the most part, we screwed it up.

The only thing that keeps me here is that despite ourselves, we haven't screwed everything up yet. But we're working on it.

calamarichris

People unite against the nasty climate up there, but we have no enemy to unite against--just each other. Maybe we need a good 1903-San Francisco-style earthquake... (which is perhaps the reason for the crappy human improvements [Taco Bell architecture] we have here.)

Joe360

I say O.C. but only when I'm talking about The O.C. Marketplace. I have also said Cali. on rare occasion as well as SoCal. I don't see what the big deal is. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

As far as CA being a craphole, I must bring up the point that although traffic is bad most of the time, most of us don't have to drive very far to get to where we want to be. I've lived in South Central, east L.A., El Monte, and now Covina. There is a vast array of neighborhoods like any place else. D.C. has incredibly high poverty and crime rates, yet when you go into the capitol you would be hard pressed to see even a bit of litter, much less the type of crime that plagues it's outskirts.

The only other place that I've been in long enough to get a real idea of it's living condition was Virginia. I would say Cali, SoCal, CA or what ever you want to call it is vastly better. We have the mountains less than 35 miles from the beach, and equally as close is the desert. Drive up the 5 for a few hours and your can see a tree that was a sapling when Jesus was a teenager.

NutnBoltman

I don't know anyone from California who says they're from Cali. The only ones who I've heard say Cali are not even from California. I think because of the cultural diversity in California, people who live here tend to tell others where they are from in the state. For instance when I travel, I tell people I am from L.A., even though I live in Orange County. I guess I identify more with Los Angeles because grew up around there. When someone says Cali to me, your definitely not from around here.

Ray R

Cali is a city in Colombia where the Pan American Games were held. It has a velodrome. "OC" stands for "Orangutan County."

caloso

NorCal guy poking his nose in here. Cali is in Colombia. Frisco is in Texas. My MIL lived for many years in Irvine and never, ever heard anyone refer to Orange County as the OC.

TrojanHorse

What if you've only lived here for 20 years and don't like Cali? I don't like it because I mostly hear it out of dippy Arizona kids.

The whole "the 5" thing threw me when I moved to LA, along with "surface streets" (aren't they all on the surface?) and of course, I still can't decipher the sanata monica, san diego, etc. freeways.

Here's a handy graphic for the "could care less" crowd:

caloso

My wife is a SoCal girl through and through and I have finally come to a compromise with her on the freeways: Once we cross over the Grapevine, I stop calling it I-5 and start calling it The Five.

psalm

Born and raised Cali boy here! I really don't care between Cali, So Cal, or any variation of California there is, including the west coast. What I hate is the whole west side thing. The 4 finger "W" salute especially bugs me.

mattm

lol

jimxyz

When I was a kid my parents called all the freeways by a name (I'm not sure they refer to the highways as freeways anywhere but in CA) - Take the Foothill freeway to the Golden State freeway to the San Monica and hop on the San Diego freeway to the Riverside... As a kid it was a pain in the ass to figure out how to get anywhere until someone, probably the Sig Alert guy, started using numbers. Sure LA has traffic, all the damn time, but at least we don't have mandatory carpooling (yet anyway) like in D.C. The highway into and out of Virginia is carpool only during rush hour - the are no regular lanes. And, many roads are one way only during rush hour and then they suddenly switch to two way traffic. That's some scary biznitch.

longbeachgary

That's funny beacuse I SoCal doesn't bother me at all.

psalm

Funny, I call some freeways by name, others by their number.

bitingduck

I never heard SoCal from anybody until I moved here (from the midwest). I hear it all the time from people who are here. In 15 years in LA, I heard a local (who was born and raised here) say "Cali" for the first time a few weeks ago. Up to then, the only time I ever heard "Cali" was east of the Mississippi-- when I go back to Michigan people ask about Cali, and once I had a US customs officer in Montreal (you clear US customs before you board from Montreal) ask something about Cali, and it confused the hell out of me because I knew a bunch of people who were racing track in Cali, Colombia right around then.

CommuteCommando

You're forgiven, youngster. Wife's son and all his friends say that too. Goes around flashin' signs and talkin' all gansta.

In the seventies we were all droppin' out and pretending to be hip. Eighties rolled around and half of us voted for Reagan.

CommuteCommando

This seems to be regional too. People in LA metro seem to be more intimate with their freeways, calling them by name. Down here in "Dago" we use the numbers, like in the bay area too.

m2tiguy

I live in ~ california,,,, and ski at Mammoth -
not, Cali, not Mammi,K.i.s.s it please

B. Carfree

That wouldn't be much of a shaker since the San Francisco Earthquake was in 1906.

Native Californian (Bay Area) of the boomer variety, currently residing elsewhere. I hadn't heard Cali, other than referencing Columbia or a cartel from there, until just a couple of years ago. I hate it, unless it just refers to SoCal.

redinfinity

Maybe my generation is younger than most people here, but I heard SoCal, OC thrown around a lot by my friends/acquaintances, both in high school and college. NorCal as well (the 'hella' crowd). And these aren't thrown around by wanna-be gangsters or anything like that, just normal people. "Hey, where do you come from?" "Fountain Valley - in OC."

I graduated college (UC Santa Barbara) in 2009.