Talk:Northern California

Archive

Archive discussion August 2006 and earlier

Auburn, Placerville, and Eureka? Major Cities?

These cities are questionably major as far as my understanding. I believe they are all county seats but they seem out of place in my opinion. I would consider a either city with a population over 100,000 or a that is the primary in a metropolitan area at the very least to be a major city. Does any one else agree?

Perhaps a "prominent cities" entry could be added - cities that are relatively small might nevertheless be prominent or major in their region, especially given the generally rural nature of Northern California.

WikiProject Rating

Definitely not a "stub," I believe it means at least the B quality, and is at the upper end of that range. NorCalHistory 05:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

External Links

User:JWB, without a comment, added an external link to The Northern California megaregion. This article never refers to Northern Cal as a "megaregion," nor does it ever refer to the think tank that wrote that paper. Consequently, I saw it as insufficiently related to be worth keeping, so I deleted it. User:JWB immediately reverted the deletion with a comment of "rv unexplained deletion." Well, here's my reason for deletion--what's the reason for keeping it in?

That particular link would, I think, be better added to San Francisco Bay Area than here. A great deal of Northern California isn't urban at all. Dori (talk) 11:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

If you look at the map in the reference, it covers a much larger area than the Bay Area proper, and they start by analyzing the entire Northern California area for urban connection, although of course they find the peripheral areas are not as closely linked. There is no claim that outlying areas are urban.

If there were a separate subarticle for Northern California as an urban region, there might be a case for relegating the link there, but there currently isn't.

I don't particularly enjoy neologisms like "megaregion" or "megapolitan area", but these are what scholars studying the phenomena do coin and use. --JWB (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you either need to add a section to this article about NorCal as an urban region, start a new article about NorCal as an urban region, or add that link to San Francisco Bay Area. Right now, though, it's a link that's unreferenced in the article and it should go. Dori (talk) 00:54, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is a Cities section although it is still short. I could add some text there, but where is there a policy that all links have to be a citation for a specific passage in the article?

I'm not sure why you don't want the material. Southern California for example has a reasonable description of the urban landscape there. --JWB (talk) 01:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with adding an "urban landscape" section to this article. It's just that that topic isn't currently covered, so an external link that goes into depth on the subject is (currently) out of place. Go for it! Dori (talk) 05:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

"NorCal" ??

I was born in Northern California, and have lived here 47 years to the present day. Not once have I ever heard anyone from here refer to Northern California as "NorCal". Never, ever, ever, never!! If you used that term in the presence of any real northern californian they would look at you really weird and know you must be from somewhere else.

I've heard lots of people call Norther California "NorCal" for short, including on TV shows and in print. Perhaps you haven't because you are part of an older generation. I changed the page to match to put (NorCal) at the top similar to how (SoCal) is at the top of the Southern California page. Brandonlee25 (talk) 06:12, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Now, some companies might use the term "NorCal" in their company name, e.g. "NorCal motors", "NorCal Dry Cleaning", etc. But no God-fearing Northern Californian would use that term in their normal speech to refer to Northern California.

As a related aside, this mistake reminds me of one time I was up in Seattle about 10 years ago, and someone asked me if I was from "Cali". This was the first time I had ever heard the term "Cali" used to refer to California. The simple reason was that nobody in California ever uses that term. If a Californian says the word "Cali", they very likely are referring to the city by that name in Colombia, South America. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emwave (talk • contribs) 03:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Searching either Wikipedia or the Web gives plenty of references to the term. I see people wearing these T-shirts [1] or sporting these license plate frames [2] on their cars. Granted, you won't hear many people 47 years old wearing those or using the term. --JWB (talk) 06:03, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

While the term NorCal may be used on T-shirts and for other commercial purposes (which are the uses I found in a Google and Yahoo search), the phrase is not lingua franca among those I am acquainted with who have lived in Northern California our entire lives. btphelps (talk) 18:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Adding a note about a year after the previous discussion... California is simply too big and populous for everyone to have talked to everyone else. I've seen a lot of these "I've never heard..." or "nobody says..." in discussions of subregions of California that already have documentation and references posted in their articles. But in the case of "Norcal" I'll add another data point - it must have been used enough that the FAA named the Air Traffic Control for the Bay Area, Sacramento and Stockton after it. Pilots of large and small aircraft talking to radar controllers call "Norcal Approach" on the radio 24 hours every day. Ikluft (talk) 00:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

My goodness! I am born, raised, and lived my whole life in Northern California and I have lately seen NorCal logos being sported on shirts and on car rear window panes. And I have heard people use Cali as an affectionate term to refer to California. Granted these phenomena are only used by the very young, so yea, you won't hear 47 year-olds using "NorCal" or "Cali". I myself don't say "NorCal" or "Cali", but yes, I've heard it here and there. So just because YOU haven't heard it doesn't mean you can make a conclusion for the ENTIRE upper portion of our state. How arrogant!WACGuy (talk) 19:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

NorCal on shirts, etc. is a brand. This has been discussed and beaten to death. It is inappropriate to place "Nor Cal" in the lead. IF an editor wants it in the article, maybe add a section entitled "Names of Northern California" and detail the names and the debate for that matter and use citations. Actual official names are bolded in the beginning of an article. Slang is not. Norcalal (talk) 06:55, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I mentioned that the term "NorCal" is used as a nickname in the article. Only a quick search on some local newspapers turned up several uses of "NorCal" to refer to the region, not to any clothing brand. This link is just an example of how this term can be used in a newspaper without explaining the context: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/10/4113489/norcal-oyster-farm-dispute-spreads.html. Note that the term only shows up in the headline and does not refer to any company and is not defined anywhere. Wikipedia can be helpful for someone reading a similar article and unfamiliar with the term, as "norcal" redirects to this page, but before my last edit, it did not appear in this article anywhere. I will concede that this term does not need to be at the top, as the equivalent "SoCal" is for the Southern California page, because "NorCal" is not as widely used at present. But there shouldn't be a reason to revert my latest edit. This issue should probably now be settled.Brandonlee25 (talk) 05:26, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

nor cal

a clothing company —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.75.41.66 (talk) 20:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced + duplication, opinion, or incorrect

On 22 November, User:Moalli made these changes to this article. I reverted them, with a edit summary of "Rvt to previous version by Norcalal--edits by Moalli were all unsourced; some were also duplication, opinion, or incorrect".

Shortly afterwards, User:76.204.77.29 re-added most of the same "information," along with some pseudo-references. Here's why I'm reverting it again:

Edit	Comment
Northern Califronia	If you want to write something about Northern Califronia, go create a new article. This one's about Northern California.
contains a world city, San Francisco,	Unsourced.
that is one of the world's and the West Coast's largest financial center as well as a cultural and tourist hub and center of liberal politics.	Unsourced. I can find poor refs that say that SF is no longer the largest financial center on the west coast (Los Angeles is), but I can find nothing at all that says it is. And the phrase "center of liberal politics" is definitely not WP:NPOV.
San Francisco County is also the fifth most densely populated county in the United States with 6,422.57 people per sq km (16,634.37 per sq mi).	Unsourced.
The region is also home to San Francisco International Airport, the tenth-busiest airport in the United States by passenger volume (see World's busiest airports by passenger traffic) and Oakland International Airport which has one of the busiest domestic traffic in the United States.	Unsourced; if it was sourced, it should be under Transportation. Also, what does it even mean that Oakland has "one of the busiest domestic traffic"?
Northern California is also home to the Port of Oakland, the United States' 4th busiest commercial port.Port of Oakland Official Site: Facts and Figures (2006)	Citation doesn't back this up; it just says that Oakland is the "4th busiest container port"—not the same thing at all (think cruise lines).
The Port of San Francisco across the San Francisco Bay has declined in traffic volume in the past decades but was the major port of entry from the Gold Rush until the 1970s. The Port of Stockton is the busiest inland port in California and is located on the San Joaquin River delta.	Unsourced × 2 (and should go under Transportation anyway, not Significance).
The region is also home to efficient public transportation systems and rail lines, most notably the First Transcontinental Railroad that formerly terminated in Sacramento but now extends to Oakland.	Efficient? Notably? First, the Oakland extension was completed in 1869 (yes, more than 140 years ago). The First Transcontinental Railroad article doesn't give a precise date as to when it was no longer making transcontinental runs, but implies that it was sometime between 1904 and 1942.
Northern Calfornia also has the highest concentration of the highest-income places in the United States with Belvedere in the Bay Area having the title of the highest median income for a population of over 1,000 with over $116,000.Census 2000 Demographic Profiles	The source given does not back up this statement.
The Bay Area is also the metropolitan region with the highest concentration with households with median incomes of over $100,000 in the United States.	Unsourced.
In contrast however, the interior areas of Northern California outside the metropolitan areas contain the state's most poorest towns, with the village of Tobin north of Greater Sacramento having a poverty rate of 100%.	If you follow the link to that CDP's article, you'll see that it had a population of eleven in 2000. About the income stats, the article says, "the small sample size means this status must be taken cautiously"—which isn't being done here. The "reference" comes with its own {{Page needed}}, which again means that this is unsourced.
Northern California is divided between a liberal, more Democratic leaning coast as well as the core area of Greater Sacramento and a more conservative, Republican interior. This division is often attributed to the more diverse, liberal populations of the San Francisco Bay Area, core Greater Sacramento area counties of Sacramento, Yolo, and Nevada, and the rest of the coastal area (see Coastal California) to the rural, White-majority population in the Central Valley and interior.	First, this is entirely unsourced. Second, you could say almost the identical thing about Southern California—the coast is more liberal than the interior—and since that can't be blamed on SF, the whole house of cards falls apart.
In recent elections, the Central Valley counties of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced have leaned more Democratic due to more diverse populations and influence from the Bay and Greater Sacramento areas and all of these counties except Madera voted Democratic in the 2008 U.S. Election.	Unsourced. How do we know it was due to the SF Bay influence?
Many liberal issues such as marijuana usage and abortion have been popularly supported in liberal areas while they've been constantly challenged and voted against in the conservative interior.	And this is also true in Southern Cal. Without sources, we can't say anything meaningful about this.
The contrast of political views in Northern California can be seen by the difference in the county results of the 2008 U.S. Election with San Francisco as the most Democratic county with 84% voting Democrat and Modoc as the most Republican with 68% voting Republican."Supplement to the Statement of Vote: Statewide Summary by County for United States President" (PDF). California Secretary of State. 2009-04-10. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2008_general/ssov/4-pres-statewide-summary-by-county.pdf. Retrieved 2009-06-13.	Presidential voting percentages are not the beginning and end of political views. Look at that reference and see how many votes also went to McKinney (Green) or Nader (Peace & Freedom). Notice, also, that with less than 5000 votes cast in Modoc, to quote from above, "the small sample size means this status must be taken cautiously".
Nevertheless, Northern California is seen as a more liberal region due to the more heavily populated San Francisco Bay and Sacramento areas compared to the small population of interior areas and the political view cases of the five Central Valley counties between Sacramento and Fresno Counties.	Again, unsourced.
Northern California Presidential elections results table	These numbers are unsourced, and the only thing that's definite is that they could not have come from the previous reference.

User:Moalli or User:76.204.77.29, feel free to bring this back, but it needs to have verifiable reliable sources with no original research or bias. Better spelling and grammar would also be nice. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 08:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Can someone explain this to me?

Haha so i was reading this article, which is great by the way, and i came across this sentence.. "Northern California is home to three of the state's four metropolitan areas that are home to over three-fourths of the region's population as of January 2009". It's only slightly confusing lol. Can someone explain because to me it's saying that of the three out of four largest metropolitan areas in the state, three are in NorCal? I don't know it's just really confusing. SoCal L.A. (talk) 23:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

San Jose and San Francisco: Which is greater? How is preeminence decided in list order?

Though the census has identified San Jose as the principal city in the title of a particular Combined statistical area (due to population and related demographics), there are many reasons why SF is the preeminent city. The idea of listing SJ first in the Cities section is ok, especially if referencing the cities and their size. However, there are many other categories in looking at the qualities of a city and why one or the other may be preeminent. Because SF IS preeminent in so many other areas, it seems that it should be list FIRST at the BEGINNING of the article due to the fact that in so many characteristics, SF is preeminent. There is only one significant reason San Jose is larger: There is more room for urban sprawl (which made real estate less expensive) while SF is very dense and confined. These aspects are obvious. But I see that they need to be pointed out here. Further issues exist with using the CSA as the sole reason and then attributing significantly more meaning beyond that fact. After all, it is primarily for statistical data development. This development is directly related to assigned relationships between cities related to geography, economy, and population. To summarize: Much more exists in the determination of the preeminence of one particular city over another than the details of a CSA and for an editor to say that the US Government has decided this in citing the existence of name order in a particular CSA is not sufficient to determine preeminence. And, finally, just because the US Dept. of Commerce Census Division determined some name order is not tantamount to the US Government determining preeminence. The current form with SF first in the intro paragraph and SJ first in other places seems to create a reasonably accurate representation of facts...hopefully. Please weigh in as I know others will... Norcalal (talk) 05:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Which is a Global City? See the Global City article. SF is a beta class, while San Jose did not make the list. Besides its location in proximity to or including Silicon Valley, how would it begin to compete on any other level? Lists of reasons can begin here to settle this...

More data on World Cities... http://www.41latitude.com/post/400972984/most-important-cities-united-states.

They're both global cities according to GaWC. San Francisco just ranks higher, I believe San Jose ranks "high suffiency" or "suffiency". Obviously San Francisco ranks higher on a global scale though. 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 05:57, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

A good point that SJ is not a Global City anywhere near the Beta Class...actually it did not rate the list. How could San Jose compete on any other level beyond the fact that it is part (and only part) of Silicon Valley? Total numbers of persons employed in the City of San Jose is only like 1,800 more than the City of San Francisco, with both having way over 400,000 workers each. The Silicon Valley argument is about what besides silicon valley related employment and development of technology? Besides Apple, Google, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Facebook, Sun/Oracle, Yahoo, and most of the other cool Silicon Valley companies are NOT I (I REPEAT NOT!) headquartered in San Jose. [Why do most of the cool kids avoid San Jose?]. West coast banking giants (cheifly Wells Fargo and west coast ops for B of A) are all in SF. Since San Jose exceeded the population of SF around 1990, it seems that there is potential for this pissing contest but in reality the name of the region and the associated iconic characteristics are ALL in SF. The US Mint and regional Federal Reserve are in SF. The 9th District of Federal Court is in SF. Cable cars, China Town, those amazing hills, the TransAmerica Pyramid, Levis, the Giants Baseball Team, and many others; Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge itself is (2/3) within the City of SF for crying out loud. SJ has the tech museum and the Winchester Mystery House, and sprawling development and malls and freeways and what else? Population is insufficient as a category for rating all by itself. What kind of bread or chocolate, or rice, for that matter, is San Jose famous for? Norcalal (talk) 06:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

My 2 cents: even though San Jose has surpassed the other in both population and area, San Francisco still remains the internationally more famous, more well-known, global center of the region – whether it is due to precedence or some other reason. Since Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, San Francisco should generally be listed in first in most cases, because that is internationally more common and recognizable. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

San Francisco also has the history not present in San Jose. Historically San Francisco was the largest California city and certainly the financial center, having its own stock exchange. 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 20:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)