San Francisco, what’s in a name? Well, the good folk of… well, they helpfully tell us what to call them.
Easy, you think… San Fran, right?
But no, wait, our friends in San Fran tell us, no, they hate that.
Fair, having just returned from San Antonio in Texas I knew right off the bat that not to call them San Ants.
Even worse is the F-word ‘Frisco’ which the Pulitzer-winning San Francisco columnist Herb Caen railed against.
When he wrote: ‘Caress each Spanish syllable, salute our Italian saint. Don’t say Frisco and don’t say San-Fran-Cis-Co.
‘That’s the way Easterners, like Larry King, pronounce it.’
City on rock’n’roll
Of course we’re loath to criticise our most-loved musicians who are keen to promote the city.
Particularly when they’re prepared to leave their home in Georgia when they’ve got nothing to live for.
Which gets us to the one San Franciscans like best ‘City by the Bay.
And putting aside past monikers Caen’s ‘Baghdad by the Bay’, a Babylon reference.
Or ‘Paris by the West’ when everyone wanted to reference themselves to the French.
Grace Slick perhaps had it best when she sang about ‘building this city on rock’n’roll’.
Gateway to excess
As well as Jefferson Airplane, the world knows the City by the Bay as the spiritual home of hippies.
With Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana and Steve Miller and their flower-wearing fans down by Haight-Ashbury.
Of course, as much as every tourist to San Francisco checks out Haight-Ashbury.
We’re advised by Green Day’s biggest fan, my little post-punk rocker, that Billie Joe Armstrong is from across the Golden Gate Bridge in Oakland
All of which is prep work for when we finally get ourselves out to San Francisco.
Which has, of course, been on the radar for ever and certainly since our Aer Lingus trip to Dublin, San Francisco, which Covid stalled.
So, San Francisco, what’s in a name? And now we know, thanks for sharing.