Used to live in LA…is it true that “Frisco” is a word only used by tourists, and despised by those living in “the City”?
If you want to be real generous in how you define metro area(Fort Collins all the way down to Pueblo) “the front range” works for Denver as well.
I live in Dallas. Since Dallas and Fort Worth are only about 30 miles apart, the two cities and their suburbs are often referred to collectively as ‘DFW’. They are also referred to as ‘The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex’, or just ‘The Metroplex’.
We here in Cleveland refer to, and I quote, “Downtown”, “The East Side” and “The West Side”. Horribly unoriginal, I know. We also occassionally say, “The North East Ohio Area” and/or “Greater Cleveland.” Civic p.r. type booster groups sometimes call the area “The North Coast.”
Some loutish national sports talk radio host refers to us as “C-Town” but how that distinguishes us from those further southeast down I-71 in Columbus or Cincinnati I’m not exactly sure.
Actually, I-71 runs southwest from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincinnati.
Huh. I thought everything not Long Island or the City was simply Upstate.
(Yes, I did grow up on Long Island.)
You must be closer to, like, Poughkeepsie than I am here in Irvington, where we’re more likely to place ourselves in the Lower Hudson, or more succinctly, the Rivertowns.
Yep, though some local rappers use the term as well, as well as in “Sittin’ in the Dock of the Bay.”
I’m from the Bay Area. The real one, in California. Because it’s pretty large, it’s got several subregions.
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The City. The Examiner used to (dunno if it still does since it was sold) even refer to it just like this, with capital letters. San Jose is larger than The City, but even people there will talk about going up to The City. San Francisco City and County are coterminous. Where I’m from.
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The North Bay. Everything north of the Bay - Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano Counties are the North Bay.
2a. The Wine Country. Sonoma and Napa Counties. Used primarily by tourists and the people who love them. I grew up largely in Sonoma County. No, my parents aren’t vintners. (I had a coworker ask me that awhile ago. Heh!) -
The East Bay. Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. Where Oakland and Berkeley are.
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The South Bay. Santa Clara County. Where San Jose is.
4a. Silicon Valley. Originally a nickname for the Santa Clara Valley, it doesn’t really have any real borders and certainly doesn’t fit into a specific valley. Some towns in southern Alameda and San Mateo Counties are considered part of the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is more of an idea than a real physical place. -
The Peninsula. San Mateo County. The, um, peninsula that has San Francisco at the tip. Stanford University is in the Peninsula.
Now I live in Chicago. Since it’s only got one big city at the heart, everything is organized based on how far away it is from downtown. Like, there are “far west suburbs”, “near south suburbs”, that sort of thing. Southeast Wisconsin and Northwest Indiana are part of the greater Chicago metropolitan area.
Buffalo NY is also called the Queen City of New York State (because it is the second largest, by a considerable margin).
A discussion in another thread reminded me that Poughkeepsie NY is called the Queen City of the Hudson Valley.
Milwaukee is called ‘Brew City’ by some.
I live in a far north suburb of Detroit that is in what’s commonly called the Lakes Area. If you looked at us on an aerial map, you’d see there’s lakes on one or both sides of most roads in this area. The PR powers that be are trying to get people to call this area Automation Alley.
My brother lives up in The Thumb. My folks live down in the Piedmont, but if you ask my mom she’ll say they live in the foothills. She’s so cute.
That’s the nickname for the City of Denver alone. When I lived there, the media tended to refer to the region as the Front Range. Depending on the context, it could mean anythng from Denver and its immediate suburbs to the urbanized area from Fort Collins south to Colorado Springs.
Fort Collins, Colorado and the surrounding area is the Poudre Valley.
The Buffalo-Niagara Falls area is the Niagara Frontier, but in the past couple of years the media has taken to calling it Buffalo Niagara. Canadians call the cluster of cities across the border – Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Welland, and Port Colborne – just plain Niagara.
The urbanized area from the Niagara River to Toronto is the Golden Horseshoe. When Americans use the term, it includes the Buffalo area; when Canadians say it, it excludes Buffalo and everything on the US side of the border.
The Las Cruces, New Mexico metro is the Mesilla Valley. El Paso, Texas was the Borderland.
Let’s not forget those endless debates about what makes up the East Side and West Side. Some claim that Garfield Heights, a suburb located east of the Cuyahoga River, is actually part of the West Side, because it’s more of a working class suburb than other East Side 'burbs, and thus culturally more West Side-ish. I’ve heard some say that the Tremont neighborhood in Cleveland is part of the East Side, even though it’s west of the Cuyahoga.
DC is of course also “The Nation’s Capital”*
No one that lives in or around DC calls it “the nation’s Capitol.” Locals prefer “Washington” and sometimes “the District.”
We have to change that. Any ideas, guys?
The phone book says “Greater Memphis”. Local newscasters often refer to the viewing area (centered in Memphis) as “the Mid South”.
Way to neuter my sad attempt at setting up the joke, bud 
And while true that I (nor anybody else around here) will actually call it “the nation’s capital,” I do still hear it with relative frequency on the local news. Even more if you count mentions of “the capital beltway” or “the capital region.” And “capital region” comes in pretty useful for my own explaining my job, working all around PG, MoCo, NoVa, and DC.
San Diego county, is known as, um, San Diego county. (Not recalling any other names it’s known as.)
The county is generally considered to be made up of four regions:
- San Diego city
- North County. Basically everything north of San Diego city; includes Escondido, Oceanside, Carlsbad.
- South Bay. The area south of San Diego Harbor; includes National City and Chula Vista.
- East County. Basically the areas east of the other three regions; includes La Mesa, El Cajon, Ramona, and the county’s mountain and desert areas.
I’ve always thought that the term “The North Coast” was being mis-used here.
Cleveland isn’t a coastal city, it’s on the southern shore of Lake Erie.
As such, I’ve suggested to locals (I’m not from the Cleveland area, but I currently live there) that the proper term should be The South Shore.
Often, I get a look that says “If you hate it so much here, why don’t you move back to where you came from.”
FWIW, the Warriors NBA team, circa 1970, played in The Cow Palace (which is actually in Daly City, not in SF) and wore jerseys that said simply, “The City”. Now they play in Oakland, and call themselves “Golden State”.
And totally off-topic: I read once that when Greeks say “The City” (or the Greek equivalent thereof, presumably something like polis), they’re referring to Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, from old habit.