Maybe this should be in MPSIMS, but it could get heated.
Southern CA is hella whack.
What with their “the” in front of their clogged freeway names. I almost wanted to slap some chick who asked how to get to “the” 101. Oy.
SF is the most beautiful city in the world. LA is a smoggy, shallow, ugly sprawl.
The A’s beat the Angels about 70 percent of the time.
Yes, I think use of phrases like “The 101” are reason enough to split the state in two. Split it right about where “The 99” and “The 5” come together, for all I care. 
The problem with this thread is that in my impression people in Northern California seem to obsess about Southern California, while people in Southern California don’t think of Northern California at all. So the posts are likely to be one-sided.
I’m afraid I virtually never give any thought to anything south of Bakersfield, and I only get that far because I was born there. You’re just feeling self-important again, thinking everyone thinks about you all the time. We don’t. 
Not at all. I don’t like SoCal. It’s just the impression I have after reading similar threads.
Except when the South wants to divert the North’s water.
There is no debate here. I don’t know whether it is better suited to MPSIMS, but it surely does not belong here. It is hardly a BBQ Pit rant. (Maybe if we had a Forum for “faulty hand-warmer rants” we could have put it there.)
Maybe it can hang out in IMHO.
[ /Moderating ]
Yawn We don’t care, dude. Why you guys obsess about us is beyond me.
Because whenever we go places, people say things like “Do they really [fill in the blank] in LA?” or “Oh, I don’t like California, I was in LA once and it was ugly” etc., etc. And we smile and say “well, I’m not from LA…or anywhere near LA. I’m from a small town hundreds of miles away from LA.”
It gets annoying.
Personally, I solve this problem by telling everyone I’m from Chicago.
Right. Outside of a sports rivalry or two, most everyone is So. Cal. likes No. Cal. Or at worst, we’re apathetic. The hostility is one way. When I read the thread title, I knew the OP wouldn’t be from So. Cal.
California exists north of Santa Barbara? Who knew?
SoCal: Desert Parks (Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Eastern Mojave, Anza Borrego)
NoCal: Redwood Parks (Big Basin, Calaveras Big Trees, Humbolt Redwoods, Redwood Nat’l Park)
A vote for SoCal. If I had the money to do it, I’d move back to Ventura in a second. San Diego would be second choice.
NoCal is a nice enough place to visit, but I never wanted to live there. Turned down an opportunity in Novato back when you could still afford to live there. Okay, that just makes me stupid, I admit. If only I had that house to sell now…
Meanwhile, I’m here in Iowa. Not an ocean in sight.
This is really a Bay Area / Los Angeles area thing. South of Orange County, north of Sonoma, does anyone really care? We’re too busy trying to explain to the rest of the world that we’re NOT L.A. / S.F.
I wonder, do the other Californias have this issue? Does Baja California del Norte have the same sort of rivalry with Baja California del Sur?
Oh, pish, Hajaro. Taking about obsession, I know you SB types. “OMG, we’re not SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA! That’s, like, LA! We’re the CENTRAL COAST.” The what? Ventura and SB counties get hysterical if someone implies they’re So Cal.
Being a UCSB graduate, however, I want to smack anyone who says they went to “Cal” or “UC” meaning one particular place in the east bay, of which all other UC schools are merely a shadowy imitation.
People, people!
Let’s just agree on one thing: Nor Cal? So Cal? Who cares. It’s all better than Bakersfield.
'Cept maybe Fresno.
I’ll drink to that!!
Weighing in as a former (and long time) resident of Southern California now residing in Northern California. Both locales have things to recommend them. I moved from the high desert in San Bernardino County (the largest…and emptiest county) to Los Gatos, a small suburb of San Jose, about eighteen months ago. I really like it here, but I could have said that about Pasadena or San Gabriel or Orange or any of the other towns in the south that I inhabited over almost sixty years. Except Lucerne Valley. You can have the high desert. I’m outta there permanently.
San Francisco is a beautiful city (especially when viewed from the bay), but most beautiful? Its streets are as dirty as those in Los Angeles, and the urine on the sidewalk near City Hall in San Francisco is not rose scented. Rush hour on Market Street is just as harrowing and anxiety producing as rush hour on the San Diego Freeway going through the Cahuenga Pass.
I seem to fit in here in the north, especially after I learned to drop the “the” from highway designations. That’s a dead giveaway that you’re “foreign” around here.
Well, ain’t that the truth. But I’ll vote for Taft as worse.
shrug As far as I’m concerned, I live in the best part of CA, except for SLO–and you have to be rich to live there. I dislike SF and LA pretty much equally–I would be perfectly happy never to have to go to SF again. In my head, Northern California is everything north of Sacramento and the Bay Area doesn’t count at all, which I guess shows how provincial I’ve gotten…
Why all the hate, people? 
I was born and raised in a pretty damn nice part of SoCal, and I am still here (after a few detours to San Diego & Boulder), but I love SF and NoCal too! Even the podunk mountain towns like Tuolumne!
This is an awesome state to live in. Sure, I’d like to live within an hour of NYC, but I don’t and I won’t. Here, I am within a reasonable drive of ocean, desert, & mountains, as well as a decent city (though LA is lacking in some arts, I think it’ll do). An hour’s flight and I can be in SF or Mexico- what’s not to love?
Do the different boroughs of NYC act like this? Or other states?