San Francisco vs. Los Angeles

I have lived in both San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 18+ years I’ve lived in California. There is a fairly one-sided rivalry between the two cities.

People in San Francisco, or more completely the Bay Area, HATE Los Angeles and Southern California. To them it’s a barren cultural wasteland. Never mind the palm trees, 300 days of sunshine, beautiful beaches and the fact that such a huge amount of media and culture are born here in Los Angeles. A San Franciscan would sooner live in Folsom Prison than L.A.

Go to any sporting event in the Bay Area against a Los Angeles team, and you’ll hear the crowd repeat chants to “Beat L.A.” Tell someone that you live in Los Angeles and you’ll get a reaction that’s somewhere between “Sorry your dog died” and “Did someone step on something?”

What’s funny is that the feeling is not really mutual. Angelenos don’t have particularly negative things to say about San Francisco, other than “it’s freezing up there.” In fact they don’t have much to say about it at all. Sure the fans like to see L.A. teams beat those from San Francisco, but that’s still not going to get them to the game on time (Los Angeles fans are always notoriously late for games, with the stands often not filling until a quarter of the game has been played). It’s kind of like San Francisco is L.A.’s little brother —

San Franciscans would like to think that Angelenos are too shallow to even know that they’re hated. Maybe so. But I prefer to think of it as we’re just to happy here – how can you be angry when the weather is so beautiful every day?