> I can get to Manhattan within 15 minutes from Hoboken or Jersey City.
As a figure of speech most people won't consider either of those NYC. Somebody visiting Jersey City went to "New Jersey" colloquially.
Actually, I take it back, people who don't know NYC well "know" that Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx are "places in NYC" even if they aren't quite sure what they are, I'm not sure Queens registers for most people, and Staten Island, even though it's geographically one of the largest parts of the city, may as well not even exist. People picture Manhattan in their heads though and that's about all they ever visit. Some people might confuse the name Yonkers as part of NYC because it's kind of a funny name like Brooklyn or Bronx and they've probably heard it on NYC area TV shows and movies. But nobody outside of the NYC area will visit White Plains, Paterson or Newark and claim "I went to New York City".
Meanwhile, people who visit Palo Alto definitely say "I visited San Francisco". But I do agree with other comments that people don't usually conflate San Jose or Oakland with San Francisco.
It's the colloquial semantics of place names that I'm referring to. It's a little bit like how "Asian" means either East Asian, or East Asian + South Asian depending on your dialect of English, but nobody who ever visited Aermenia or Cyprus ever claimed they "visited Asia". Or people who visit Egypt visited "the middle East" when really they visited Africa.
Part of it is name recognition. If I'm not from the Bay Area, "Belmont" or "Millbrae" doesn't mean anything to me or to the people I'm talking to, even if they're clearly distinct places well outside of SF. The identity of SF has subsumed those other areas, at least in the geographic knowledge base that people from outside the area walk around with.
Most people know Jersey City is obviously not NYC. But most people from outside of the D.C. area couldn't pick out Annandale nor does it have any meaning to them. So people just say "I went to D.C."
This has some embarrassing and sometimes hilarious side-effects for out of towners. Like for example, somebody visiting San Francisco proper, knows that they have a buddy that lives near there (because in a past conversation his buddy said "I live in SF" because it was easier than saying "I live in Emerald Hills" and doesn't understand why it's not immediately convenient for them or their buddy to just hop on a street car and meet up for a quick Coffee.
Or I know a company from the West Coast that set up shop in "D.C." expecting it to be convenient to their Government customers, only to find out that none of their customers would come to their office since it was a 2 hour drive in traffic from the actual customer locations out in the larger Metropolitan area.
> I can get to Manhattan within 15 minutes from Hoboken or Jersey City.
As a figure of speech most people won't consider either of those NYC. Somebody visiting Jersey City went to "New Jersey" colloquially.
Actually, I take it back, people who don't know NYC well "know" that Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx are "places in NYC" even if they aren't quite sure what they are, I'm not sure Queens registers for most people, and Staten Island, even though it's geographically one of the largest parts of the city, may as well not even exist. People picture Manhattan in their heads though and that's about all they ever visit. Some people might confuse the name Yonkers as part of NYC because it's kind of a funny name like Brooklyn or Bronx and they've probably heard it on NYC area TV shows and movies. But nobody outside of the NYC area will visit White Plains, Paterson or Newark and claim "I went to New York City".
Meanwhile, people who visit Palo Alto definitely say "I visited San Francisco". But I do agree with other comments that people don't usually conflate San Jose or Oakland with San Francisco.
It's the colloquial semantics of place names that I'm referring to. It's a little bit like how "Asian" means either East Asian, or East Asian + South Asian depending on your dialect of English, but nobody who ever visited Aermenia or Cyprus ever claimed they "visited Asia". Or people who visit Egypt visited "the middle East" when really they visited Africa.
Part of it is name recognition. If I'm not from the Bay Area, "Belmont" or "Millbrae" doesn't mean anything to me or to the people I'm talking to, even if they're clearly distinct places well outside of SF. The identity of SF has subsumed those other areas, at least in the geographic knowledge base that people from outside the area walk around with.
Most people know Jersey City is obviously not NYC. But most people from outside of the D.C. area couldn't pick out Annandale nor does it have any meaning to them. So people just say "I went to D.C."
This has some embarrassing and sometimes hilarious side-effects for out of towners. Like for example, somebody visiting San Francisco proper, knows that they have a buddy that lives near there (because in a past conversation his buddy said "I live in SF" because it was easier than saying "I live in Emerald Hills" and doesn't understand why it's not immediately convenient for them or their buddy to just hop on a street car and meet up for a quick Coffee.
Or I know a company from the West Coast that set up shop in "D.C." expecting it to be convenient to their Government customers, only to find out that none of their customers would come to their office since it was a 2 hour drive in traffic from the actual customer locations out in the larger Metropolitan area.