[1890] in Humor
HUMOR: On Being a Bay Arean
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Wed Feb 12 14:03:53 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:45:30 EST
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:10:07 EST
From: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
From: terry@cs.cmu.edu
WHO WE ARE
ROB MORSE
EXAMINER COLUMNIST
IF YOU think a $550,000 house is moderately priced, then you
might be a Bay Arean.
If you never want to see a Borsalino hat again, then you
might be a Bay Arean.
If you're in recovery from anything, then you might be a Bay
Arean.
If, on the whole, you'd rather be in Philadelphia than Los
Angeles, then you might be a Bay Arean.
If you carry flashlights and water in the trunk of your car,
then you might be a Bay Arean.
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Return to Baylife 97
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If you don't carry flashlights and water in the trunk of
your car, then you might be a Bay Arean, born and raised.
Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, but the concept of redneck is
much easier to define than who we are. It might be easier if
we had a distinctive accent, instead of a lot of strange
words like "low-foam," "namephreak" and "Washbag."
We live in the best place on Earth - as one of our TV
station's news promos keep trumpeting - and we don't even
have a good name for ourselves.
"Bay Arean" just doesn't work, as proven above, and for a
lot of obvious reasons. These nine counties and 6 million
people are too wildly diverse and proudly tolerant. Bay
Arean Nation we are not.
"San Franciscan" only works for those who live within the
city and county, and for a lot of cops who moved to Novato.
You try telling them they're not San Franciscans.
One thing, though: When people from San Mateo and Mill
Valley go to Paris and people ask them where they're from,
they say San Francisco.
People from San Jose say they're from San Jose, but even
with their Sharks and light rail system, they often add:
"not far from San Francisco."
Palo Alto and Oakland may be the only cities in the Bay Area
besides San Francisco that can be identified clearly by
those who live far away. Palo Alto is famous for
electronics, and Oakland for ebonics.
If you come from elsewhere, you quickly realize that high
society in the Bay Area is a long-running comic strip,
starring plastic surgeons. The real royalty hereabouts are
the born and raised.
Notice these rare and wise folks always add the B and R
words to make telling points in conversation, whether
they're San Francisco born and raised, Marin County born and
raised or San Leandro born and raised.
They outrank all newcomers, especially the wealthy ones who
can afford to buy and raze their old bungalows and throw up
tasteless mansions.
In states that aren't overrun by outlanders, no one would
ever think to describe themselves as born and raised. In
Rhode Island, where I come from, practically everyone is a
native. The word "native" mainly is used about food, as in
"native corn."
Here it would be called organic, humanely tended baby maize
hand-shucked by Ph.D. dropouts.
When people move to the Bay Area from elsewhere, they go
through three developmental stages, the last making them
full citizens who can't live anyplace else in the world for
more than a month without getting a bad case of fog and hill
deprivation.
The first stage is the "Everyone's Weird Here" stage.
You think it's weird that there's a stand-up comic on the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors, one who's actually paid
for it, unlike the clowns on the Boston or Miami city
councils.
You think it's weird that the only minority set-aside on the
Board of Supes is a seat for a heterosexual white male.
You think it's weird that everyone lives, dies and goes into
therapy with the 49ers, but they don't have beer bellies and
hate all other pro football.
You think it's weird that people expect newspaper columns to
have little dots in them.
You think it's weird that you can't wear your fur coat to a
restaurant without fear of verbal abuse from people eating
rare veal chops with porcini mushrooms.
You think it's weird that mushrooms have names, and fish or
meat always is served on some kind of bed - and it's on the
bed, not you, the way you eat at home in Cleveland.
You think it's weird that everyone always talks about the
weather, just like Iowa, even though the nearest farmers are
a bunch of yuppies in Sonoma making reduced fat goat cheese.
Then the rains come, you start talking about how terrible
the weather and the Niners are, and you're in the second
stage of becoming. It's the "The Bay Area Is Great, But . .
." stage.
See, three dots are even starting to look natural.
You also start using phrases like "stage of becoming," but
ironically at first, when you're making jokes about Marin
County, the part of the Bay Area it's politically correct to
joke about.
(Later, when you are fully initiated into the Bay Area, you
learn Marin jokes are passe. Even people in El Cerrito drive
BMWs and have therapists.)
The Bay Area is great, you say, but who are all these
grown-ups sitting around cafes all day and how do they make
a living?
The Bay Area is great, but if I see one more woman in
Spandex sucking on an Evian bottle . . .
The Bay Area is great, but why aren't the newspapers as good
as the New York Times? Those parts of them that aren't
reprinted from the New York Times, that is.
The Bay Area is great, but how come the only people who talk
to strangers are ordering them to put out their cigarettes?
The Bay Area is great, but how do you meet anyone?
Now you are entering the third stage of Bay Areaness, and
you are as close to citizenship as you can get without
having been born and raised here. You still don't know
anyone all that well, but you've hugged a whole lot of
people.
Hugging is the mark of the born elsewhere and moved here.
Those born and raised here only hug after 49er touchdowns.
After you've been here awhile it seems natural to be hugged
by someone you hardly know. In Rhode Island such an act
would mean you're about to sleep with the fishes in
Narragansett Bay. Here it means approximately: "Feel how
toned I am."
So you hug. You order things with low foam. In the middle of
downpours you worry about the drought.
You believe in preserving the environment, and have a
sticker saying so on the back of a 12-mile-per gallon
"sports-ute," as you call the sports utility vehicle you've
never shifted into 4-wheel drive.
You support your neighborhood stores, except when you go to
Costco and buy pistachios in burlap bags and pickles in jars
as big as fish tanks.
Your home, apartment or garage has been remodeled so you can
store your Costco purchases.
You order people to put out their cigarettes, sometimes even
outdoors.
"The City" with capital letters looks right.
You stare blankly at newcomers who tell you how weird the
Bay Area is.
You get the shakes south of Gilroy, and not because of that
epicenter.
Oh, yeah. This final stage of becoming a proud citizen of
the Bay Area is called "Everyone's Weird in Los Angeles."
