This question is geared mostly towards Californians but really anyone can answer it š
I’ve always grown up considering the SF Bay Area to be part of NorCal since it’s in the northern half of the state and is much different from SoCal, but I’ve heard that some people who live north of the Bay don’t consider it north enough. NorCal to them is more about the region above the Bay, up towards the Oregon border. What do you think?
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From SoCal … Bay area is NorCal 100%
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If we only included the areas north of there then it would only be like 5 people.
Yes.
in my head there is Northern California and Southern California, so if I had to place it it would be Northern as it is NOT Southern.
Now. Is there are 3rd or 4th California delineation that I am unaware of? Entirely possible.
Kind of Like New Jersey in this sense. NJ is usually thought of as North Jersey and South Jersey, and MAYBE The Shore. But it’s kinda really North, South, Central, Skylands, and The Shore, at least a solid argument could be made for each of those.
Yes, the Bay Area is indisputably NorCal.
Absolutely
If Iām feeling generous. Iām usually not – the Bay Area is really kind of its own thing.
Yesā¦ and no. When Iām talking to 90% of Californians, I call it NorCal. When Iām talking to someone from Humboldt, I call it Central California. People in far Northern California get a bit spicy about what qualifies as āNorCalā sometimes.
Yes, indisputably.
It literally IS NorCal lol like what?
Yes, unquestionably.
The obvious proof is to simply google “Northern California” and see any of the links that show up. But nit-pickers in the far North will say this is still wrong. They want to split the state into more than three regions.
If you split into two regions, it’s divided based on the bipolar concentration of population. There is a “megaregion” around LA/San Diego and another “megaregion” around SF/Oakland/SJ/Sacramento. They are clearly distinct from one another in terms of physical separation but also in terms of culture. There is a large stretch of low-population land between the two. Then, the rest of the state gets grouped in with these two “poles” of cultural concentration. NorCal, centered around San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Sacramento, and SoCal, centered around Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, with the surrounding regions of California rolled in.
I refer to the line between the two as the “Hella Line.” It’s the line North of which people say “Hella,” sports bars show Giants and Warriors branding, and people do grocery shopping at Safeway, and South of which people say “the” before freeway numbers, sports bars show Dodgers and Lakers branding, and people shop at Vons.
This line runs roughly from San Luis Obispo, to Fresno, and up to Mono Lake. It is not a straight east-west line. For example, Mammoth Lakes clearly has a stronger SoCal cultural influence despite being further North than San Jose. And Monterey and Carmel clearly have a stronger NorCal influence despite being closer to Mexico than to Oregon.
Some people split the state into three. In this regime, there is also “Central California.” This encompasses the area around Fresno, Yosemite, and Big Sur.
Importantly, this division makes distinct the region _between_ the LA and SF metro areas. It does not _include_ either metro area, so the Bay Area would definitively still be in NorCal. Central California here would be bounded by Santa Cruz, Modesto, and South Lake Tahoe in the North and Santa Barbara, Bakersfield, and Death Valley in the South.
People from far Northern California, i.e. Eureka, Redding, etc…will protest this delineation. They believe they are sufficiently culturally distinct from the Bay Area that they don’t like being lumped in. And since they’re the Northernmost part of the state, they lay claim to the “real” Northern California. And it’s true, they are very very distinct from the Bay Area. And they are much further North than San Francisco.
But they are not unique in being distinct from SF or LA. Most little pockets of the state are similarly distinct. And if we’re gonna split “far Northern California” off from the Bay Area, suddenly there’s reason to split the state into like a half dozen pieces.
The split loses its viscerality. Everyone understands the Bay Area and LA are the focal points of California, economically, culturally, etc…and one is significantly further North than the other. This is the simplest and most common use of the terminology “NorCal” and “SoCal” and is not just inclusive of the Bay Area, it’s centered on it. People who insist otherwise are upset at being overshadowed by a much more important area that they don’t feel personally connected to. They share that with every rural area of every state that has a dominant city (Southern Illinois, Western Massachusetts, Upstate New York, Eastern Washington). They don’t get to claim NorCal as theirs on that basis alone.
Is this in dispute? If SF isnāt in Northern California, then Iām not really sure what Northern California is. I thought NorCal was ubiquitous with SF
Yes. Bay Area is pretty much all I think of when I hear NorCal.
I think people largely believe it to be so and I have no problem with that, but when I was in school in might-as-well-be-Oregon, CA it was generally seen as a joke that bay area kids called themselves “nor cal”.
Another sentiment that I heard repeated a lot as it relates to the Bay was that Northern California doesn’t have any big cities. The Bay is The Bay, it’s not Norcal -some of this is probably attributable to the typical rural/urban divide too, but to some far flung areas up here, no, The Bay is not norcal. It’s technically the midway point of the State, ffs.
Bay Are resident here: We consider the Bay Area to be NorCal to such an extreme that we have trouble accepting the Valley/Sacramento and parts north as part of NorCal. If we had various Bay Area residents define what constitutes NorCal the commonality would most likely be any area within a 45 min drive of route 80.
Of course
I consider the Bay Area to be a part of NorCal, although it’s the very southern most of it.
Of course. I think it pretty silly to say otherwise.
Unquestionably NorCal, yes.
Yes, of course.
Now would there be a subset of people who would differ, yes. I kind of feel like that will always be the case, kind of shaking your fist at the moon type of hyperbole. People are allowed their opinions, even if many others wouldn’t agree.
Born here and never left. Bay Area is 100% Northern Ca.
āI donāt careā – other 49 states
I feel like California has four main regions. SoCal, the Bay Area, the Central Valley, and NorCal. Sacramento & Santa Rosa feel like they’re on the southern border of NorCal. If there can only be 2 regions, I’d make the Bay Area part of NorCal.
Also, I’ve never set foot west of Pittsburgh except for Seattle & Vancouver, which I visited as a kid.
I’m on the east coast. SF is the big city in the north, LA is the big city in the south, Sacramento is somewhere away from the coast and either Fresno or Bakersfield is Mos Eisley without the charm.
I usually call the Bay Area NorCal and I refer to anywhere north as Northern Northern California lol. I know that people from the more northern part of the state don’t consider the bay to be NorCal, but the vast majority of people in California do.
Having grown up in the Bay Area, Iām used to thinking of āSouthern Californiaā as that entirely distinct world south of the Grapevine and I suppose at the northern end of San Luis Obispo or maybe Santa Barbara County. Everything else seems like it could be Northern California, except perhaps those parts of the Eastern Sierra like Mammoth that are heavily influenced by Southern California.
I could accept a āCentral Californiaā distinction that would include San Luis Obispo, Fresno, and Monterey but would cut off before the Bay Area. The Bay Area is definitely the major urban area of Northern California. To say it isnāt northern because itās not the farthest north would be like claiming Washington isnāt in the Northwest because Alaska is farther north and farther west.
As someone who grew up in Humboldt County, I’ll say that the Bay Area is definitely NorCal. But it’s not Northern California.
Californians don’t use the term “NorCal” & Yes – SF is in Northern Cali…
Colloquially yes, though geographically speaking the Bay Area is pretty close to halfway between California’s northern and southern borders.
Yes, no question. Though there are tons of subcategories in the state like Central Coast, Central Valley, Sierras, etc., many people recognize the SLO / Monterey County line as the cultural divide (some will argue it’s SLO / Santa Barbara, though I think that’s really SoCal vs. Central Coast). If we’re speaking purely in terms of geography, the literal dividing line is 37Ā° but NorCal still includes the Bay Area.
Anything above Bakersield is Norcal.
Reject geography, embrace the 13/14 dividing line.
Down where I live in SoCal, no one ever refers to the Bay Area as āNorCalā.
The Bay Area is the Bay Area.
Complicating matters, SoCal is a much smaller region than this NorCal region would be.
Last, no one I know has really ever said āNorCalā and very few people that live here say SoCal.
Speaking from SoCal, yes it is. What people in the far north part of the state think is for you to hash out with them. No need to involve us in that.
Itās definitely Nor Cal.
From “Real” Northern California for the last 45+ years, originally grew up in the Bay Area until my mid 20’s. When I lived there it was quite (extremely) different from what it is now. It was beautiful. Not the wall to wall development and strangling freeways. You couldn’t pay me to live there again.
The Bay Area is geographically located in the northern part of the central area of California and there are miles and miles of area north of that. Miles of forgotten territory and forgotten people ….fly-over California. Most people in “Northern” California do not consider the Bay Area to be Northern.
Culturally the people who live north of Sacramento have next to zero in common with the Bay Area. And **resent** being lumped into a label of Northern California with the Bay Area being the representative. When traveling out of the State…we have to go to great lengths to explain that we are NOT from the Bay area and that it is hundreds of miles away. We are NOT from San Francisco…NOT near the Bay area…… NOT from there!
Yes, because it’s well established to be in the popular lexicon.
If I were naming regions from scratch, NorCal would start no further south than Santa Rosa or Sacramento. But I don’t have that power.
A critical mass of people call the Bay Area as Northern California, so the Bay Area is in Northern California.
Anything above Fresno is considered Nor-cal by some people.
If someone says they are from northern CA I assume the Bay Area.
As does 99.8% of all other humans you talk to. Haha
I knew a guy who said only Southern California people use the term āNorCalā and people from the Bay Area would never refer to themselves that way.
Iv never been on the other side of the Rockys.
Yes
Those old enough to remember station wagons will know there’s the front, the back, and the way-back.
Well, there’s south, north, and way-north.
SF is North.
Ukiah, Weed, Humboldt, Lassen, etc, are way-north.
As someone who lives in NorCal I’d say that anything north of Fresno is NorCal. Fresno down to Bakersfield would be Central California and then below that is SoCal.
From norcal.
Bay Area is definetly nor cal. The only questionable area is Fresno. Neither socal or NorCal wants it in their space.
Yeah