LA vs SF

The NoCal/SoCal rivalry is epitomized by the battle between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I know people who have lived in the Bay Area for over a decade and have never been south of Monterey. San Francisco partisans will disparage everything about L.A., claiming it is ugly and lacks "true" culture. Angelinos attitude toward S.F.? Too expensive.

But the comparison really makes no sense. San Francisco, which is sometimes called a "real" city like New York is tiny by comparison. It has less than half the land area of Queens for example and about a third of that borough's population. To compare it to L.A., which covers about ten times more land and has more than 4 times the population, makes even less sense. Instead, it might be better to compare the metro region of San Francisco with the city of Los Angeles.

According to the somewhat arbitrary formulation of "Metropolitan Statistical Areas" (MSA) by the U.S. census, S.F. is grouped along with Berkeley and Oakland making it the 12th largest metropolitan region. But why not throw in San Jose whose metro area is directly south? The city of San Jose is actually bigger than San Francisco, so perhaps San Francisco should be considered part of San Jose's metro area which is currently ranked only 30. I know several people who do the San Jose-S.F. commute going one way or the other. And for lucky transit riders Caltrain now has express service that connects the cities. Of course, relatively few people use the service since transit ridership in the San Jose area is much less than in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a region five notches below it in population size.

Linking San Francisco MSA to San Jose MSA is not even close to the population of the Los Angeles MSA. However, it is only slightly larger than the population of the city of L.A. Throw in Glendale, Santa Monica and a few others and you've got a match. But San Fransicans may not like being connected to their larger neighbor to the south. San Jose is Kraft Cheddar next to San Francisco's grass fed fromage de chevre, and that indistinguishable mass of industry "parks" along 101--Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, Belmont--Oh where am I now? The headquarters of Flexnel?--is Velveeta, great for melting on top of your next Tuna and Macaroni Hotdish.