I grew up in CA too and we never said Cali, Frisco, or SoCal.
But to me "The City" is NYC, not San Francisco.
"Cali" grates on my nerves like nothing else. My kids told me that it started with the song "Back to Cali" from Notorious B.I.G. Ugh.
Haha. Yes, that was when I remember realizing that nonnatives called California Cali. I was in elementary school and had a classmate named Kallie and we said the song was really about her.
As far as freeway names, and former names, you still hear that a lot in Las Vegas. People never, ever refer to I-515 unless they are newbies or out of towners. It is still referred to as The 93, as it always has been. Even the Department of Transportation still includes The 93 and 95 on their signage going through The Spaghetti Bowl (the downtown interchange, so named because of its design).
Then there's The Beltway in Las Vegas and Henderson. It isn't a complete beltway, but maybe someday...there isn't much of it missing now. But the weird thing is sometimes a reporter will report an accident or past incident as "The Beltway and Decatur, or The Beltway and Jones." That is very non-specific, since both locations occur *twice* on The Beltway, once on the Northern Beltway and once on the Southern Beltway. The beltway's formal name is I-215.
I see "Beltway" in writing (ads usually) but I never say it. I say "the 215."
We have The 15, The 95, The 215.
We also have streets abbreviated to Trop, DI, and some others I can't remember right now.
San Francisco was, and is, San Francisco. "Frisco" sounds kind of cheap to me, and that city deserves as much respect as it can get. Las Vegas, on the other hand, thrives on being called Vegas. Nobody seems to notice or care.
I think there are two reasons for this:
First, San Francisco means Saint Francisco whereas Las Vegas means The Meadows. Dropping the Saint part is a bigger deal than dropping the The part.
Second, the city limits of Las Vegas doesn't include a lot of what people think of when they think of Las Vegas. Most people don't even mean the city of Las Vegas when they say they're going to Las Vegas. They mean they're going to visit unincorporated Clark County, perhaps the town of Enterprise (that's where The Strip is).
So the term "Vegas" actually refers to the Vegas Valley, including but not limited to the City of Las Vegas. "Vegas" includes the town of Enterprise, city of North Las Vegas, city of Henderson, and all the unincorporated areas of Clark County that are in close proximity to The Strip.
