Bay Areas ?

[Moochy]

Hey, how many of you have a "bay area" nearby? I'm from northern California and I hear other people using this term to refer to other areas, presumably with a bay. :D I think theres one in Houston... and maybe one in Florida?

How would you characterize the political stripes of the people in your local "bay area"?

SF Bay Area is damned left-leaning (thank the gods), but the righties have fled over the hills to the inland areas to create gated communities free of any diversity, economic, cultural or commercial. I must sometimes work in these areas I see the stark differences between the bay area subrubs vs. the inland suburbs.

[Cocoa]

1. Tampa Bay area

not sure about politics, but a lot of nutty stuff goes on around there.

[Jara sang]

2. Chesapeake Bay area

Most people call it it Tidewater though.

[Squatch]

29. Or Hampton Roads

Very Republican. Very military.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

3. We have many bays, and a big Hahbah

[Moochy]

4. Do you call any region in Mass the "bay area" though?

I remember everyone talking about "the dig". Then I visited my companies HQ in Boston, then we drove through it under it and over it..

I have to report it was very very big, at least in 1999.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

26. No because we have too much water that has had names for centuries

the Big dig is still going on. it is supposedly almost finished, but I'm not holding my breath.

[KG]

5. i live in the Tampa Bay area.

home of the best community radio stations on planet earth - WMNF-FM 88.5 - www.wmnf.org , and a very pleasant place to live, especailly the St Pete/Pinellas Co. side.

hey, if it wans't a totally cool place to live, would i be here?

[Moochy]

8. Du'ers places are Cool places

Good point :)

There must be at least one cool place in every town where a DU'er lives, their house!

Unless they are a troll, and operate out of a bunker in RNC HQ, or one of their outsourced data centers in Lahore.

(hehe hope i didnt give any RW operatives any ideas... faux freeper data centers)

[montana_hazeleyes]

6. Hi Moochy,

I'm from S.F. Bay Area also. Been here all my life. And feel damn lucky and glad about it as we are blessed with such a left leaning and diverse atmosphere here. You are so right about the inland areas.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be in parts of the country where I'd be surrounded by righties. In the city I live in I did not see one Bush**- Cheney** sticker and let me tell you I live in a mostly wealthy (not me, lol) community.

[Moochy]

7. Heya Montana!!

Heya Montana! :D I do feel grateful, and count my lucky stars every time I hear a horrible story here at DU or other forums on the internets where tales of intolerance, bigotry and racism abound. We got all those things here too in the same amounts, its' just not so cool or acceptable to express these things openly.

Racism in the Bay area tangent:

I think about the way the S.F. Bay Area was segregated through the real estate profession, keeping 'em separated as it were. In college, I learned about the shipyards in WWII and how the integration of black and white labor forces started here, and how unions were able to gain strength by integrating. My father worked at the Chevron/Standard oil Refinery in Richmond, and there were alot of bigoted rednecks as well as blacks and Latinos there, and somehow they all managed to get along, despite alot of horrible management decisions, that used racism and class as anti-unions wedges.

And then later how in the 70's when black nationalism was seen as a threat by the powers that be, and in a concerted effort to gut the growing black middle class economic base, huge chunks of Oakland's heavy industrial base of was relocated abroad or elsewhere like Seattle.

I've heard my asian friends who've studied the identity politics in college (asian american studies type classes) talk about how asians are the "model minority":
Dear minority X, why can't you be more like minority Y.

Identity politics of the worst kind, the subtle subtext to the shrinking white majority discussion of race here in the Bay Area.

I think I should give some credit to my dad's good sense to recognize that snow was something to visit for a day, and ski upon, instead of shovelling it, and living in it. (He's from Jackson Minnesota, and joined the Navy to get away from the small town with limited opportunity)

[XemaSab]

9. Humboldt Bay Area

n/t

[Moochy]

10. I Love Humboldt Bay

Your redwood trees are much prettier than our eucalyptus down here...
:hi:

[Gormy Cuss]

11. Hey who you calling righties?

Seriously, the upside to the insane real estate prices in SF and Berkeley is that the formerly arch-conservative white suburbs just east of the Caldecott tunnel are experiencing a dramatic shift in ideology. Congresswoman Tauscher (D-Alamo) has a district with an equal number of registered Dems and Repubs and the unaffiliated seem to skew left. George Miller (D-Martinez) is another long term Dem.
We call it the Berkeley invasion.

Further afield is still largely conservative and they have the environmentalist's worst friend Pombo representing them.

While SF and Berkeley are well insulated from anything but liberal politics the cultural and economic diversity are threatened by low housing affordability rate. No one wants to bite the bullet and start producing higher density affordable housing on a grand scale.

It's still a pretty cool place however.

[Moochy]

12. I know plenty of lefties in the 925 :)

:hi: hi gormy!

Excellent points, I was hoping some lefties out in the 925 would speak up to defend my broad brush regionalism :D

I have no dreams of home ownership for sure. The market is insane, and shows no real signs of letting up.

Thats a great trend, lets keep pushing the blue eastwards til we hit NY :)

[Gormy Cuss]

13. Yeah, they forgot to lock the gate before we snuck in.

:hi: Hi, Moochy!

I can't lie. There's still more conservatives here than any other place I've ever lived, but it's getting better every year.

I can't afford to buy my house now. The SF area market is really warped and at some point I think we'll have a dot.bomb style correction -- fast and dramatic.

[Moochy]

16. "Pent-up" demand

I've heard that and it's clearly due for an adjustment, but it seems like, even in a depression people want to buy houses in the SF bay area. The pent-up demand will probably just keep fuelling increased prices even after 100% of this countries debt has been bought and sold by conoco-chevron-halliburton.com.

I picture housing prices steadily rising even in a post-apocalyptic scenario :rofl:, like some bastion of high priced real-estate, Romero's Zombie movie, Land of the Dead.

Thats just how pent up the demand for the housing is here in the bay. :D

[Gormy Cuss]

17. All too true.

The city is hopeless, but the outer fringes and marginal neighborhoods in SF and Oakland are susceptible to a serious correction if the employment numbers tank again.

There is another way the market could correct, similar to the way it was done about 99 years ago. :scared:

[malmapus]

14. Yeah these people down in So. Cal think they have a bay area

Lol I lived in SF for 5 years and still laugh when I hear about the bay down here.

[Moochy]

15. Which bay is it?

:hi: Hi Malmapus!

Not that old North South thing? :) hehe, glad I'm wearing grey.

Funny how us norteños are the only ones who ever perceived the Northern -Southern California rivalry?

I think it started when 'they' started stealing 'our' water. :sarcasm:
Those darn southern california lawns!!

[malmapus]

20. Once I figure that one out I'll let ya know

I still don't see anything that looks like a bay down here heh. Of course I compare anything to the SF Bay when I hear the word being used :)

[Seabiscuit]

25. Well, there's San Diego Bay, San Diego Harbor and Long Beach Harbor

but I never heard of any of them described as "Bay Area".

To me, there's only one real Bay Area - the S.F. Bay Area.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

21. Hey there, malmapus....

I'm going to (sweetly, of course!) call you out! We SoCal DU'ers do too have a bay: The Santa Monica Bay, you know! Of course, it is differently configured than the SF Bay, and so what? It is a very pretty place, IMHO...

:hi:

[sakabatou]

18. Ah, yes SFBA:

one of the stablest weather systems in the US I believe.

[Moochy]

19. Huzzah for Microclimates!!

Hi sakabatou! :hi: It doesnt get colder than about 30 in winter here, typically it's only bout 45 at night in the coldest winter, and in the summer, well forget it we dont have summer.

Mark Twain said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." We do have the "Indian Summer" or a late warm period in fall, that usually produces the hottest days. Going to school as a kid in that weather was really depressing, all summer long we are often socked in with fog, and then you get to go to school and the days are 100 degrees for a month or so. :)

It's about 74 degrees here in my little microclimate, supposed to get only about a few degrees warmer.

Today: Sunny except for coastal low clouds and locally dense fog... extending locally into the Bay during the morning. Highs 60s to mid 70s coastside to 106 in the warmest inland areas. Afternoon seabreeze 10 to 25 mph.

Tonight: Coastal fog and low clouds...moving locally into the Bay overnight. Otherwise clear. Lows mid 50s to mid 60s except 70 to 80 in the hills. Evening seabreeze 10 to 25 mph.

Travel about 10 miles east, and it's going to reach 100 today.

[sakabatou]

23. Yeah...

being that I live in a suburb off of SF

[Crazy Guggenheim]

22. S.F.B.A. here.

[Seabiscuit]

24. And how about "River Cities"?

"Right here in River City" from the musical "Oklahoma"

Sacramento aka "River City"

San Antonio aka "River City"

I saw one or more cities called "River City" not long ago.

[Mutley]

27. Chesapeake Bay area

I think the west side of the bay it's pretty blue, and the east side of the bay is pretty red. In my state at least.

[Bridget Burke]

28. "Bay Area" is not a widely used phrase in the Houston area.

But there's a Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership for communities on (or near) Galveston Bay. The group serves the cities of Friendswood, Houston, Kemah, LaPorte, League City, Nassau Bay, Pasadena, Freeport & Webster.

www.bayareahouston.com/Home/

For anyone who knows the area, that's a pretty diverse group of communities. Residents include rocket scientists, refinery workers & commuters to downtown Houston. The well-off have second homes on the Bay; the less-well-off own bait camps.

[noonwitch]

30. Grand Travese Bay

That's up north, on Lake Michigan. Macomb County has Anchor Bay, on Lake St. Clair.